Marcus Aurelius' Cure for Seeking Validation

I’m recycling this idea from an old post because I learned a life hack that paraphrasing your own content over and over again generates you more money than coming up with something fresh. I'm experimenting with my shitposts so expect my inconsistencies being consistent here.

A.

"Most posts on Hive are not valuable or fall under quality content category because not everyone can be that excellent blogger that is going to generate traffic here." -someone from Hive said so in 2023 and they made this post.

Majority are just normal people getting rewarded for opinions/shitposts/stories that they know they won’t get any money posting somewhere else and that’s ok. We won’t get mainstream adoption if only people that can do good content get rewards here.

While we’re on the subject of what is a valuable content, that tutorial about how to navigate Hive or how to play this NFTgame on Hive has more value than a post that talks about what they did last week, their trip to X place last month, daily beauty routine or what they ate for dinner because after a day or three days, everyone else gets an amnesia and moves on to the next shitpost to celebrate.

But if you ask my unsolicited opinion, if a newbie were to come join the platform and learn the ecosystem, that tutorial for Hive posted weeks to months back will yield more value to that person, now multiply it with the potential of more people getting onboarded to the platform per month.

But being my own inner devil, here something I found comfort from Meditations by Marcus Aurelius.

If you really think your content has value, then not giving a fuck about critics is the way. It doesn't matter if the validation that comes in the form of votes or praises never come. Sometimes your stuff was shared in the wrong place and wrong time. So even if your stuff doesn't meet the standards of the place, it does not necessarily mean it's bad. If the content you created is inherently good, it will stand on it's own.

If this blockchain is around for decades, can you imagine your grandkids checking out how cringe their grandparent's blog here?

The post ended right here, the wall of texts below are just streams of disorganized thoughts.

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II.

I never ask the reason why I get upvotes. I just assume by someone’s grace; they like me enough to keep me on their autovote list or random manual curators doing their curation rounds bringing along with their trail of upvotes. But the end point is, I don’t ask, I just assume, yeah maybe they like me or just thought my shitpost was worth the vote. It’s the same mindset when it comes to receiving downvotes, I just assume they don’t like me, don't like my stuff, or just getting some revenge downvotes for being in a downvote trail. Rewards are all fair game before the 7 day payout.

Let’s say your post generated 1$ worth of rewards, then the price of Hive dumped, so now your pending payout is hovering around 0.8$, the days passed by and you’re on the 6.5 day where Hive dumped even further that the pending payout is now 0.2$. Would you still blame the market forces beyond your control at fault here? That’s just the market doing it’s thing and the reward pool doing a daily tug of war as stakeholders get paid with their share of the inflation. Nothing before the 7 day payout is guaranteed to be yours.

C.

What about downvotes? Is this a malicious tool that needs to be removed because it makes people unhappy? This will be an evergreen topic on the blockchain as long as there are monetary incentives for your social relationships here. Because with downvotes, now people can say they hate you with feelings and you lose money. The emotional damage of being hated on facebook, twitter or tumblr can't compare to seeing how outside forces can influence your income.

Most can’t be bothered to use the downvote function because it would be in conflict with their main objective of earning in peace off the platform. But they will start to mind once their own content or identity gets stolen. It’s someone else’s problem unless it affects you directly no? What if your first introduction to Hive was a message from a stranger asking if it's really you posting on Hive? because that's actually what happens whenever someone fakes an account here and responsible curators have to go the extra minutes trying to reach the real person to downvote a post that may just be worth a few dollars.

We have the freedom given by the system to support stuff we like and don’t like. This is the consequence of decentralization where you can’t be totally inhibited from upvoting or downvoting the hell you want.

We got to give the account some benefit of the doubt that it might be legit when all signs and experience of seeing the same pattern happen point it's not legit. Curators that go beyond the see something they like click upvote are undervalued.

D.

If your mental health gets shaken from the downvotes and lack of validation, maybe social media was never the right place to begin with. Might be the right time to just do a cleansing from social media for the sake of your mental health or something. If you're affected by the lack of engagements under your post, you may need some time to reflect on your own content consumption habits. Why do you not comment on contents you pass by on any social media all the time? I'm sure you get plenty of that on your feed.

Because it's not engaging enough for you, you don't really like the content or author, or just don't want to be bothered because you like to mind your own business. That's what normal people do. But if you do get people engaging with you, for the love of engagement and appreciation, it wouldn't kill you to just upvote or make a small reply to acknowledge the commenter exists.

