Quitting Steemit after 4 weeks (for now)

Dear reader,

I originally intended to, after 4 weeks, take a quick break from Steemit, but now I’m not sure anymore if and when I will come back.

Four weeks ago, I started this project of mine to publish my own childhood art exclusively here on this platform. You may say it’s a silly project, you may even say it shouldn’t even be considered “art” and I’m sure many people are genuinely not interested in this stuff, just like I’m, for instance, not interested in fishing.

To be honest, there was far less interest in my project than I was hoping for. Yes, it also means that there was basically no “Steem payout”, but I wasn’t interested in this, at least not in this first phase. I intended to use Steemit, which to me had the reputation of an open-minded arts and original content platform, to see if this could be a long-term project people would be interested in.

The paintings I published here mean a lot to me. I have hoped that others would like to discuss what is depicted, how it came to be, and to encourage them to look back at their own old paintings as well, to see the world for a quick moment from a child’s perspective, to make people laugh.

The main problem I have now is actually not even that there was hardly any interest. Of course, any project needs a certain time to build an audience. My problem is that I do not know why there is not interest. The question is: is my project broken, or is this platform broken?

Again, I do not think my project is of high value. Still, it is my own original content, and that should be, according to my understanding, what this platform was built for to promote and support.

Ever more I suspect that at least in some respects, it’s actually Steemit as a platform which is broken. I’ve seen other, truly gifted artists and photographers and other original content creators struggle to build an audience. Apparently, the whole Steemit growth strategy seems to be to actually build an audience first by commenting on other people’s posts, and upvoting it, then eventually receiving a “follow” back and get attention for your own posts simply as a “return of favor”. Apparently, there are no consumers here. There are just producers, sometimes mutually consuming each other’s work.

Unfortunately, this is just not a strategy I can sustain. This is only a small private side-project of mine, and I do not have the time to “curate” other’s work and devote a substantial portion of my time to this social component rather than preparing and writing my own blog posts. Don’t get me wrong! I’d love to interact with people, and I will gladly also upvote their own content, I just don’t think this should be what takes the most time on this platform. There should be a way for others to discover fellow contributors, but to be honest, I have not found a way to do this myself: the tags are just flooded with spam, the highlighted posts only promote the top-level artists.

Then, eventually, there are the plagiarists. It is even more discouraging to find that the platform apparently is overrun by plagiarists. They simply copy-paste images off the internet, or copy whole websites, just to make money of other’s original work. I’ve seen dozens of these accounts, posting copy-pasted work daily. Some get warned by other community members, or in very rare cases flagged but I feel like little is done to stop them.

For me, it’s not about the actual payout these people receive, it’s about the attention they receive, (and thus steal from others) and the payout is simply a measurement for that. And they do receive high daily payouts! Now tell me, what is the incentive to create your own content if you can simply make free money by copying the work of others? What are the Steemit currencies worth if copied content gets rewarded higher or at least equally as high as original content? This is an inflation in the making.

Now I come back to my central point: I can simply not tell if it’s my project which is broken, if it’s my strategy of using this platform, or if it’s the platform itself, or all of them.

Until I find this out, I may not come back, and look for another platform which to me seems more suited to publish original art, and more fair.

Thank you to all the people who have been genuinely interested in my work! I will let you know if I shall come back, or whether you can in the future find me on a different platform.