Welcome to Whale Club.
The first rule of Whale Club is: you do not talk about Whale Club.
The second rule of Whale Club is: you DO NOT talk about Whale Club!
Third rule of Whale Club: if non-whale yells “stop!”, criticizes, or flags out, their blog is over.
Fourth rule: only whale can flag.
Fifth rule: one flag at a time, fellas.
Sixth rule: the flags are bare authority. No questioning, no crticism, no equality.
Seventh rule: flags will go on as long as they have to.
And the eighth and final rule: if this is your first time at Whale Club, you have to flag.
The profit has been always the priority over well being of community.
Again, Steemit's content has been taken over by few whale investors whose priority is self interest not the good of community. If they do anything for the community it is just side effect of their attempt to acquire profit.
They invite and incentivize junk content creators showing disrespect for the rest of hard working content creators who try to improve the quality of this platform.
Just to make it clear, quality posts do not have to be long. They can be short too. Short does not mean few sentences and copypasta of YT link with few sentences, or flood of 10 insta googled photos just to make your post look long. Quality is about the amount of effort, creativity and time you spend creating something. How is that "5 minute" posts with photo of your sandwich or lazy copypasta video with 50 words earns more than well written and interesting article (even quality 200-300 word short one or genuine work of art)?
What is even worse is that some content creators who used to produce decent content have now started to create junk in order exploit these new, junk content initatives. They try to milk the rewards fishing for random, mindless votes from that "group" of few whale investors.
Just like all these Eastern European plagiarists have been doing for months with their trash copypasta which @steemcleaners has been futilely trying to fend off. Plagiarism in absolutely no way should be upvoted. For the respect of other content creators. Also it incentives scammers who just manufacture accounts with plag to fish for random votes from that small "whale-investor" group. There are so many such accounts popping out every day trying to scam that steemcleaners cannot keep up with finding them. Every day there is some highly rewarded plagiarism that goes unnoticed past the payout. There are not enough people volunteering for steemcleaners to find them out. Just because of that mindless upvoting by the "group" they cannot get rid of these scammers who persistently keep generating the accounts and new scams as they see the profit.
Upvoting plagiarism or trash content only attracts vultures and scammers not quality content creators. If you have no time to spend 20-30 seconds on at least looking through the post if its legit and quality then you should not vote on it. It is the ultimate show of disrespect of these few, mindless and inconsiderate whales towards great, quality content creators and contributors to community.
Donkeypong idea of segregating very short link type of content and quality posts would be very good. Any content in link section should have rewards disabled.
Here are some of quality examples:
Great, quality post by @sykochica
I suspect that this post got so little because of sykochica's gender or because it is related to LGBTQ. It is not a first time she gets peanuts for her LGBTQ related posts.
- "2016 Halloween Makeup Tutorial Contest Submission - my apologies to KISS Nation by @merej99" - 1SBD
Very funny, quality post with video of makeup tutorial by @merej99 who is well engaging community member.
She ended up with the last place in competition, because her entry post was not rigged by whale bots. She had no chance to compete with 2 other, whale-favoured users. One who does not even contribute anything to this community (same as her whale patron, compulsive spun content creator) - no curation of other users, no commenting, no chat. No engagament whatsoever. She only created some "Steemit" promotion posts, obviously to fish for easy profits.
Very unappreciated user with so much effort and ideas for Steemit community.
Here are some examples of dubious quality posts:
- "Introducing Myself-Alexa Nova" 65 SBD
Could someone, please explain to me why this new user deserves more for the posts than other old and loyhal users such as artists, musicians etc. If this user got so highly upvoted for being some minor porn celebrity, then it clearly sends a message to other users on Steemit that "you are worthless here unless you are famous or favoured by some whales".
I also wonder what kind of followers this user is going to bring to Steemit?
No wonder that this introduction received such a high reward, considering that Steemit is saturated with cis males of "peeping tom" mentality. It is probably the same reason why sykochica's LGBTQ posts are ingored or attacked.
3 sentences and copypasta of YT video.
- "My first Steemit post" 18 SBD
Seriously?
1 Sentence and copypasta of some gif. If I posted something like this I would select to refuse the payout. Taking the reward for something like this is awfully disrespectful for quality content creators.
These are only few examples out of dozens coming up each week.
I am well aware that this post is probably my Steemit suicide.
If that is so, let it be.
I'm not afraid to speak my mind.
I have done a lot to help Steemit become better in many different ways.
I will not be posting anything more in my blog until I notice that Steemit appreciates their loyal, long term users who produce quality content.
I will start writing when it stops being manipulated by small group of investors who do nothing for the platform except of bringing their investment.
I will come back when this platform stops advertising something that it cannot provide trying to lure new users giving them a promise of American dream type of product, feeding on their hopes jsut to realise that their blog is worthless unless they know some whales or are promoted by some.
EDIT:
There are some arguments that quality is a subjective concept.
I think that pretty much almost anyone in most cultures would agree that quality is defined by making an effort in your work and adding something from yourself. It is about being creative in producing something which is superior in its design over other product. The product can also be an information. Some information can have better value and teach us more than others.
According to dictionary definition it is "the standard of something as measured against other things of a similar kind; the degree of excellence of something".
All the best.
-logic
P.S. Since day one I have found the names "whale", "dolphin" and "minnow" to be really silly. They had major "WTF" effect on me making it hard for me to take the platform seriously at first. I think that those words have major anti-marketing effect on anyone new joining the platform.