I'm a big fan of @practicalthought who can be found only here on Blurt! His name could not not be more appropriate. He writes from an incredibly well thought out mindset combined with a steady and balanced approach; accompanied by a moral compass second to none.
He is a master communicator, and can you believe it; Hive could have kept this gem of a content creator for themselves! But doing what they do best they drive their smartest and most talented off their platform while Blurt welcomes them with open arms.
@practicalthought recently took the time to leave us a comment in my recent post about me being the most down-voted person currently on Hive, you can see the post here. But this is no ordinary comment it is a serious Practical Thought! And below is my reply.
Out of respect this is not being cross posted onto Hive and Steemit without his permission. However I would love to. Furthermore, everyone make sure to follow and support this gem of a mind we are fortunate enough to have here on Blurt. Also I just set @practicalthought to be 50% beneficiary of this post.
@practicalthought Says...
I find it interesting at times I was mostly left along, other than some times Bernie wanted to nullify one of his targets (usually FTG) votes on my posts. I was more affected by him nullifying my stake claim votes on my circles posts. He also left so many nasty comments on my posts replying to those who commented at times.
I watched so many (squirrelbait was one of them) in my circles get so enraged at the nasty abuse they would have often have weeks or longer rage meltdowns. Those like him who do this don't understand (or care) that those they target often have circles including folks like myself who witness these actions and after a point just quietly power down and leave. So it doesn't just affect the accounts they are targeting. I'm proof of that.
I regret the abuse that the system there allows that has made so many such as yourself the recipient of abuse. The mathematics of this system are ingenious, and to have allowed such a mechanism as the reward theft down votes so the initial miners could retain permanent control of their personal crypto faucet was a flaw that overshadowed the entire math.
I'm glad that you found your way to Blurt. While there is a lot of truth in the insults Markymark has as far as the low volume on exchanges making any realistic cashing out pale greatly when compared to the Hive coin, sometimes there are other mitigating values that are as much or more important.
The respect of ones stake (property rights)
The respect (even in disagreement) afforded speech.
The upside potential and if doing a comparison with say Hive the downside potential.
Under that last point, there is so much upside potential to Blurt. We now live in a world where the oppressive controllers wish to dictate all speech. Especially online. As more find out one can say whatever here it should serve as a draw for the many who don't even give a shit about crypto but are desperate not to be shut up.
Because of the low valuation, the potential for a super high valuation from current prices is greater than say Hive. It's much easier to see Blurt going from say .025 to a value of say .25 than it is to see Hive going from a value of .53 to 5.30.
On that last note, part of Blurts issues is the lack of exchanges we are on. I personally felt it was a mistake for the Foundation (before my time here) not pressing BZ at Binance about honoring his pledge to list forks from Steem when he was embarassed by his exchange helping themselves to customers property in the hostile Justin Sun takeover.
https://www.binance.com/en/blog/all/czs-statement-on-the-recent-steem-hard-fork-421499824684900605
When other forks become available, we would support the other forks too (assuming they have a decent number of users following it). In this case, I would almost encourage the community to create a new fork, especially given that the few victims involved seem to have the capability to create forks. They forked out HIVE from STEEM not long ago. It’s not a pleasant situation for them; it’s a lot of extra work. It’s also definitely not a pleasant situation for us either; it’s a lot of extra work for us too, without much return. But a fork is the standard method to deal with this type of issue in a decentralized world.
A wise saying that displays much truth is
A house divided will fall
And the Hive house by its own rules is divided, with those in control with their flag control denigrating personal property claims is designed to divide.
I understand just how traumatic these things can be, despite the public face of laughing it off. I watched to many get chased off, so often accompanied by the most hurtful gaslighting language one could wield to add salt to the wounds being inflicted. Enough that as I said, I felt wounds were being placed on my own soul as I watched so many I grew to care about being toyed with in such ways.
Blurt is about harmony, from the top down. I came here after investigating Jacob and understanding the energy of his intent and heart are exactly what one would desire in ones neighbor. During my time here I've slowly grown to know more about Ricardo (megadrive) and while I think there are vast differences at times in our views of the world, I find it refreshing that he values respect and speech and property rights. I understand how he and Jacob were drawn to one another, and despite Jacob being somewhat absent as he works on other projects (he is still a part of Blurt however) I feel safe knowing that Ricardo is here overseeing the foundation. His vision of integrity are just as much a part of what makes Blurt what it is as Jacobs was/is.
@world-travel-pro Replies
Well, if that is not a serious Practical Thought, than I don't know what is. For starters, absolutely 25 cent Blurt is far more likely than 5 dollar Hive in any relative time frame. Yes, Blurt is about harmony and I respect and agree with your comments regarding the founders. They are good trustworthy people, like the kind of neighbor you would want. Also the volume is picking up and I think it will become less of an issue as Blurt grows.
