I've always felt tempted to do a satirical series based on some of these characters I've stumbled into over the years. Did a couple posts back in the day shedding light on some of the most absurd vote buyers. Those days I had a mountain of material to pick from. Things slowly started getting better after all that went away, though some were pissed but for some strange reason the robots they paid to support them didn't have their back. Whodathunkit eh? "I buy my friends and look how successful I've become!" LOL!

I remember busting one of the biggest art frauds this platform ever saw. Dude spent hundreds on his votes and got WRECKED. Then I felt bad and like you said here in the post people get second chances so I wrote a post and used my platform to shed some positive light on his existence. I wanted to see him thrive taking the honest approach because I sensed it was possible. I was dead wrong though. I left for a brief period. Upon arrival I saw his work "trending" again with paid votes. What he was doing was one of the oldest art scams around where one takes a high quality image, then crops out tiny sections, blows them up, and presents these tiny pieces of one image as "art", while claiming to be an artist. Of course it was disapointing to see. Especially when at the time there were several real artists struggling, being forced to buy votes in order to remain 'competitive', or simply giving up. New folks here these days don't even know how fucking ridiculous it was here in those days and don't even realize how much progress was made taking out the trash in order to provide the genuine creators the platform they deserve. So many of us fought so goddamn hard for that.

But in my mind the next step after that, once there was some actual quality people and products out on display, was to then focus on attracting and onboarding your basic content consumers. So they could consume the posts, play the games, spend the money, have the fun, and also get paid to do that. Then when the ridiculous voting window thing was removed and consumers wouldn't be penalized for liking something, I thought, "Now's the time!" Was really excited to get that ball rolling. Even my last post there in January, I'm talking about it.

Consumers aren't attracted to these types posting drivel just to get rewards though. From a business standpoint, it's so wasteful. But more and more, slowly but surely, I'm seeing people working for that audience that just so happens to pay them, rather than just the tokens.

Those are the keepers.