In a piece of introspective original creative content, not penned by a bot but by a bard with a beard, I have here some thoughts on the value of my blog posts. By public opinion as we see it reflected in my recent views and upvotes, it is worthless. Things crashed rather fast this week, from receiving 26 Hive at the start of the week, to receiving 0.026 Hive by the end of the week for the same length of original creative content. Just saying!
The subject matter on both occasions was equally abstract and philosophical, and yet the readership vanished. The reason for this is because there was never really any readership to begin with. It’s all “bots” here on Hive, as I call the delegations to whale voters. It’s delegated stake to one or two whales who upvote you. It then it looks like you received hundreds of upvotes. But actually one dude upvoted you with lots of other people’s delegations.
I’ve seen it for years on Hive, not that I’m bothered any more. I just have no need to write good work or produce informative content when only one whale gets to upvote it or not. And when he saw my Hive stake of only a few pennies, he probably didn’t bother upvoting any more.
So in other words, I had one or two readers, now I have less than one, so that’s not too bad. What a curious place the Hive is. So to the 4 or 5 whales who make up the entire Hive, nice job guys. Now I can write garbage like this and not give a damn since you lot are the total readership for posts like mine.
Every year for the past 5 years on Hive/Steem I have been encountering this roadblock and block of mental interest and inspiration, since there is no readership anyway. Why should I try hard? Get your chatbot to write you something in seconds and post that for plenty of upvotes... if you have a big stake of Hive Power.
What I’m saying is that original creative content of calibre no longer matters. That’s how it seems to me. Rather it’s your investment in Hive Power that moves the whales or big votes here on Hive. Write a good piece of informative text with photo and you get nothing. Write garbage but have a big stake of HP and you get all the whale upvotes.
Obviously I’m probably wrong but who cares? I write what I like and how I see it. And this is how I see you whales on Hive. So carry on with your cat pics and recipes. Good job on the original creative content there folks. And keep getting your whale upvotes, where one whale looks like 600 votes and readers, yet it is only one.
I will carry on writing interesting and informative posts in my genre way out on the perimeter, and I will write from the heart and the head. Regardless of these manipulative whales and their hundreds of delegators. Stake is all that counts it seems. Prove me wrong, I need some objectivity today to balance my subjective opinion. I mean to go from 700 upvotes to 9 in one week is a sign that its mostly a single whale or maybe two and the other 698 are delegations who never read a world I write.
Hive is an echo chamber So therefore I write whatever... not to interest the reader because the reader does not exist. Only the investor and his money. In this echo chamber called Hive, there are so few people in such a big space that all we hear are our own voices bouncing and reflecting back at us, and we think the place is crowded and that we have an audience and that we are big and popular. But that is just the echo of our own voice sounding like a lot of users.
Anyway, I enjoy creating original creative content using language or imagery. I write for my own legacy and my diary and my captain’s log. But I don’t write for the non-existent reader. Even the whale has lost my interest and I have lost interest in him. I write one day and votes arrive from him. I write another day and no votes arrive from that couple of whales. So I have given up bothering about result or outcome or profit.
I can produce thousands of words of content, all original and all filled with feeling or information or both, as well as experience and personal insight. And yet it will produce no readers or no upvotes. So I don’t over-endeavor any more. I simply ramble and tell my story of the weird set-up called Hive and DPoS or “delegated Proof of stake” the blockchain consensus mechanism that we have here with its 21 odd witnesses with the biggest Hive bank accounts and following that rule the place.
Don’t worry about quality posts, they don’t mean much. Rather just buy all their Hive and stake it as Hive Power. Then they will upvote whatever you write. So buy in and get the rewards. Don’t bother with skill or interest. That is how I have experienced it here on Hive, I’ll be candid. And I can because I’m not a herd kind of guy, or a follower, or a tribal kind of person. I don’t join the Hive cult or any crypto band of bros who love their token like their wife.
I see through those meme followers and army of privates following the whales. Sadly Hive – build on DPoS mechanism – is flawed in my opinion. I prefer a better philosophical paradigm or smart contract to run my coins. PoW or Proof of work, Like Bitcoin, might be a better option. But I’m not a coder or developer so I don’t know yet. I just don’t like it when the uber-rich “hodlers” of the coin, the whales, get to have more say based on their wealth. I don’t like rule by the rich. That’s called “Plutocracy”.
Thanks to this little free thought experiment and critique of Hive and DpoS, I now have my subject – Plutocracy: it’s pros and cons. In coming days I will write some philosophical blogs on the value of the various types of political power and control mechanisms, as well as the values of the various blockchain consensus mechanisms, from a layman’s point of view. That’s how I learn something...research it so that I may have to tell it to you non-existent readers. What a conundrum! I’ll write about conundrums on another day too so stay tuned.
(photos my own)