This is something that've been happening to me a lot lately
If you were a lawyer, would you accept to be paid with compliments such as "oh man, I love the way you know the law and how you save people's ass on the court, keep doing great!"?.
Maybe if you were a doctor? "Dude, you are great saving lives, keep practicing!
Mm... I am sure that maybe a builder would, right? "It is nuts how you built that wall man, the way you put the furniture over there is just Mamma Mia! I wish I could do so well!"
The answer for all of that is clearly no... so why should an artist be different?
I've been watching a lot of people lately that just comments and says things like "MAN! Your work is absolutely crazy! Keep doing!", "Oh I admire you work and I enjoy so much your posts! Thank you so much" or my favorite "This post is so good! This definitively deserves an upvote!!"
Yet all these people have something in common: They didn't upvote anything, they were just seeking for upvotes to them.
See, you don't need to be a whale to upvote. You don't even have to give 20% of your vote... it can be just symbolic you know? 1% of your vote can be recovered in less than five minutes.
Random image I put to make the post prettier.
See, I got bills to pay, food to eat and things to do. I don't do these with compliments. I don't go to the grocery and say "hey! Thank you so much for the milk and the chicken breast, you are awesome! Keep doing this great, bye!".
That would be stealing.
Well, it feels the same way here.
So please, not only with me. If you liked what you read on the post, not on this one but on every other, upvote it. That's how you show your gratitude for it or how you support.
And just in case you didn't know... You don't lose anything by upvoting. Giving your upvote doesn't make you lose money or anything. This is the whole joke of Steemit. So here you can be greedy-free and that will only make you have more in the future.
Still, since this hurts me a little bit I will stop upvoting comments because I don't want to collaborate to do this kind of spam stuff without the proper gratification.
See ya!
(All the images are my own creation and so I own the rights of them)
I always try to listen to the ideas of my fellow followers to improve my posts and to give something back to the community... therefor: What would you like the next posts to be about? What should I talk about? What kind of painting? Would you like some tutorials about arts, about cooking? Maybe some fresh gaming broadcast? I would love to know!
Bye!
The silver-lining, I think, is that the world at large is slowly slowly waking up to the idea that creating beauty and adding aesthetic value to the world is, in fact, a value for which the creator should be remunerated.
The ideals of Steemit and the way it’s been designed to work seem to be playing a smallish-and-growing part of that, even if it isn’t being fully applied on a practical day-to-day level.
One of the things that I was always very guilty of throughout my life, but which I’ve been trying to change, is not appreciating that when I enjoy some for of art, it’s an almost moral imperative to find a way to pay the artist for the value they’ve added to my life. It’s not a product like a iron or a bottle of some craft beer, but that’s exactly the point.
I don’t think anything of plunking down five, six dollars for a good small-batch pale ale, so why should I hesitate to throw five dollars to the busking saxophone player that I stop and listen to and intensely enjoy. It took me some time to get this, but, ultimately, I’m coming around to realize that the saxophone player is providing more value to me than the beer, because I enjoy the music more than I enjoy the drink. So why should it be somehow different to pay for the beer which adds to my life but not for the music which adds to my life even more? (So I’ve started to tip the saxophone player regularly when I stop and listen to his music. It’s absolutely worth it, and we’ve actually become somewhat friendly).
Maybe some people think there’s something more “noble” about art that puts it outside “commerce,” and there’s a long history, I think, of that kind of attitude. But with the way the world
is structured, there’s nothing noble about starving and that’s the (worst case scenario) end result artists who don’t get paid...Or, artists, to save their lives and fees their families, will make less and less art, until the options for beauty in the world are severely diminished and life becomes a palette of duller and stabbed grays. (Nothing against the color gray of course...I love it in landscapes...)
Outside steem, have you found any attitude shift regarding payment for the value your are providing people? It may be harder to figure out ways to pay a visual artist who’s work I see and appreciate and from which I receive value into th added happiness and satisfaction in my life. But I’ve been trying through those websites where you can be a fractional patron of artists, and trying to hire artists to do work that I may not have needed but or could have gotten cheaper from some industrialized artist-mill that exist in some countries.