Now I'll share a bit about my story of being down-voted and why I chose to deal with it the way I have. Something I have not spoken about much at all. As you say, you witnessed others being bullied and harassed and it making them enraged for weeks even longer. Really detrimental to ones mental health and happiness as you site @squirellbait.
It was no different for me. My life was as close to perfect as I could have it, then one day out of nowhere I opened up my computer to see my blog that I worked 5 years to build up, zeroed out. No questions asked, total shocker! I sat there with my head in my hands and almost cried, jaw dropped, totally stunned. I sat there for the better part of twenty minutes completely in shock.
That was the first day of the following weeks of depression and jumping through hoops doing everything I could to satisfy the down-voters with no avail other than to allow them to add insult to injury.
After taking a step back and understanding what I was dealing with. I had but only one choice to turn my victim induced depression into a feeling of success, confidence, and celebration. The alternative could have been Prozac a therapist and a sad story of what "they" did to me.
I turned that sad, angry, victim, depression into some serious competitive energy that I could use to turn the tables on them. The first thing I did was forget about getting them to leave me alone....I soon embraced their down-votes as I could see others that followed my blog where getting highly disturbed and sympathetic as they watched them down-vote my excellent travel posts for the next two months.
Once I had all the down-voters singled out and lots of sympathetic attention on me. I then was able to level the playing field and go up against them in the arena of business and public opinion. Meanwhile I chose Blurt as my off ramp and bought half a million as the anti-Hive/pro Blurt PR campaign began.
Competing with them not in the business of down-votes, but in the business of actual business and marketing is where I knew I could win or at least have a serious effect. I knew this is the last thing they or anyone would expect. A marketing campaign straight from the hell they created.
So far my marketing campaign against them, steeped in truth from the information I've gathered....has worked far better than I and those who've helped me put it together could have ever imagined. I was the writer, but information was being fed to me from about four or five different sources.
Flipping the tables on them in this way has erased all feelings of depression and victimism they unleashed on me. I now have zero feelings of "Depressed, Do-nothing Loser" and 100% percent feelings of "Kick Ass, Confident, Winner". I'm really feeling good about everything.
Once you factor in having met amazing people like yourself and seeing my exit price of Hive about four and half times higher than it's current price. It's hard not to feel good. Then seeing my Blurt investment higher than my initial purchase valued in bitcoin...I'm really feeling like a million bucks these days, even better than before they began their attack on me.
It's true when I say I have never been so mistreated in my entire life. Literally being on the receiving end of a down-vote and PR campaign to destroy five years of work, effort, and reputation is devastating emotionally. For some people like myself the best way to deal with being made to feel like a victim loser is to fight back, and the only way is to compete in an arena you actually can win in, and be a winner once again.
Everyone on Blurt should be very proud that they are here. This is the place to be, regardless of the how you ended up here. The future of Blurt looks incredibly bright and we need to all be grateful to be here under five cents. Now I'll leave you all with a quote from one my favorites.
George Washington- "It is better to be alone than in bad company."
Great comment, thanks for sharing it!
"It's much easier to see Blurt going from say .025 to a value of say .25 than it is to see Hive going from a value of .53 to 5.30."
I wonder what his reasoning is for that? If he's around, I'd be interested to hear. You seem to take it as a simple "I'm bullish on BLURT" statement, but with that specific language it looks to me like he means something more?
On the topic of SkidMarkyMark, I see he's down from #18 to #20 on Hive's reputation leaderboard. His upward advance has been halted by dozens of content-creators he has abused, striking back in small chunks at his post and comment payouts. Perhaps, like me, they are leaving a little HIVE on the table for curation, even if they can no longer post or comment? I'm considering leaving a few thousand there, as investment diversification, and to earn curation rewards by upvoting good content by good people. But also to remind Skidmark, the cabal, and naive strangers what's really going on there. The downvotes will lead to a look at my profile, where they'll find my latest post explaining how I was bullied and censored off the platform. We'll see. There are others like myself. If there are enough, Marky will never make another cent/token on Hive. Bully whales can be taken down, even in a decentralized system that encourages them.
"I feel safe knowing that Ricardo is here overseeing the foundation."
I do value that opinion, but I'm a skeptical person who has been burned, nonstop, for I don't know how long now. My tolerance for having my time/resources wasted is about as low as a lizard's belly button. I've been assured by a few other Blurt members now that everything is great, and those with the reigns of power won't abuse them. That helps. And yet, even with assurances, I can't help but realize that they don't actually mean anything. You can't take assurances to the bank, or the courtroom, or even the courtroom of public opinion. I've been assured before, after all. "This time is different" has not served me well thus far. I'm not saying anyone owes me anything, such as more information. I'm just saying, it's hard for me to trust any further than I already have, given the circumstances.
