My fellow Steemians,
I have had a bit of a rocky history with Steemit. When I was first convinced to join two years ago, people were showing me Jeff Berwick’s famous introduction post that earned him $15k. People told me that because my online following was bigger, I could make even more money on Steemit. By then I had already been demonetized and censored so much on YouTube and Facebook, I was ready for an alternative. At first I was skeptical. It seemed like it had to be too good to be true.
But because of my support for blockchain technology in general and enthusiasm for decentralized social media (anyone else remember Diaspora?) I jumped in anyway. I put a lot of thought and effort into my Steemit introduction post and boy was I pissed off when I made only a tiny fraction of the money that Berwick earned with his. “Holy shit, life is unfair, and Steemit is even more unfair!”
I wish I could say that my ego has no sway over me, but when it takes a beating like that, it certainly can influence me! One of my good friends and someone whose opinion I value highly, John Light, told me it was a kind of pump and dump scheme and I wouldn’t want to be associated with it. I don’t want to be an expert on blockchain technology so much as a cheerleader for it. I want to focus on waking people up and spreading a message of peace, love and freedom. Blockchain and cryptocurrencies are a huge part of that, but I don’t need to be an expert to convince people to embrace them.
I was really torn. I wanted it to be true, but the unfairness of it really made it look like a scam to me so I took John’s advice and backed off of the platform for a while. It wasn’t until about a year later that I started to take a serious look at the undeniable community that has formed up here. I had to think long and hard about what it represented despite the undeniable unfairness of it. Of course in one sense, there’s nothing unfair about a voluntary system that you can opt out of at any time that isn’t forced on anyone, but the imbalance of power was undeniable.
I spoke at length with my friend Barry Cooper about his success on the platform and how it was mainly due to his directly appealing to whales who control a lot of the upvoting power because they were the early investors in the platform. We can complain all day about the imbalance of power, but the people who invested early are the ones who helped make this platform what it is. Ultimately, I came to be grateful for their contributions and realized that while it may be “unfair” it is also a just market reward for their foresight.
I slowly began to get back into Steemit but only in a half-hearted way for quite a while. I thought of Steemit as another place to post my content that at least pays better than YouTube, but didn’t really get into it. I didn’t realize that there really is a unique value to the community around this platform. That all changed on January 13th when AggroEd invited me to speak on a virtual panel about “The Steemification of Social Media.” I listened a lot more than I talked and I learned a lot. It dawned on me what an opportunity I had squandered by not engaging on Steemit sooner. I made a commitment then to make a concerted effort to get my following off of YouTube and Twitter and Facebook and onto Steemit.
I found happiness when I left Facebook. I was able to leave Facebook because there was a vibrant community and conversation here. It wasn’t until I felt like there was a real conversation here that I was able to pry my brain away from the unhealthy addiction of Facebook. Since then I have been a champion of Steemit everywhere I go. I tell people at Libertarian Party gatherings to get on Steemit. I recorded an outro for my YouTube videos that tells people to get on Steemit. I just very recently decided to #leaveloudly on Facebook and have an autopost that goes up every 24 hours telling people that if they want to find me, I’ll be on Steemit.
I have been well-rewarded for my cheerleading for Steemit. I am able to fund a lot of my activism with money earned on Steemit. I have been able to help many underemployed and unemployable activists find regular income through their content here in a way that would never be possible on any other platform. Even more recently, I have been delegated an immense amount of Steem Power and I do my best to use it to encourage others to participate in the platform. At least every third post on my feed is from someone else and I try to distribute my upvoting as much as possible. I upvote nearly every meaningful comment on my posts. I want to get new people onto the platform and turn minnows into dolphins.
As I was once resentful of the imbalance of power, I have noticed I am now the subject of the same sentiment. And of course I have had my screw ups and my ego driven mistakes. I don’t particularly care if you forgive me or not, but I do care about this community and what it represents for the future of social media and the future of humanity. I care if you help me become a better member of the community. I want everyone on this platform to know that I value your input. I read most of your comments. If you ever think I’ve missed something, please email me at adam@adamvstheman.com. If you have content that my audience would enjoy, email me the link and I’ll probably RS it. I welcome your feedback, I read your comments, and I cherish your trolling. There’s a lot of love and a lot of light here. There’s a lot of passion and a lot of power. There’s a lot of brilliance and a lot of brainpower. There’s a lot of money involved so of course there’s a lot of controversy. There’s jealousy, and ego, and insecurity too - and that’s just from my posts! I’ll take the good with the bad knowing that Steemit represents a major leap forward for humanity. There’s a different kind of community here and a different kind of conversation here. Let’s keep it that way. Steem on!
