It's funny how sometimes small sentences, simple ideas, have the magical ability to evolve into complex thoughts. I mean, when I first read the sentence, I didn't think much of it, but as time progressed today and the mundane activity in front of me blurred into droning, the concept started to become clearer and clearer.
A quick post written by Dan, that if you blinked for a nanosecond too much, you may have missed it, has been making rounds in my head all day and cemented itself in relevance as I started to remember how I got started on this platform too, as I started to remember "my risk".
Risk, what risk?
I really had to think about this one, and attempt to bring my mind back to my early days on this very blockchain. You see, these days, it's a lot easier for me to think of someone with no stake, someone who has not invested a penny into this platform, as someone that has absolutely no risk, but that's because I never thought of flipping the picture on it's head.
I should start with one simple fact about me. I, Like many others, did not buy STEEM right away after joining, I was hesitant, I did not know if this whole crypto thing was even real and I needed to double check, I needed to make sure I could turn the magical internet money into something I could spend before putting a single cent in.
But it's not necessarily true to say that I was not risking something by joining, by writing things about myself on this blog or by participating on the openmic contest, of course not. I, like many others, decided to wager my sense of self worth in the hopes that I would find a receptive warm audience. I say wager because of the element of uncertainty.
You see, for plenty of content creators, the work they put into their blogs and videos, regardless of the type of content, is work that is connected to their ideas of self identify and self worth. This means as you might imagine, that the risk of being rejected or ignored, is very real and can have an emotional cost that of course is not quite measurable with metrics.
I've seen plenty of people say that they prefer acknowledgement, meaning interactions, over ghost upvotes that could just as well be delivered by a bot. These comments are without a doubt, a manifestation of the fear of loss, expectations not met.
What if I suck?
I suspect that plenty of people ask themselves this very question every single day on STEEM and I'm in no way shape or form making light of their situation.
We have to admit that for those of us who have been here a while, for those of us who have a floor level of support, the notions that we are terrible at this whole "steem thing" have long abandoned the building. I mean, this is not to say we don't have strikes and gutters, but overall, every time we shoot we hit something. This however is not the case for thousands of users every single day.
I also suspect that there is a considerable amount of people who have quit, not because they "didn't make enough", but because they felt as if they were singing to an empty bar, and the emotional toll of feeling inadequate was a little too much for them, and there, in that special detail lies this idea of risk.
What's the solution?
It's so obvious and so talked about, that this particular reflection of mine is going to seem to fall short, but there is no other way to end this post. The solution is improving curation, and supporting curation initiatives more aggressively.
Projects like @c-squared, @curie and fundamental in balancing this whole thing, and a conversation on how we can create curation more enticing to stake holders should never be off the table, because that has to be the way we drive this home.
As I said, after a whole day ruminating on the word "risk" as it pertains to content creators, I'm trying to not only let the lesson sink into my mind, but also make it a point to do my part to make someone's experience a little better, a little more welcoming.