On top of all that, I'm the kind of person who doesn't really do the leader thing - I'm an anarchist/libertarian, along with about half this platform. But I recently saw someone (megadrive I think?) say he hopes to rid this platform of anarchist sentiment. That's scary to me - not just that my particular ideology seems to be under attack, but that anyone would openly declare they are trying to remove/suppress certain ideologies on the platform. I hope I simply misunderstood the intention of his statements, but I've felt wary about powering up since then.
Crypto for many is about decentralization, and decentralization of government is anarchy and libertarianism. We don't need that top-down control and power structure anymore, we can do things better with blockchains and peace and voluntarism. Anarchy isn't about burning things, it's about living a peaceful healthy and free life, without tyrants. Blockchains like Blurt help make that possibe. I really hope Blurt isn't taking a stance against anarchy, since anarchy is just a stance against tyrannical rule. Ideally, I would like to see Blurt become a bastion of decentralized freedom, not another top-down control structure.
If it's not my place to wonder these things, please let me know. I mean absolutely no disrespect by it to anyone.
"It's true when I say I have never been so mistreated in my entire life. Literally being on the receiving end of a down-vote and PR campaign to destroy five years of work, effort, and reputation is devastating emotionally. For some people like myself the best way to deal with being made to feel like a victim loser is to fight back, and the only way is to compete in an arena you actually can win in, and be a winner once again."
Hear here!! We may be victims but we don't have to take on that mentality. And in that way, we can become victorious.
My reasoning is for several reasons. I'll use Blurt now as an example again. When I joined Blurt was hovering between .002 and .003. In recent months it has risen to between .015 and .04. I noticed some years back that the lower value a coin has (that has substance behind it) the more gains are possible. One example was I actually grew disgusted with Steem because of the down voting before Justin Sun. I powered down most of my stake there and bought Cardano at around .05 each.
Stupid me, when Hive forked off I thought the abusers would have learned their lesson having deeper pockets (Sun) do to them and much worse than they had been doing to others. So I sold the Cardano at .02 each and sunk it all into Hive, along with the little Steem I had powered down.
After joining hive Cardano shot up to as high as 1.50, a whopping 7400% increase in value. No way would you see that on any project that was valued at a dollar or higher in such a short time frame. But due to the low valuation when the bandwagon starts the increase is potentially much higher because it's still such a short amount.
In the case of saying that Blurt could 10 times (again) before Hive does it's the same principle.
I also see that people are tired of having their voices muted/censured/censored, as well as the stake weight voting theft which is a clear cut case of property rights theft.
So between the many benefits Blurt brings as far as respect, coupled with the law of human investment that demonstrates more often than not folks will invest in a quality project in greater quantities the lower the initial buy in is, I think Blurt is in a sweet spot.
It will also be curious to see, given the recent issues with stable coins failing what regulations the U.S. is about to place on all projects with a stable coin. Once again, the Blurt co-founders were smart enough to see the writing on the wall when they forked and not bring the (illusionary) stable coin with Blurt so as to avoid the soon to be coming regulations.
I believe with that upcoming regulation that Hive and Steem will be negatively impacted and for that fact alone some will wish to jump ship to avoid yet further tax complications. Blurt is a natural place for them to jump ship to, as it will already feel familiar to them, minus the whole no free speech or property rights if someone with more property decides to make you their bitch from the pool.
So you think it's mainly a psychological effect - people invest in something that has a nominally small price because it seems cheap/undervalued. They avoid investing in things with nominally large price tags because they seem overpriced.
In that case, maybe we should list our BLURT price in BTC, and not USD! I think 0.0000008 sounds like a verrrrry low price and investors will scoop it up ;D
You have a great point about Hive/Steem users jumping to Blurt when stablecoin tax complications continue. I'm not certain that will be a huge issue, but it certainly could. It will at least have some effect.
Thank you for your thoughts!
Like a penny stock, things with a small market cap can explode higher.
It would take a fraction of the capital to make Blurt go up 10x compared to hive to just go back to a dollar. The small market cap and low volume is fuel for volatility, but I'm happy about that, cause the fundamental are very strong for Blurt, so extreme volatility to the up-side will be a gift for all of us.
this is all true
but the point is the function
not the valuation
Exactly. That's why I needed to qualify a project needed to start with substance. The Cardano project is a clear cut case of this. They use Haskell to start with. Then their goals are aligned with large money and corporate overlords, testing out ID'ing everyone as well as testing how a digitized central bank would work. I knew it was vastly undervalued and probably still is considering it speaks the right code language and is an area of development those who rule over us are desperate to get all kinks worked out on before they FORCE all of us on it unless they can be stopped.
solid use-case
great points
Hey buddy, thanks for taking the time...
