Non-existent followers
I think this is a term that applies to a lot of the followers people have. They are there, we can see the numbers, in some cases going over 1000 or more. However, when it comes to our articles, we only see a handful of people commenting, upvoting, resteeming and interacting in any way with our work.
I start to believe that followers are, in a lot of situations, a bunch of useless numbers that appear on your profile that are supposed to make you feel good about yourself. The truth is that most of the followers we have are non-existent. We have people who like and interact with what we do, but besides them, there are only numbers.
The easiest way to see that is by publishing a bunch of articles throughout the week and then looking at those who are interacting with them. You will probably only see a few people who you can easily recognize, because they were always there, commenting and upvoting, but that's pretty much it.
The rest of them are simply not there, not at that moment, not ever. Unless you're a really popular person or unless you invested a lot of money into your Steem Power and there's a chance that you may upvote one of the people who commented on your article, then most of your "followers" will simply ignore your work.
I got the idea for this article after looking at the "NEW" section of Steemit and seeing a guy who uploaded several "articles" today, and by that I mean a bunch of random memes, who had over 2500 followers and absolutely no interaction on his "work".
He had money invested into Steem Power, that's for sure, and he was fairly "popular" but it didn't seem like he was making any money at all. Probably 95% or more of his followers were either bots, who are starting to be more and more annoying every day, or simply people who followed him at some point in the past, hoping to get some rewards, and when they saw that it won't happen, they just stopped paying attention to the man's "work".
It's sad, but it's the truth. Most people on this website are here for the "reciprocity" side of things. They are commenting and upvoting as long as you are doing the same for them. If you're not, or if you don't have enough money, then you're useless.
There are, of course, exceptions, people who actually take the time to read your work, people who comment, people who resteem, people who do something to show you that they are there. But besides them, besides those exceptions, the website is full of "strangers" looking for money and nothing else.
I'm curious to see what's gonna happen in the future with Steemit if this will keep going. I'm curious to see if more people will join, or if a bunch of people will leave. I'm also curious to see what will happen if I'll start investing money into Steem Power. Will more people suddenly start commenting and interacting? Will more people upvote and resteem what I make hoping to get something in return? Or will I see the same people I saw for a long time now?
I guess there's no way for me to know, and the only thing I can do is to wait and see. But before I end this article, I want to thank everyone who keeps interacting with content despite not getting heavily rewarded for it, and for being there for content creators to acknowledge their work. I'm sure you are appreciated by a big part of the community, me included.
Yes I think everybody who are active on steemit noticed this, and know this. I have been active more than a month now and I have more than 200 folowers :D ....The real number is probably around 20-30 .... so a lot of bots ....
Yeah, a lot of bots or inactive users. You can also see random people writing random comments, unrelated to your articles, hoping they'll get your attention.
That's lame, but I think that's just how things are when it comes to money. As soon as you make a platform where people can earn money, all kind of kids or people who have no idea what they're doing join hoping to get a few dollars, even if the only way they can do it involves spamming other people, writing random comments or sharing a bunch of random unfunny memes they find online.
It's sad, and I hope this will change in the future when those people will realize they won't make any money and that their efforts are in vain.
I agree, and this is taking the whole platform down. I am looking for some good, clean content but I see lot of bot spam, articles with SPAMish headliness full of CAPS ***** ascii emoji etc. When I look on the articles on Medium, it's very clean and I can get to the good content right away without swimming through loads of nonsense. I agree many people just learn and use all the Steemit mechanics to go up and get few steem dollars and that's killing the good content.
I really like your articles but only thing that I don't like is that you post too many of them :D I am quite busy so I just can't keep up with you. I also think it kind of splits the attention, comment concentration and everything in many articles. But to be honest you are one of the few consistent authors with original and meaningful content.
(Sorry for the late response, I try to stay away from work in weekends).
Yes, sadly, people interested only in money, who don't really understand that the best way to form a community and to earn a lot is to create high quality content, bring this platform down.