I’m no saint. Far from it. Everyday I feel like I have a lifetime of artists who I’ve wronged when I swayed to their music, sighed at their brushstrokes, and lost my breath at the sight of the peaceful grace in their dancing.
I’m just, I guess, trying to make up for that now, and I’m hoping that you have experienced people becoming at least a little more conscious of the value you provide to them individually, and compensated you for that value.
Your work is truly beautiful. I’m partial to the Battlebox promo art you did. The way you show movement is incredible (I look it and the explosion is actually happening over some points of time...somehow you’ve captured it so that, from my perspective, it’s not just a still, but seems like it had motion over time...it’s really unique).
Thanks for your work!
Bravo!
At the beginning of this message I didn't know if it was a real message, because of the length. But I could rapidly realize that all your words were well funded.
First of all, thank you so much for your kind words and your support. Also thank you for appreciating the human creations such as either musicians do playing in the streets or artists sharing their artworks on Steemit.
I believe that people have many misconceptions about arts in general. For instance, I find truly hilarious that most of people think that arts is not a real profession, yet if you ask them to make a drawing, portrait or whatever they refuse because they say it's too hard for them.
Most of people also think (in the wrong way of course and as you well said) that the fact of making art is a reward on itself. This is because, again, they feel they can't, so they think that artists are talented, and the talent inherit is enough reward for us, The Makers.
They couldn't be more wrong: being an artist takes an insane amount of time, efforts, focus and mostly frustration, stress. It takes a lot of time that most of people use to watch TV, play video games or just go outside with friends. It's not talent, it's a skill. We develop it at expense of a great sacrifice.
This guy @ilt-yodith is impressive, he carves out words like a master butcher doing 3D art on a frozen carcass.
Would you believe I just found your blog from him SBD transfer to you :P
Blog Up-Vote cause it's Awesome!
Yeah...I'm also following you!
Damn! I didn't realize until you told me this! Thank you so much for helping me to realize!
And I absolutely agree: @ilt-yodith hit the point there. He used very, very well each single word and spreaded out his idea in a very unique way. I am happy that there are still some good steemians out there in the middle of so many overuse of bots, whales, flagwars and chaos everywhere.
Thank you for the follow buddy =)
The force flows strong with this one
Steemit: Where
GoodGreat Talent Arrives With Every Steem Price Jumpsource: memecdn
LOL, this is great!
Remember, all of the points that you make – and you make good ones – regarding the value of upvoting content that you like applies equally to you and comments that you find reassuring, valuable, or just interesting. As you said, it costs you nothing to upvote things except the opportunity cost of voting something up and not another thing.
One of the things I am very aggressive about is making sure that people who comment on my work with something meaningful, I engage with. I upvote their comments, even if it's just a little bit. I make sure to reply to as many interesting and useful comments as possible. I ignore (rather than down vote) comments which are obviously just trying to game the system, because I have more, positive content that I want to reward that each and every down vote would take away from that.
Cultivating a positive, engaged community around your work is one of the best things you can do. Even if you think of it just as a way to earn more, not just for your art but for being a part of the community, for letting people touch you and be touched by you, you'll find it has positive results.
Every little bit helps, and that goes both ways.
You said it better.
I absolutely agree with you, this is why even tho' I am busy with work and personal stuff I take the time to read every single comment. Some of them are from people that just read a single sentence from the post and just drop a random message regarding to that without understanding the whole context. Or they just read the title and say some unrelated stuff. Such as the case of the following message that you can find few lines under:
Freaking feel your pain! If I were to tell you my stories I'd have you either more pissed off or crying! I'm still searching for a decentralized art platform, which when I started here was posted that it was going to be done, however after so many months haven't found it.
I agree with that @coquiunlimited. This platform is not really decentralized, the power is on few and these few most of times use it for their own benefit. Luckily enough there is still some curators that give life to Steemit. My cheers to them!
