A Newcomers First Take on Steem

That's a bit how I feel upon first posting on Steem. I just came here to have a good time. To share some of my thoughts with a community of people. So I paddle out into these new waters, discovering some great people--but I'm surrounded by sharks.

I'm being dramatic here, of course. Overall, my Steem experience has been grand. Though I must admit that it's a bit disappointing to see more bots than people. (Granted, I haven't interacted with many other people's posts yet. I'm sure that will help)

It seems that many people are just on Steem just to make a buck. Sure, I want to make a buck too, but I'm not here for just that! More than that, I came here because I thought Steem may be just the sort of open forum, decentralized, truly free social media site in which humans may interact with humans unimpeded by censorship and obscure algorithms.

I imagined in my naively idealistic mind that by decentralizing power and making everything transparent people would just interact with people authentically, unimpeded.

What I found, though, is that rather than community being demolished by some fat cats trying to make a buck off of us, it's being defeated by us trying to make a buck off each other.

I'm sure many people have discussed this and have come up with all manner of incetivisation programs to solve it--but I think that misses the point. This pr