When I started using this website last year, I was spending quite a lot of time searching for new and interesting content, leaving a lot of comments and upvoting people who were trying to create something good.
However, these days I'm not even trying that hard to search for new content, and I spend most of my time reading what those I follow create, because I know they're interested in creating high quality content.
It's sad, but there's not much we can do about it. Wherever there's money, there will be people who'll do anything to get some. Websites like Medium will be ahead of Steemit, at least for a while, simply because it's harder to make money there, through a partnership program, and people who start creating content know that, so they don't spam others with shitty things.
Who knows, maybe this will change in the future, but I kinda doubt it, unless the website and how things work change as well.
Related to my content - thank you for the kind words! I know I kinda publish a lot. Sometimes I feel like stopping and only publishing once a day, or once every few days.
The reason I'm publishing so often is because if you don't, it's hard to get anywhere. Publishing long articles usually is a waste of time, since not a lot of people will read them, either because they don't have time or they're not interested, and publishing rarely means receiving less attention, since every time you publish something, your article is buried under a lot of crap in the "New" section, so the only thing left to do is to publish fairly short articles as often as possible.
Again, it's sad, but there's not much I can do. If I want to get anything out of this website, I have to publish often, otherwise, it's hard to compete with those who create the same kind of content, who have a lot of money or who simply got lucky and got a lot of followers.
This website kinda became some short of Instagram for bloggers. You have to post little things here and there as often as possible to become relevant.
Oh well, it's not just Steemit. This is social media. The more followers, the more superficial the interaction. Or completely missing.
I mean, think about it, with how many people can you truly interact with on a given day on a deeper level? My guess is with just a handful. How many medium length posts can you read every day? How much information can you possibly process? Our brains can't cope with that much information around. It's overwhelming.
Imagine that in the past, when there were no mobile phones, you had just a few people with whom you interacted often. Less than 10 I assume. The rest were just people you knew. And they were around 20-30 probably. Nowadays, you've got hundreds, even thousands of contacts everywhere. I don't think it's humanely possible to keep in touch with each of them all the time, no matter if it's fb messenger, whatsapp, instagram or steemit. It's way too much.
Even the most famous social media influencers, they've got teams behind them who manage their social media profiles. They don't care about their followers, they just can't. Think about somebody famous. Put yourself in their shoes. Would you be able to reply to a thousand of comments every day? And I assume that for some, that number is small.
It still seems that most people want more. More followers in this case. But I'm curious how long is this thing gonna last?
I'm a minimalist btw and I believe that in some cases, less is indeed more. ;) Though we could all use a bit more SP. :D
Social media is, indeed, the reason having a lot of followers became such a superficial thing, making people do whatever in their power just to see the number of people following them increase.
And I also agree with the fact that it's hard to keep up with knowing a lot of people. I can barely remember my own birthday sometimes, so knowing and talking to thousands of people all the time would be a nightmare.
I wrote the article thinking more about how big the number of followers is in some cases, and how little interaction you see all around the Internet. People follow random things, and then they forget about them. That, or they forget as long as they don't receive anything for their "follow".
This is, of course, a problem that appears on every platform, and it's kinda sad. I also believe that less is, in a lot of cases, more, but it still surprises me to see how many people have hundreds if not thousands of followers, and 90% of them are inactive, especially on a website where you can make money.
I guess there's nothing you can do about human nature. After all, most people are greedy and only search for profit. If following someone means receiving something in return, they'll do it. If getting naked in your images helps you get more followers, someone will do it.
It's just how it is, and there's nothing we can do to change it. Even before the Internet, people were the same, the only difference is that they weren't using Facebook to display their "desperation" for followers and attention, they simply tried to do it "face to face".
Totally agree. Any platform only mirrors the society and human nature.
Great post. Once thing I've learned in life is "Build your own dreams, or someone else will hire you to build theirs."
its coolll