There has been a lot of drama on steemit the last couple of months, around pretty much anything on the trending page.
If it wasn't @steamsports it was @steemvoter, later @curie came under fire and then a whole lot of drama concerning Steem Guild. That devolved into a whole bunch of attacks on first Steem Guild associate authors and later any frequently trending author or even pretty much any author in general could be flagged.
Always these attacks are instigated and supported by the same people, months ago it was the same names spearheading the charge. Now they are a little more subtle and prefer too just instigate and fuel "debates" and have others do their dirty work.
This time they have managed to garner some disgruntled whale support to act as their "enforcers".
I don't have the inclination to regurgitate everything but here is an example of the ridiculousness that the masters of mayhem are instigating. Its a pity that @smooth and @berniesanders have been dragged into this, but this is how ridiculous its become.
@krnel/bad-whales-flagging-content-with-false-irrational-and-hypocritical-excuses
The steemit chat troll box used to be the steemitabuse channel... that was where the trolls wallowed and brewed their venom and hate.....
These days it has migrated to the price channel on steemit chat. The channel can be quite entertaining if that is your thing.... but its very insightful into the personalities of the members who frequent there. Some are not very desirable.
They vaunt themselves as the righteous defenders of the rewards pool, the knights in shining armor of the downtrodden author.
But actually their motives and intentions are quite the opposite and clearly on display to anybody willing to take a trip back in time in the price channel.
Those that featured authors back in the day were attacked and its very interesting that this was spearheaded by those attempting to put together the failed robinhoodwhale.
These attacks were framed as protecting innocent authors that were "duped" by those that featured them.
I personally paid out over $50 000 in SBD to authors that otherwise would not have seen a dime of rewards and I thank @smooth for making that possible. The effort would have reached more and helped out many more than just the 50 or so authors I featured had it not been for the witch-hunting of the @robinhoodwhale trolls and their crew that used to frequent steemitabuse.
Many of those robinhoodwhale and steempolice trolls have since sold out and left, a few remain and they are far more subtle now. They still have competitive projects that they are attempting to launch but now they are more subtle about removing the perceived competition. They have refined their methods.
Steemsports was not so subtle but it was highly successful. Its not surprising to see that it was hounded out of its position only to be replaced by the competitive sports initiatives.
Once again the narrative for getting rid of @steemsports was defending the rewards pool.
But, for the new competitive sports initiatives, that were prepared and ready to fill the "newly created" sport vacuum, that was not enough... They want it all... They had to remove anybody from the trending page and eventually remove all those voting for other authors (guilds) and spreading the rewards far and wide.
The intent is to get back to the "good ol' days" where a few won the lottery and the rest got beans....
And this lottery would be rigged as a few already had some big whales in their pockets.... now if they could just stop the other whales from voting and spreading out those rewards everywhere.
Of course the guilds would have to be taken out.
Curie was first, but that didn't do to well... and then they turned on Steem Guild, righteously defending the rewards pool again. True some SG were upvoting themselves will 100% whale votes, but that was only an issue because all the other well earning posts on trending had been systematically removed and some additional whale power had been added the consequences of which were still under testing.
SG made adjustments, but that was not enough. They have to be drummed out of business because they are still spreading the reward pool out to too many authors.
As a member of SG, that was not as active and putting in as many hours, I had never had a 100% upvote from SG. So some of us decided to test a few additional funding options and lay out some troll bait...
The results are enlightening...
The narrative is that the trolls are defending the trending page, later once percentages were dropped and shuffled a little it became defending the rewards pool.... and their noble motive's continue to evolve (posts are not good enough, too long, too short, too intellectual, too lowbrow, too many whale votes, disagreement of payouts etc. etc.)
Then it suddenly became a slug fest to bring any popular author off trending....
....and to totally eliminate Steem Guilds work and prevent the 400+ that they are distributing rewards too from earning anything.
Do yourself a favor and take a trip back in time through the price channel on steemit.chat
SG dropping percentages or switching to fewer posts that went on trending was not enough.
Changing to voting after payout to eliminate trending is also not enough.
So Trolls... defending the trending page was just and excuse as demonstrated by my troll bait
Defending the rewards pool also doesn't wash either... because you sports initiatives are earning more than ever....
- Your "mates" are now regularly on trending
- Your desire to have lesser authors eliminated is palpable and clearly spelled out in the price channel.
- Your desire to have other popular authors eliminated is evidenced by the new flagging rituals enacted daily on the trending page, while your and your mates remain untouched.
Your hunting through past posts to find late votes(my troll bait) is evidence of the extent to which you are prepared to go to attempt to discredit and hound SG to the extent that it is impossible to function.
Thanks for playing...
Anybody that wants to see the true motives of the righteous defenders of the rewards pool may now see the extent to which the trolls are willing to go to eliminate any perceived opposition to their plans for steemit domination.
One simply need to look at the powerdown status of the most vocal of the "Righteous Defenders" to understand just how much commitment they have to STEEM.
EDIT: it's amazing I called and look at the large number that turned out, deflecting and accusing, but few getting into the merits of the post... This post must have struck a nerve.