I think there is a particular problem with new people who somehow think that copy/pasting the same "Great Job" comment on a lot of posts will get them insults. Instead, it's more than a little insulting when we've spent time researching and writing our posts, so at best, we ignore them. Sometimes, I reply that putting just a little thought into the comment would have earned attention, but I don't know if that does any good. I don't bother to flag them, but I understand why people do. Thanks for putting this sentiment into words here.
I don't usually get enough comments that I even think to check if they've upvoted.
Either way, if I take the time to actually craft a response (and it's usually something relevant and meaningful to the content in the post and not just a cookie cutter compliment), then it's likely I've already upvoted the post. Upvotes are what keeps Steemit chugging along, after all.
People are told to comment and interact with others to increase their own posts' visibility. What they fail to learn is that the interaction should be meaningful and genuine. Most of us can see through a hollow attempt at gaining views and upvotes.
Rest assured if you see that I've commented that I'm upvoting, too (I just wish my vote were worth more than $0.01-0.02 :( ).
Absolutely. The fact that your vote is worth .01 doesn't mean that it s not worth. It's symbolic, it doesn t have to give something big at once. I mean... if that would be the case then street musicians should constantly stop playing and shout at the people that left only 5 cents...
And for what is worth, I never open their blog if I see that they are spam.
For sure! HF19 didn't help any of this, it kinda made the problem worse. The false narrative put out by many people in comments is becoming a drain on the community interaction part of Steemit. There is a bigger issue with this at play, and yet people want to complain about why we upvote ourselves. We have to believe in and support "ourselves", if nobody else will. something I have discussed a lot about with Fuzzy lately.
HF19? Is this the one from first half of 2017?
I tend to call people out when they do that to me. It's irritating at best, and quite selfish at worst. You should try it a few times, when people say something like that in the comments just reply with "But not good enough for even a 1% upvote? I'm confused by your comment..." They will either stop doing it and leave you alone, or realize that it's pretty bad form to do that and stop it.
Absolutely. But well, Steemit is getting pretty shitty lately. Maybe it's time for something fresh and new.
Enjoy the vote and reward!
I saw a comment the other day on a post that was an entry to one of my competitions. It said 'wow! That looks like that took a lot of work!' But they didn't upvote it, the worst thing was, it only had 1 vote (mine) on it at the time.
I can't understand why people would do this, a vote, quite literally costs nothing.
Cg
Really great work by the way :-)
Cg
I agree man... it's horrible what this tiny act can mean in either one or another way. Thanks buddy
Sorry sir i am new in steemit . Please for give up me.i will not do this next time please sir forgive me...
No worries @iqbalhossin, just please don't spam
You raise an interesting but often discussed point about art as an intellectual pursuit (not unlike science) and art as a business (how we pay our bills). I really prefer to keep the two types of art separate as they usually end up causing me to create different things. Perhaps that's just me because art as an intellectual pursuit pushes myself personally and has meaning for me only, whereas art as a business seems to be based on external meanings and values that you transact with other people. Would love to know what your thoughts are on this. I happen to think every profession is equally important but that's not how our work is valued, and unfortunately in the blockchain economy it is not different (at the moment).
I think arts are like any other profession... medicine, cooking, law, builder. I am certainly not sure why people think that by doing arts you have to be poor or arts by itself is not a serious profession.
I can assure you that arts can be WAY harder and more frustrating than any other profession. And if done right, it can pay off more more than what many lawyers and doctors earn.
Although for getting to that level you gotta sacrifice a lot and do a loooot of work without seeing any earning for it. But the truth is that you do because you love it. And there comes a point where you ens up doing it so well that prople want to pay you for that.
This is why i always recommend to do whatever you love to so, money will eventually come.
You've been F.U.R.R.'d. My voting power is low because I upvote the posts I like, just like on FB.
F.U.R.R.'d?
Followed, Upvoted, Replied to and Resteemed. =)