[IMAGE: https://steemitimages.com/DQmamv2zQbydZU8oVft83F3mx3SHMpsQLmDTrCK4zNB67cp/DQmamv2zQbydZU8oVft83F3mx3SHMpsQLmDTrCK4zNB67cp.jpg]
Image courtesy of @joshsigurdson
I am the author of FREEDOM!, a book endorsed (I mean banned) by the US Department of “Justice.” You can get a copy here. I’m running for Not-President in 2020 on the platform of the peaceful, orderly, and responsible dissolution of the United States federal government. You can find out more here. You can find an event near you here. Whoever has the top comment on this post after 24 hours can claim a free signed copy of FREEDOM! by sending me an email at adam@thefreedomline.com with their address.
>Would it be better if they just gave Adam some or Steem outright?
That was the whole point....they did. He got a huge delegation of power given to him just because he can bring in people...not that he has a whole lot of quality content. Interviewing someone on the street for three minutes who makes no sense is not quality nor is posting a meme of a kid on the floor. If he wants to maintain followers outside his mainstream they don't want to see someone who didn't have to work hard at all at getting his power abuse that power to rip off the rewards pools that they are struggling to get higher rewards from themselves....the less in the pool the less money to go around.
>So singling someone out who is playing by the rules is not the way to address these grievances. We should advocate for changes against the rules that we do not like
Everyday I get on here I see post of people advocating for changes. The only real changes I see are the ones were people with the money and knowledge creating bots like the transparency bot that go around and call people out abusing the system by bringing notice of the abuse in their comment section. Same way with scammers, someone made a bot that goes looking for them and warns people commenting they are scamming. Why these people do this is because no one seems interested in actually fixing the system of abuse so each have taken and invested their time and energy into fighting it instead in whatever area they feel compelled to do so. There are constant calls to users to call out these people but most fear the consequences of being flagged or harassed by someone with more power. After constantly reading the pleas of people to come forward and help I have decided to try and engage in a positive manner when I see it. To see if I can have a positive dialogue with people about it instead of just calling them names like cheaters or rapers. Adam is the third person I approached with this concept, one of three responded back and we have a good conversation about it. She was abusing bots for hundreds. My approach was can you get a fifteen percent (what she claimed she got by doing it) return on a hundred dollar deposit if you put your money in the bank overnight. I told her no one can fault her for using bots otherwise you make no money after working hard on a article....not that she was writing articles she was running contest that enabled her to do very little posting the same contest over and over again. I don't know if she stopped but I think I gave her food for thought, I upvoted her comments back to me in appreciation we could talk about it without getting angry. I know I am not going to make money posting articles, like I said I've already seen how useless that endeavor really is on here, people much more skilled then myself have been at it a lot longer with most barely hitting five or ten dollars for it, that's why I comment more then write stuff. I write enough just to contribute something but mainly I am just a blogger, been doing it for three years now and I enjoy doing it. Adam has learned how to manipulate the system using the power he was given...he never earned it, it was given to him by someone with lots of power, it's not fair to everyone else that he uses it to manipulate the system. Today as soon as I log in I see another whale talking about the abuse from those who are putting up numerous post each day without regard to quality just because they know they can make a hundred bucks off it. That's three, four, five post a day which amounts to hundreds of dollars out of the rewards pool for very little effort. I mean come on, have a little respect for the people you are taking that money away from who are working a whole lot harder then taking a minute to post some stupid meme. Respect goes a long way....as a matter of fact it's the whole premise he builds his campaign on....people respecting each other instead of needing government to intervene to force people to respect each other. If he can't respect the system then in the long run the system will fail, then Steemit will be forced to regulate the system to avoid going under. They know it's coming, they talk about it everyday...no different then if banks gave out ridiculous interest on deposits they can't sustain...eventually they'd run out of money.
@jakboy | April 18, 2018, 6:38 a.m. | Votes: 1 | [
VOTE ]
Will this platform be able to continue to attract people when it becomes abundantly clear that only a small percentage will actually make any real money?
What will happen when it grows to the point that government comes in and regulates how things work and content is controlled and disseminated?
Will there every actually be a coherent community strategy and can there even be one with money at the center of everything?
Will Steemit be able to continue to stay in the background of activities on the platform when the bills to run this place reach in the millions and ten tens of millions every month?
What is the strategy for combating the competition that is coming and will continue to come?
What happens if the price of Steem tanks and stays there?
