So there it is, you spent two hours writing a post, you've checked the spelling, you've done your research, you are getting ready to hit POST but right before you do, you check once more. Twenty minutes later you have two comments from different bots, a spammy account something generic and unimportant, so you know what you need to do... BOT IT UP!

Anecdote Incoming

So I know about this guy who started more or less at the same time I did. He unlike me bought about 2k of Steem from the begging of his journey. At that point in time I was holding close to 200 SP in my account if I'm not mistaking, so to me, he looked like a whale. Of course this was long before I understood how this whole thing works, I was merely weeks into this little journey and the idea of having that much on a crypto wallet sounded as difficult as climbing the Everest naked.

My little story begins right with the introduction of the controversial Upvote Bots, the hardfork had just happened (unknown to me of course) and this facilitated their birth, if you will. I kept on seeing this one account making crazy money with the posts he was making. To me, a plankton that would jump on one foot if my post had more than 1 SBD, seeing constant $80+ payouts was mind boggling.

I would read the stuff, why not? it was pretty good, I would even laugh every now and then, but I always felt a bit uncomfortable leaving comments next to the spammy accounts and the bots with their quirky tag lines. You've been defended by a ninja, still sounds cheezy, funny, but cheezy none the less. So leaving a comment on a ground filled with rocks was something that never felt right. I did however eventually leave a comment or two, why not? testing the waters if you will, and I did not get a response, so I stopped.

The posting continued, the payouts kept on being up there, but the SP of the wallet was not growing all that much. The constant power downs where the reason, but back then I was probably not that familiar with the exact dynamics of it all.

Many months went by, the posting of the account stopped being as consistent, effectively the author, which mind you was/is talented stopped feeling motivated enough to pump out content. Singing for an empty bar can hurt one's ego and I'm quite familiar with that feeling myself. All of the sudden, the account stopped posting. Just like that.

What happened?

Speculative Meno says

That as much as many authors on this platform enjoy seeing some big numbers at the bottom of their posts. As much as they love the idea of making tons of money with their intelectual currency, this wealth if you will, is not entirely fulfilling. It might be to some, but to others I'm sure it feels like empty hotpockets empanadas.

My good friend Cope(@mfxae86) wrote a post that to me really sheds some light in the dynamics at play here.

Yes we might want financial success, but in a disposable era where absolutely everything wears a label of expiration, we are starving for human connections, and I would say even more so that we are needing "money". All of us, including yours truly would like to feel as agents of relevancy, as people that contribute if not to society as a whole, to conversations of value.

Why would we spend so much time thinking about complicated subjects, if it was not to share our ideas? What would be the reason then? - Ok, so I wrote this thing here, I think its great, it really explains how this and this works together and possible sheds some light on to the dynamics of our polarized society, great, this is great... now... let me put this on a piece of paper and stick it in a drawer.

Of course not, nobody does that, so why are we spending out time, wasting our time, lying to ourselves about this whole thing? Are these self bought trophies a replacement for human connection? Are these somewhat isolating behaviors a vaccine against emotional needs?

I submit to you the possibility and of course I can only speak for myself that none of these feeble replacements for human connection work in the slightest, maybe they offer a short term bump, like a line of cocaine (or so I hear) but they are nothing that makes us go to bed feeling relevant and filled with purpose.

I had a great day today, I made this post about how I think we should tackle global warming... I put all the good ideas in there and then... I upvoted it with bots to like 300 and the bots left me all their beautiful comments... I had this guy tell me he likes the pictures, which is great because they are not even mine, and that makes me feel good... this other guy told me he resteemd my post, which is also, like also awesome because I checked his profile and he didn't, but he is trying to win my favor and that feels great

Ok, Ill stop

I'm being a bit jerky today, but that's just because of @silentscreamer's recent post. I'm trying to maybe influence a few people out there to be the change, and I'm not saying that because I'm some crazy idealist, I'm saying it because we need it, we, us, humans, we need to be better than this.

We need to relearn the value of human connections, retrace our steps back to the moment we let greed and the fear of living in scarcity take over our minds. We can be better, I've seen it too. So here, my message is for you. If you just got here, if you've been here for a few months, gosh... if you've been here a year and you are tempted to succumb to the mentality, to the "If you can't beat them join them". This... is your loving slap in the face...