Just out of curiosity, where is steemit userbase coming from since their original thread has only 31 pages, twitter has only 1000 followers and facebook has less than 1000 followers?
things aren't adding up for me here. More I dive in, more complicated it gets.
The people falling for the Steem trap aren't crypto people. They are normal people who hear from word of mouth that "This girl just got paid $11,000 for having tits on this site called Steemit!" Then they say wow! and they make a few posts. Then they realize they don't have tits and, as such, don't get any money. However, every now and then one of them does have tits, and they tell their friends about their success.
At this point Steem is basically the titcoin meme that Pornhub made a video about. I'd be absolutely embarrassed if I were an investor of this fraud.
The objective is to monetize content providers, whether they are journalists, musicians, memesters, beauty consultants, or developers, to give them a place to earn money without having to chip off a percentage to a manager. People who think they are going to get paid for the same posts that do not earn them a BTC tip on reddit (or even un-spendable reddit gold) are going to be let down by the reality that no one will pay them for just participating on steem either. The make-up tutorial earned money because it targeted fashion and it was a first--and yes, you could have made one yourself, some guy did exactly that and made 10k (parody works too--he probably said, "That's stupid, let's mock it." and got paid for the effort). Some people are good at making content, some get lucky at it, but most are mediocre and will have to have a good day to make even a few bucks on the platform. If it gives content providers a way to keep more of their earnings, then I think it will be successful--stories like the make-up tutorial get people to the site, but they hardly guarantee anyone the same luck for the same effort.
This all hinges on the assumption that payment correlates to quality. I've made this point before, and I'll make it many more times. The way Steem is set up, you don't see the best content, because the okayest content is the easiest to gamble on.
This is already a phenomenon seen all over social media. Look at Twitter, for example, where the only metrics of success are likes and retweets. Even there, content is dominated by garbage "parody" accounts, who all repost the same stuff. Why are these accounts the most popular? Well, on a platform like Twitter, people are rewarded via followers and notifications for playing a part of the majority. It's the same reason why you only see conservative view points ridiculed and progressive ones hailed. The best content strays too far from the norm to make up the most exposed content.
You can see this everywhere. Hell, look at top movie lists. The Shawshank Redemption routinely lands #1 on user generated lists that consist of voting for what you like. So does Pulp Fiction. Are these the best two movies ever? No, they aren't. So why do they always land on top? Because they are the goodest. Everyone likes these movies. It may not be everyone's favorite, but everyone likes it.
Anyways, Steemit rewards users for contributing to an echochamber-circlejerk. Post a picture with boobs in an introduction post, make a guide on how to use Steem, or talk about how awesome Steemit is. The content can be summed up as that. Nobody is going to make an in depth post on politics. Nobody is going to write a novel. Nobody is going to explain a mathematic theory. Why? Because although this would be the best content, it won't be rewarded. People aren't looking to help out the best, they are looking to help out what qualifies, because more people can agree on that.
I would bet that the most brilliant people in the world, under anonymous identities, would not garner publicity or money with a post in their respective niches, regardless of how profound it is. I would also bet that these same people
could make money if they instead used a fake identity as an attractive-but-relatable female and post about the same clickbait garbage that everyone else is.