All relevant issues that for me raise potential challenges that I would love to see addressed on a community wide basis. As I said I am here learning, participating and hoping. Time will reveal and I hope things can be made clearer and strategies will be put in place that become abundantly clear to those of us who are actively participating because we love the concept. Thanks.
Actually, to that end, I have created Steem Ocean which is a site that monitors the Steem blockchain and provides stats (and will also gradually provide new features that are missing from steemit.com). One of the features is a voter ranking table that displays voting behaviours and ranks all active voters relative to each other, attempting to display their level of altruism (It's just a rough guide). Currently your account is #2 on the whole platform for the amount of money paid out in self votes and as a result your account is near the bottom in terms of it's altruism ranking.. I'm curious as to what your comment on that may be. I am in no way judging you here and I'm sure that most people, given a large delegation, would be using it to upvote themselves.. Do you feel that I should change the algorithm in some way? Maybe accounting for how much resteeming each account does to promote other accounts would be a good idea? You can learn more about how the voter
This place does have lots of potential and the opportunities for those who work hard can be great. I will continue to put the time in here and do all I can to learn how to become better at blogging. In the meantime your continued positive posts are very helpful. Thank you also for your support and hard work.
First off, thank you so much for your help on Steemit @adamkokesh.
Second, the 24-hour repeating FB message to #leaveloudly is very clever and something I'm going to look into.
Third, slightly unrelated to this post, but relevant to your journey of elevated consciousness: Do you know Mark Passio's presentation on Occult Mockery of the Police and Military?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3z2chw_bR50
If so, great. If not, SO GOOD! For example, putting the checkered floor pattern (Freemason symbol for ignorance, wandering around, not knowing right from wrong) wrapped around the brains of policemen.
-Issuing "dog tags" to soldiers.
-Putting the hypercube on the crown chakra of police
-And more! If you don't know, I highly suggest you make the time to go thru this presentation (on 2x speed)
Good good good. You might already know the points that he makes, but succinctly it is that "Authority" (of the violent non-voluntary variety) is a man-made illusion. The ones who believe in it and ACT on it are under mind control.
He said the dark occultists he worked with always called the police and military "Our dogs". They totally owned them.
They would also mock the police and military symbolically on their uniforms using checkered-floor symbolism, hypercubes on the 3rd eye chakra and crown chakra, issuing "dog tags" for the military and more.
The dark occultists knew that those in the police and military would likely never find out and even if they did, wouldn't have any beef with it.
Finally, Mark used one of your videos in his "Cult of Ultimate Evil" presentation. the one you did with Staff Sergeant Bob: https://youtu.be/ZSqBNGxLiAs?t=7m37s (it will start playing at the beginning of the interview).
I think coming from you, some good-hearted military and police might wake up, gather their courage, and quit their destructive cult.
I'm speaking up about it too here in China. The same mocking symbols are also found here, but slightly varied.
All the best to you Adam
>And of course I have had my screw ups and my ego driven mistakes. I don’t particularly care if you forgive me or not, but I do care about this community and what it represents for the future of social media and the future of humanity. I care if you help me become a better member of the community.
Correct me if I am wrong here, or out of line, but this basically just sounds like a non-apology for shitting on everyone with your newfound SP delegation. More power to you, and do whatever you want, but you should not be surprised when Steemians begin to notice self-upvoted single comments at 20 to 100 dollars, and memes at 80. On top of this, you upvote every single post of your own with the SP at around 70 -80 bucks. This is the free market. It is your right to do so. This doesn't mean it is a good thing for this platform, though. You've scaled back a tad on the meme upvotes recently because a few bigger players became aware and called you out.
>I upvote nearly every meaningful comment on my posts.
Most of your posts (usually old YouTube vids/blogs) are full of spam comments and very little engagement.
> I want everyone on this platform to know that I value your input. I read most of your comments.
Then why aren't you addressing the death threats happening on your blog's comment sections?
Just be honest. You got a huge SP delegation. That's great. You abused it. Non-apologies don't make that okay. You can do whatever you want. The market is paying attention though. Those of us who were blogging away when Steem was 12 cents (while you were "pissed" at making a thousand bucks from your intro post and pretty much left the platform) can see pretty clearly that this SP delegation is a big boon for your political platform, and not a whole lot more. I invite anyone who thinks I am off base here to go back through this blog and decide if there is a sense of giving a shit about the folks here.
It's great that you promote and fund some folks on here. Not so great that it has also been copy/pasted YouTube vids of chickens with no text, or your friends bragging about how you "crushed" some other anarchist in a debate.
