Confessions of a Self-Voter

10 months I am on Steemit Now and what a heck of a ride it has been.  Like 99% of other users I started here with nothing except a little delegation from Steemit Inc, just enough to allow me vote and post.  When I joined the price of STEEM was above $2 and I think my vote was worth a cent.

The trending page looked okay…ish…..  The same authors were trending regularly but the difference then was that paid voting bots were not a big thing.  And posts on trending were earning really good money.  I wanted to be there.  I wanted to hit trending and get that exposure.

Although my vote was not worth much, I set my posts to Upvote so I could kick start the rewards.  My thinking was ‘social proof’.  If there were votes and a small value, maybe others will follow suit and also vote.  Blogging online is a lot about social proof.  Two blog on the same topic, one has 100 likes and the other has none, which are you going read right?

So every post I made I self-voted and in the meantime the price of STEEM went down and hit below 90 cent. The value of my vote also decreased but I continued on.

And then a little bit of magic happened. @stellabelle made a delegation to me of 20K SP.  This was massive and what’s more, I woke up one morning to it just being there.  I had no idea I was getting it and no idea what to do with it.

My first actions were to go to the Introduction tag and go on a voting bender. I had no idea how long I would have the power for so I was going to make the most of it. For weeks I spent day and night on Steemit, let my own business suffer a little, but I really needed to make the most of this.  I increased my posts so I was posting almost every day and I ensure I did a health amount of curating and commenting at the same time.

But then something just as incredible happened.  @fulltimegeek matched Stellas delegation.  OMG.  I worked harder and harder.  I was active in every channel I could be on Discord and did a massive amount of networking.  At this stage I had completely neglected my own business and by Christmas was beginning to burn out 40 – 50 hours a week is no joke.  But I could see the light.  My SP was growing, my posts were doing better and Stella had told me she would be taking back the delegation at the start of the New Year.  I was looking forward to it being gone.  I had worked so hard, I had posted so much, I had commented everywhere I could add value and I had also set up the Blockchain Business Intelligence Community.

Stella took back here delegation and although I was initially grateful to have it, I was also relived when it was gone.  I was going to get back on top of my own business and take some time off Steemit. I needed the rest. 

But @fulltimegeek didn’t take his back.  I don’t know why but I was under the impression that that would be going at the same time.  I didn’t know what do to.  I needed to focus on my own business for a while and was so burnt out from Steemit. 2 days passed 3 days passed.  I even though of contacting @fulltimegeek to ask him to take it back.

But I didn’t. Instead I went on a self-voting bender.  The price of STEEM was the highest it had been since I started here.  My vote was worth over $7 and I did something I never did before.  I began to vote on my own comments.  Fuck it, all the big fish were doing it.  I said it lasted about 8 days and then @fulltimegeek took back the delegation.

I turned Steemit off for a week. Didn’t touch it at all.  I didn’t even go into discord.  I spent a lot of time catching up on my own business and thinking about what to do next.

No one ever said anything to me about losing the delegation from @fulltimegeek or my self-voting.  No one had to.  I knew it was wrong what I had done. And although no one said anything I knew I had to rebuild trust that I had broken.

So why am I tell you all this now?  Well because I want people to know how I really feel about the practice of Self Voting.  And although my story may mean I lose the respect of some, I hope that I can gain the respect of others.  Heck this is Steemit and what I have said here, is very much food for my haters, I just hope a witch hunt does not begin in the comments, but I do expect a few.

You see I still believe in Social Proof and self-voting offers that, but only to an extent.  Steemit is not like any other blogging or social platform, and there is only so much self-voting that the community will accept.

Bidbot are also a way to gain social proof and I did not agree with them, so now I began to question my use of self-votes for the same reason.

When you start out on Steemit you start with nothing.  Self-voting is a way to help grow your account, as well as providing social proof on the post.  Personally I believe there is a cut off.  A time when you should stop self-voting.  For me the time was when I reached 5000 SP.  I though at this level SP I would been seen as more of an influencer and should myself set a good example.

But I don’t have 5000 SP yet and I have stopped voting.  When I realised how much of an influencer I was seen as, I realised it was time to stop.  I don’t think ‘do as I say and not as I do’ is a good enough attitude for an influencer on Steemit, not matter what size fish you are, Whale or Minnow.

Now I happily delegate out a lot of the little power I have.  I don’t vote on my own post or comments and I won’t be voting on my posts again in a hurry. I support people around Steemit as much as I can and I have even set up a witness server @steemcommunity with @abh12345 (shameless plug ) I do hope you will consider giving us your vote.

So if you self-vote, within reason, the truth is, I don’t see a problem. Especially when you are new and need to grow your SP.  But if you are a whale, a witness or a community leader, then it’s time to look in the mirror.

Feel like I just did a full counselling session.

STEEM ON everyone 

Paula

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