Ex.

Do you know how easy it is to get swarmed on other social media sites for having a different opinion? Damn easy and people don’t need convincing to go into those sites even if they get 0 dollars for their time liking or hating. Here, you can like, dislike, have a different opinion and still potentially earn if you’re with the right crowd.

Ferruginous

Hive’s secret marketing opportunity is mining the drama because it’s where you can see people say “I don’t give a fuck about your downvotes, I’m leaving” only to come back with a different account assuming nothing happened under a different pen name because they said they hate it here. If this was a regular social media site, people would just block others that have a differing opinion and have their peace of mind but nope, the blockchain being the blockchain means nobody gets censored and you can be as annoying as much as you want.

There is a monetary consequence to disapprovals and downvotes here, people’s sense of being hated and turn on defense mode get heightened because now that hate is a threat to their income and they need those $. People love drama, it’s no accident to see a lot of view under a controversial post but only a few comments on it because people lurk and want to see what happens next.

G.

9 to 9.8/10 of the time, all drama can be traced back to a post being downvoted and the argument about being censored is just a cover to the real cause for being upset, loss of potential income. Here’s a life hack that maybe some may not be aware of if you have a controversial take, just decline the rewards and keep expressing what you need to express to the void then hope someone notices it here. Everyone is still free to express their opinions no matter how controversial they are, the part where they have to be paid for having an opinion is just meh (my unsolicited opinion).

If you know your opinions/posts are worth more than the money this platform is providing you (and you’re being underappreciated), you’re being inefficient considering this place has low traffic. You should get out of Hive and spread your views off to some other social media sites with more traffic and see how much of your audience wants to pay you for having an opinion. No one gave me a tip after complementing their wedding photos on facebook but I can get 0.03$ worth of votes if I just said nice things under a post, and this is just my opinion being thrown out there.
1k words already and I haven’t even started with my original writing prompt. Ideas just flow when I write and it’s a mess inside this head all the time. I forgot my prompt.

Chupacabra.

A friend gave you a lottery ticket that’s guaranteed to win because the system is rigged. Your only cost is the time it took you to figure out the 6-digit number combination and submitting it on a specified date and time. You won a 100$. Now on your way to claim the prize, there has been a change in the actual amount you’re going to get because of taxes and the laws regulating lotteries had changed during interim. You’re now down to 70$ which was still fine considering you got the ticket for free anyway.

Your ticket had a small smudge of ink on areas where it shouldn’t, the ink used wasn’t black, and a small crumple on the edges and some characters on the writing faded. Not really the end of the world because the characters that earned you that win are still clear. There’s a 20$ penalty for having the ticket shown in poor condition. Still not a bad deal considering that 50$ of yours was handed free.

Upon review, only 4 digits were actually right and the total prize was reduced. Now you have 10$ to claim. A friend wants their cut because they rigged the system for you taking 50% off. Now you have 5$ to pocket from your trouble. But it took you 3$ of opportunity costs to be somewhere else for your trouble, had to miss work to claim this reward and etc. which kind of makes the whole ordeal probably not worth the trouble.

Perhaps your perception may have changed if the base amount was a million dollars. You’re probably more pissed at the idea that you thought you had this x amount expected only to be screwed by circumstances outside your control. And this is what the pending payout mind trap does, being too attached to a number that may or may not come. What is real is the digit that actually registers on your wallet thereafter.

I.

I think of upvotes on Hive are like that. Right from the start, when you’re given an account here for free, shitposting here gives you access to rewards. If you play the game and be good to the community, you get access to those social rewards and grow your network. If your blog looks crap, there’s a lesser chance that some would bother supporting that kind of content so you have to put pretty pictures and do some form of formatting to avoid making a wall of text (like this post). The friend that wanted 50% cut from your rewards are like the curators here where they keep 50% kickback for supporting you.

And some conditions are beyond your control which includes how reward distribution can be affected by the changes in the code or market forces outside the platform doing their thing. Nothing is guaranteed and when I mentioned about opportunity costs, I meant it as, you could be doing something else for your time with more secured streams of income but you chose the blog to earn approach despite this method of earning being an unreliable source of income stream. Yes, Hive upvotes are like that.

If you made it this far reading, thank you for your time.