Stop ignoring the death threats. Considering letting your posts stand a little bit more on their own without boosting them all, every day, to the 90 dollar level immediately, and actually put out some new, engaging stuff with an active comment section.
Of course, you can do what you want. This is just one market actor's subjective evaluation. Strangely, though, more and more folks are telling me that the story reads about the same to them as well.
EDIT: This quote is funny:
>and boy was I pissed off when I made only a tiny fraction of the money that Berwick earned with his.
[IMAGE: https://steemitimages.com/DQmQZRir99EgTs2xDPNqrvguqsyq5CT4QrUhhqdHKpWmmTJ/Screen%20Shot%202018-04-18%20at%2017.30.40.png]
I guess it is just a fraction of 15Gs, but...c'mon. Really? Pissed at a cool G for saying "hi"?
To all those criticizing Adam for abusing the platform, I'd like to ask: How many people have YOU reached through spreading the message of liberty and freedom? How many times have YOU physically endangered yourself, or perhaps risked your life, to spread the message of freedom? Would you even be willing to face jail time, or perhaps death, to stand by your principles and spread the message?
The way I see it is that Adam has done more than 99 percent of the people on this platform to spread the message of liberty and freedom. So when I see Adam, or another libertarian powerhouse like Adam, earning good dollar on Steemit, I don't see unfairness. I see just rewards.
It is my belief that people like Adam, Mark Passio, Larken Rose, and other prominent activists in the freedom community, some of whom have physically risked their lives in the name of freedom, should be BILLIONAIRES.
Yes, you heard that right.
If someone like Mark Passio joined this platform and copied all of his What on Earth is happening podcasts over to Dsound/Steem, I would LOVE to see him rewarded with thousands, millions, potentially BILLIONS.
You know why?
Because people like Mark, and Adam, have done more than many of us to spread the message, and their work is of immense value.
So, instead of pointing the finger at other prominent activists, take a look in the mirror and ask yourself if you have even reached a FRACTION of their audience over the years? Let's be honest, most of us, the vast majority of us, haven't.
If a Kokesh, Passio, or O'Keefe became a millionaire through steemit, I would tip my hat and congratulate them. Anyone who has been tirelessly spreading the message of freedom over the years, sometimes at a detriment to their health and physical livelihood, has my FULL RESPECT and SUPPORT.
Before you criticize anyone, it is always important to take a look in the mirror and criticize, or evaluate, your own contribution to the Great Work.
@saaa | April 18, 2018, 4:23 p.m. | Votes: 0 | [
VOTE ]
"SUPERMAN" of FREEDOM IS ADAM KOKESH
(this comment taken from my blog)
Freedom is the right of all human beings, be it black, white, yellow, green or pink. The rights of permanent freedom must be realized by the government in power.
The figure of @adamkokesh is one of the activists who keeps raising the voice of freedom for all human beings on this earth. Through post @adamkokesh I read many articles about freedom.
@adamkokesh able to hypnotize all circles of society to re-restore the remnants of freedom that have begun to decay by time. @adamkokesh we must support to continue to convey the voice of freedom.
In @adamkokesh steemit has opened our eyes to the perpetuation of freedom that continues to be done by those who hate the freedom to walk well around the world.
I recommend the figure @adamkokesh should be given moral and moral support, so that the voice of freedom is no longer silenced. @adamkokesh is "SUPERMAN" with the power of freedom that has penetrated into his soul.
Continue to fight @adamkokesh, we always support you to voice the voice of freedom to the whole universe ...
@saaa | April 18, 2018, 4:24 p.m. | Votes: 0 | [
VOTE ]
"SUPERMAN" of FREEDOM IS ADAM KOKESH
(this comment taken from my blog)
Freedom is the right of all human beings, be it black, white, yellow, green or pink. The rights of permanent freedom must be realized by the government in power.
The figure of @adamkokesh is one of the activists who keeps raising the voice of freedom for all human beings on this earth. Through post @adamkokesh I read many articles about freedom.
@adamkokesh able to hypnotize all circles of society to re-restore the remnants of freedom that have begun to decay by time. @adamkokesh we must support to continue to convey the voice of freedom.
In @adamkokesh steemit has opened our eyes to the perpetuation of freedom that continues to be done by those who hate the freedom to walk well around the world.
I recommend the figure @adamkokesh should be given moral and moral support, so that the voice of freedom is no longer silenced. @adamkokesh is "SUPERMAN" with the power of freedom that has penetrated into his soul.
Continue to fight @adamkokesh, we always support you to voice the voice of freedom to the whole universe ...