A little insight.
First, where I am coming from.
I joined SteemIt on Saturday morning, June 24th, 2017. I wasn't really intending anything major to happen here. I had been going down a rabbit-hole of cryptocurrency related surfing as I had recently taken up a very small shot at mining coins on my spare GPU cycles while I browsed.
I found this fascinating social network that was blockchain powered. So on the Friday night before it all began, I decided to sign up. They said they would email me when it was ready, and they might have to contact me via phone to verify I wasn't some nefarious spam bot.
I went to bed.
I woke up early Saturday to find that my account had been approved with little fuss.
It's been pretty much downhill from there.
I started reading, and posting, and planning my 'introduceyourself' post. All the while, finding people to discuss things with on steemit.chat. I came into contact with people like @acidyo and @clevercreator and learned how awesome this community was going to be.
At some point, I sat down to learn Markdown while creating my first post, a classic introduceyourself. I got responses. Wow, people were real.
Ok, lets write a couple more. So I created my second and third posts about random things.
Somewhere in there I decided to try out the 'postpromotion' channel of steemit.chat, and found one small negative to an environment like this. One of those 'sides' to SteemIt I am here to discuss in this post.
Upon placing my link in there, a user decided to upvote it. Yay! He even told me that he did.
Then he demanded I upvote his post in return.
Wait? What? Sure, let me read it and see if it is something I can upvote.
I got maybe 20 seconds into reading it before Steemit.chat pinged me again with a mention. He was wondering why I hadn't upvoted yet. I informed him that once I read it I would decide on the upvote.
The next 10 minutes were spent listening to him complain and call me unfair, to tell everyone in chat to NOT upvote anything I posted because I wouldn't upvote back.
I eventually tired of the argument and left the postpromotion channel entirely.
Then I met the other 'side' of SteemIt. Two different users, at the same time, who had been in another chat were discussing my argument with this guy and reached out to inform me that they backed my beliefs about upvoting entirely. @Anritco and @snowwhite were amazing to chat with, and through them, I got invites to several groups. So far, the best of these has been the Minnow Support Project ( @minnowsupport ). Check out a recent post about them.
Seeing both of these 'sides' I started to notice a feeling, or vibe off the various members I came into contact with. It's not always obvious, and there are plenty of middle-ground-types to muddy the waters of my opinion. Still this is what I had found in general.
So, in no particular order, I give you the 'Sides'
Side 1 - In It To Win It
These are your upvote for upvote, post any content that will get resteemed, seen, or upvoted - types. Quality is only a means unto a rewarding end. The type that are bringing down the entire network because they want to make 'money' here without providing value-added content to it. They will not help SteemIt become widely adopted and serve only to dilute the curation of the rest of SteemIt. I wish we could see less of this.
Side 2 - The Rest of Us
These are the 'think hard about what I post' types. The ones who give us something to read, to laugh at, to cry at. They move us, they inform us. Their content is original and worthy. They don't hunt for the upvotes or the followers. They just provide, and trust that the rest of the 'Rest of Us' will see to them. Support these posters when they arrive and come along. They are adding value to the entire venture and will help it remain for many years to come.
Now this isn't to say that the 'Rest of Us' aren't going to enjoy the rewards, but it's not the sole driving force in their content. They aren't doing every little dirty trick to get it, but neither will they turn it down. I admire this kind of member and their type of content. I try and follow those that are of like-mind. I will say that I have found my home in the MSP (Minnow Support Project). It is a beautiful community that is growing very very quickly and is always looking for more people of similar mind. It can help you build a following and boost your exposure, but it is by no means friendly to the spam-friendly, upvote begging, cheap content types.
Since then, I have even been the victim of 'flag war' just for posting some of my own low SP flags on some posts in NSFW that were clearly plagiarized. I wanted to help out the awesome @o0pepper0o, and suffered a lot of hate for it. You can read about this here.
Thanks - @discordiant
