I felt powerless and without any voice is a sea of minnows, dolphins, orcas and whales that It hardly matter what I do.
Coupled with the mad dash of all planktons and minnows trying to grab the attention of the bigger fishes that they end being swept by what is trending, copying works and actions of others they think are close to these whales in a bid to get notice but often times it looks and feels like a lie, a foolish attempt for a money grab just to get some crumbs.
I understand the desperation people feel and most people indeed came to Steemit with the promise of easy money by sharing content they got from Facebook, Youtube or 9gag and passing it off as their contribution to the content here.
You'll them commenting in majority of posts with the same line of I have upvoted and resteemed you so please do the same as if you are obligated to do that.
They maybe bots or people who do not really have a good command of the English language and is the best that they can do. I feel sad if that is the case.
So what is a minnow to do? Band together and create a school of fish. We were about 10 people when we started last October and we have never begged, used a name of a whale as one of the five tags to gain his attention. We worked on our articles, we supported each other and we tried to give the best that we have.
A lot of us were lucky and managed to save enough SBD to buy delegation and some to cash out. Proofs uploaded to Facebook, Steemit was no longer a scam!! It was not a ponzi! It was paying by mining the minds and creativity of people. They came in droves after.
From 10 we are at almost 200 people. About half are actively posting content. So we revived one of the old account someone had @steemitfamilyph was created before by one of the founder to show off his family to Steemit.
He had no illusions of grandeur , hell he didn't even think of having a team. The 10 people he regularly talk to were most classmates and relatives except 3 people who have no idea how they got there haha.
That was made into a main account. We each shared some delegation to get it to have a slider so that piece by piece it can feed some minnows. Often vote trailed by any of us who had sufficient VP. We stayed true to the name we were Ohana in spirit and in Steemit and nobody gets 0 cents on their post. (Hard but it can be done)
We manually curate articles, highlight 5 a day and those are fully voted with 100% power from the main and trailed by several of the admins. In this way we encourage them to write things that they want, to take pictures of things that interest them, tell stories of love, joy, heartache and depression, believe in themselves and write things that will enrich Steemit. They do not need to get swept away in the mad rush. They can be taken care of and grow naturally.
You are right having high delegation is addicting. You just want to sometimes do a 100% vote on a particularly good post but have to restrain yourself.
The happiness that someone gets $2-$4 dollars on their post from us because they made something exceptional makes it all worth it.
Don't get me wrong I am not a 100% altruistic. The main reason I originally got the delegation was to upvote myself and earn. My mindset then was what a lot of whales were doing. Rewarding themselves, leasing out delegation to bid bots but those ideals changed when we saw the first wave of people we helped pay for a part of their tuition fee because his parents did not have the budget. To see a person be able to pay off loans, to give a stay at home mom a way to earn. Minimum wage here is about 9 dollars a day. That four dollars earned in a Steemit post would give her the financial freedom to take care of her daughter.
It is amazing what a few minnows can do when they form a school of fishes.
