I've been on Steemit for over a year. There have been few days when I have not been on Steemit since June 8, 2016. I am a Steem addict, and like many addicts, I even tried to quit, and find something else. It didn't work. It's too captivating, and holds too much potential.

Steemit is a test.

It's a test, a mirror, a petri dish for our minds. You may not be able to see this yet, but if you stay here, you will.

Every day each of us struggles with something. At first, when you get it in here, you struggle with trying to get people to give you money. Your mind is focused each day on that mission. And each day, your worth begins to be measured in numbers underneath your post. If you have $0, you feel horrible. So, your fear kicks in. You start making plans, or building bots.

If your mind is in this stage 1 phase, you will not understand stage 2. But if you have a mind that exists on the periphery, or if you have been struggling for a long time in life, you might begin to see the outlines of stage 2, on your own.

So, what is stage 2 exactly?

Stage 2 is a survival mindset that is hyper-focused on other things besides the money ticker. The people who get to stage 2 quickly know the following things:

1. Money exists in the minds of people.
2. People make decisions where to put their money based more on social and emotional reasons than purely intellectual reasons.
3. Social bonds between people determine to a large extent where money goes.
4. Humans are emotional, irrational and are in need of feeling a certain way.
5. Each person who is capable of giving wealth to others is a unique person with unique tastes.
6. Many whales and dolphins still do not get their own intellectual and reading needs met.
7. Humans will feed their own children before the children of others.
8. Humans evolved from tribes, and I believe we are headed into a digital tribe era.

Can you see something here?

When I go idea shopping on Steemit, I am searching for future tribe members. I am looking for people who are kind of hanging around in the shadows, who are real, and who have the authenticity trait. I'm searching for people who can form a shield, in order to advance society into the next phase of existence.

What Steemit newbies need to realize:

Steemit is made up of social fabric. This is not really a commodity culture where the best idea wins. Those Steemians who focus their efforts equally on building social bonds plus thinking in deep ways about things that affect tons of people are the ones who do well on here. It's getting harder by the day to stand out. Early adopters even are struggling to stand out due the massive influx of users. That's why it's important to realize one thing:

You and I, and everyone one here are part of the future.

If you're reading this now, you're among the earliest adopters of new technology, freedom and new thoughts. We are inside a decentralized autonomous organization and it's up to us to make it either the fantastic future or the spam pit of doom. I suspect the people operating the vast 5,500+ account botnet (currently draining the reward pool) are not fit for society. It is too bad they are not putting their amazing botnet-building skills to better use, becoming a part of this unique and wonderful place, a place where we have a chance to build a futuristic world together.

Instead, they have decided to weaken this system, their stupidity, arrogance and ignorance decided to rule their minds. Every organism has its cancer, and the botnets are ours. People wonder what the future will be like....all they have to do is join Steemit. We all have to get this idea out of our heads:

"It's up to Steemit, Inc. to fix everything"

We are so accustomed to a centralized control structure, that it forms our every thought wave. Even I had this trouble last year. I was mad about Steemit Inc.'s decisions, as I considered my solutions to be superior. It hit me a few months ago, that this kind of thinking is flawed. I have to step up, to take more action, and not rely on any central authority to make the right decisions. In short, I decided that in order for my reality to change, I have to do everything in my power to make things at least better than they were before me.

You see, for once in our lives, we all have been given an opportunity to change things. We have been given free tools, in the form of a digital wallet with zero transaction fees. I can send money to Africa in seconds. We need to remind ourselves of how incredible this is. I forget, and like a dumb human, I take it for granted.

Only in times of illness can we see how amazing it is to breathe normally, to be able to walk, to talk and to think clearly.

It's human nature to begin to take things for granted and abuse what is given to us for free. I see Steemit attracting people who don't care for the inventions, for the possibility that Steemit could change the world. I see scammers, beggars, and spammers. I see people who are very desperate for money.

I need to talk to these people because they are in fact, degrading everything we have built here. This degradation is in fact a mirror of the world, and how it is right now. The world is not a good state, and as more and more people come into Steemit, our little place we've toiled day and night to create, it will continue to be degraded unless we all stop what we're doing and wake up.

After thinking last night about the botnets that have appeared in here, it became obvious that this stuff will actually continue, and we all will need to become more vigilant. I would say that @personz is doing a fantastic job, and also @patrice and @sherlockholmes and all the people working behind the scenes to mitigate the damage. @sadkitten, the little AI kitten has been working tirelessly, combatting the fraudulent, spam comments. These people are doing a service to us. Without @patrice for example, this place would be terribly ugly with spam and fraud.

The botnets are way more of an issue that the human "follow 4 follow" desperation. Because if the botnets are funded, or gain some huge SP, they will be harder to control. So @personz is doing the right thing by attacking this problem before it gets out of hand....I think it has become out of control recently, as I started looking into the matter yesterday.

What can we do?

We can wake up our minds to the reality that we can make this thing work and not starve to death anymore.
We can support @spaminator and take more actions ourselves. If you notice something super fishy, you can report it to @sherlockholmes in Steemit Chat. There is an action group forming to get this spam under control, and it will be run by the @spaminator account. More coming soon on this development. If you want to take an active role in reducing the amount of spam on Steemit, comment below.

I want to clarify, I am not talking about content moderation, but clear abuse of Steemit like: written or image plagiarism, identity theft, comment upvote botnets, any kind of automated botnet activity that is created to drain rewards.....

Carry on,
Stellabelle