As I've become more acquainted with Steemit,
Steemit culture, and the nature of upvoting, I've found myself going through a complicated mixture of emotions as an artist: emotions of revelation, delight, surprise, and a little bit of culture shock.
As an artist, there's a fine line between the value of money and the value of expression.
A symptom of this can be seen when the artist must decide on a good price to charge for their work. Just exactly, how do you determine the value of art?
What's interesting to me is that Steemit Inc. has found a way to solve this; in a way.
It all came to me when I realized that "steem" is short for "esteem," the feeling that you get when your community supports the work that you do.
es·teem əˈstēm/
noun
- respect and admiration, typically for a person.
This is exactly what an artist is looking for when they sell a work.
It's JUST as important for the artist to be recognized for the message they've expressed as it is to be paid for that message.
Upvoting does exactly that with one click of a button, right? Sort of...
Recently I read in the Steemit whitepaper:
Steem is designed around a relatively simple concept: everyone’s meaningful contribution to the community should be recognized for the value it adds. When people are recognized for their meaningful contributions, they continue contributing and the community grows. Any imbalance in the give and take within a community is unsustainable. Eventually the givers grow tired of supporting the takers and disengage from the community.
The important part to me is this:
The challenge is creating a system capable of identifying what contributions are needed and their relative worth in a way that can scale to an unbounded number of people.
Does the Steemit algorithm work? Enter the concept of the whale.
I must admit I was a bit appalled when I discovered this concept. You mean someone can just buy their way into influence and power on Steemit? What kind of Steemit do these whales create? Being new, it's difficult to say. And honestly, I'm not sure who made their way and who paid their way, but that one person has so much more influence on Steemit than another, the quality of Steemit content is entirely dependent on the moral fiber of it's whales.
What artists want from Steemit.
I think, as an artist and someone who promotes artists as a full-time job, that Steemit is the perfect place for artists to gain the recognition they deserve and make a little money doing it at the same time. As I come to Steemit and try to provide good content, I hope that the artists' works that I present and the philosophical ideas that I bring to Steemit will garner the feedback it deserves both in the form of upvotes, but also in the form of a real conversation, void of any marketing lingo.
When you see some art on Steemit, upvote and leave a comment.
Tell that artist what it is that you liked about their piece. Tell them how it moved you. How it inspired you. What was it about the work that made you stop and comment? This kind of feedback is worth just as much as your upvote. Do both, and you'll make an artist happy today!