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Wait... Back Again?

Yeah I know, I'm not sure why they let me back on the show again either but the crafty cat that is @onemedia and the demented and euphoric duck that is @d-vine kindly invited me on to their show @spotlight.artist to blow some hot air about my latest release called "Travelling Man" - out on Electronic Alliance Records.

I wrote about this track a couple of days ago on my previous blog where I think I managed to get the genre down to "Liquid Drumstep" but I'll let you decide for yourselves on the night when you listen in!

Spotlight On The Artist
24th January 2020
18:00-20:00 UTC

One Life Celebration - Blockchain Music Event

I'm looking forward to hearing more about this big event that was organised by Denise and Ziggy on 11th January. They mentioned it during the EMA Takeover show the week before and it sounded like it was going to be a great weekend. No wonder they needed an additional week to recover from it! Hopefully their voices are back in full swing... mind I can't talk right now as I've got a horrendous cold shredding the old voice box!

Don't worry though, I'm not going to make a song and dance about it and do the whole "woe is me" horse manure! You should know by now - I'm a "double hard b*stard" 😉

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Steem Thoughts - Ramblings Of An Optimist

So to stop this post falling in the realms of "sh*t postery", I thought I'd write some about of my thoughts about Steem in my current state of mind.

Loading Up On SP

Over the last 4 months, the overriding emotion was that I was spending a bit too much money on buying STEEM and powering it up (some 23,000 SP to date). Sure, I'd love for STEEM one day in the future to be the social media that the world comes to use but if I'm being honest, I'd say we're probably a couple of years away or at least a couple of dapps/games away from making a compelling user experience that will bring a swathe of average users in and keep them here.

Then I thought that I'm actually looking to set the foundations for the @yourtop3 and @emalliance communities, so I'd need this STEEM Power for creating accounts, encouraging/rewarding new authentic users and supporting manual curation initiatives by following their curation trails - I'm personally not overly fussed about curation rewards but it's a nice bonus in this Web 3.0 of abundance. So really, I'm cool with that and there's enough development going on when I compare to the other sites I've used which have fallen by the way side that gives me confidence.

Recent Price Movements (Jan 14th-21st 2020)

The last 7 days we have seen some pretty crazy movements with STEEM and BTC price going up and down like a yoyo and it looks like there'll be some turbulent times ahead but let me tell you one thing - I'm playing the long game - never powered down in the near 2 years I've been here. If STEEM stays at these low prices, I'll be buying what I can with what I have budgeted in my monthly spending - I'm targeting Orca in 2020 but it might be difficult as the price of STEEM rises... not to worry, I got as much as I could between £0.09 to £0.12 per STEEM and if that's the price it stays at so be it. If it goes to 0, so be it as well, I had fun (but it won't go to 0 so no worries).

Rewards Distribution Tools - Upvotes & Downvotes

Upvotes and downvotes are an essential part of this platform. I've probably only downvoted what I considered "over-rewarded" posts in the first 2 weeks of the new EIP - you know, $60+ for maybe 2 pictures and a couple of lines of text - but I was nuked with downvotes around this time last year for a week before the free downvotes became "a thing".

It sucked, but then I sucked it up and moved on. Bloody hell, this is the internet, you get thumbs down on YouTube, Reddit, Facebook has an "angry emoji"... if you can't handle this then maybe you should switch off your computer and focus on offline life.

"But Nicky, downvotes are stealing rewards"... no they're not, they are the tools we have to choose where rewards are distributed at the end of the 7 day post period. Upvotes = rewards go here. Downvotes = rewards away from here. Simple as that. It's people's stake at the end of the day, they, YOU, can choose where to distribute rewards.

Unless someone has got your private active key and transferred steem FROM your wallet TO somewhere else without your consent... THEN that's stealing and the person who did that is a ****.

Economic Improvement Model (HF22)

You can't deny that since the Economic Improvement Plan has come in, genuine content creator's rewards have gone up, the price of STEEM has stopped plummeting and stabilised and things are looking a little better around here (minus the horrendous Toy Story 5 spoilers with Mr Potato Head and the Burn Posts on trending recently)!

There'll always be naysayers but they're often the ones who don't offer anything constructive anyway - I've stayed away from them. Content creators who left before they gave it a chance will be back - FOMO will see to that. Now that bidbot use has drastically decreased or even stopped/converted to manual curation... I've loved it and this is the start of more positive sentiments - those who stuck around are benefiting big time!

For a musical content creator who was bumbling around a couple of cents, dreaming of a $0.10 post payout in the first 8 months of the platform, where we are at now, it's a huge turnaround and I'm very grateful for the support I've been getting since then.

I would like to add that it's also been 2 years of networking, commenting and engaging to get my name out there and putting some form of effort in to each post to add my quite frankly, legendary personality in too 😁 you may want to check my Bluffer's Guide to STEEM which I write occasionally to help beginners and even intermediates discover and get more out of this platform organically.

Final Thoughts

We're the early adopters of a new ethos around how social media will operate where users have a stake in the platform that they use, rather than the platform having a stake in their users.

It's going to take time but if we focus on not talking about the technical or financial ("crypto") aspects but rather the social and fun aspects of STEEM to our friends outside this space then we can make them curious enough to get involved. Just make sure you have your free accounts claimed and ready to guide them in when they jump in 😃

Well, I rambled a little longer than I intended but what the hey, I'll see you on Friday!

Nicky

P.S. Before I forget, here's a link to Travelling Man that will get played on @msp-waves 😄