I think that is an excellent idea the more voices pointing to different examples of abuse and corruption over there the better.
I do understand your concern of trusting the top here....I shared the same concern after going through the BS on hive. But recently I've followed the top people here for a while now, and they have certainly gained my confidence. No comparison to the other two places and far more decentralized. If that statement is true or not about anarchist unwelcome here....I really don't think it matters. There is no downvote button, and megadrive is on record saying that even Putin himself is welcome to join, and that's his least favortie person on the planet to my knowledge. The design of the the platform, really can't stop an entire network of anarchist, joining, powering up, and then upvoting each other to trending, so in my opinion. I really don't think it even matters what anyone says.
Thank you for the kind thoughts and words.
I wouldn't have an issue with you posting this on Hive on the condition you put the
greater than symbol next to my quote from Binance so it's more evident it came from there and not myself.
Out of curiosity I went and looked at the blog of @Squirrelbait from back then. It wasn't as dramatic as I had thought, just was coupled with several from my follow list at that time being targeted and having words with Bernie.
https://hive.blog/berniesanders/@squirrelbait/blow-hole-bully-o-c-p-d#@berniesanders/re-squirrelbait-blow-hole-bully-o-c-p-d-20190110t225537947z
https://hive.blog/berniesanders/@squirrelbait/squirrel-bait-responds-to-berniesanders-1#@lyndsaybowes/re-squirrelbait-squirrel-bait-responds-to-berniesanders-1-20190118t000907821z
https://hive.blog/steem/@squirrelbait/re-lucylin-re-tarazkp-re-lucylin-re-tarazkp-censorship-and-suppression-of-free-speech-on-steem--really-20190112t194132265z
That's just a few I found. Thankfully he was into the sheep pics for his spam at that time, before he grew to share his addiction to penis pics.
There was another who was tight with myself and squirrelbait at that time, ihashblox. I always felt Bernie was a part of why he left too.
There were so many really. And some just wouldn't leave and he would control them through their anger so much they forgot about the rest of us and went on some crazy non winnable war with him like Ahab with his whale.
The worst was Bernie creating a mock account of lyndsaybowes called Lyndsayblows. He would leave comments such as her kids were retarded because they fell out of her c**t as he downvoted her every comment. Someone she was close to came to the chain and he began downvoting her as well. That woman had cancer and his comments ot her was he hoped she would hurry up and die from the cancer.
I could write a book on this shit, but its all in the past now. But yeah, all of the people I neamed and could continue naming all had circles of folks watching this shit unable to help. Eventually one just gets tired of it and stops logging in.
Last year one of the downvote advocates told LogicZombie when it was brought up about people leaving the blockchain that in my case I needed thicker skin and would have continued doing well there. I laughed, thinking no I don't need thicker skin. Because i don't need Hive, lol.
I'm so sorry again you were target so much. I'm sure that the many from your circles are much like myself, watching incredulously from the sidelines with no power to do anything other than either become a target or do what I did and just power down and leave.
Wow! More pure evil on the other two chains in the form of Bernie Sanders. That should have been reason enough to remove the down-vote button years ago. But since it's their source of control it will never happen.
I flew under the radar and avoided that guy like the plague. In fact, I never networked or socialized with hardly any of the ones I consider "cabal" accounts. Like practically never, they even said that was a reason to down vote me! hahaha Even though I socialized with many people, just not them.
So in that regard ignorance was bliss for a while and the timing of market when they came for me couldn't have been better. Thanks again for your condolences and sharing your experiences. Very eye opening conversation, I'll just leave the post here on Blurt. I didn't even mean to go so deep into this topic, but when I was made aware that I was suddenly receiving $3,000 down votes a day over there, I just had to celebrate! hahaha
Being attacked like they did to me was a tough pill to swallow but in hindsight it was actually the best thing that could have happened. So happy to have found and invested in Blurt!
Respect everything said by @practicalthought couldn't be more spot on blurt will succeed even more then what it is now and with joy and happiness and a better place for everyone to be, I am happy to see you happy again @world-travel-pro after what they put you through, it's you who has come out the winner with no shame.
Very disturbing stuff. Thank you very much for the kind words and support.
I like PT, and also had some fantastic over $100 votes from FTG or fulltimegeek, for many months, and v4vapid, the former though was playing power games with the owners of steemit, FTG that is, and would argue for the sake of it, the mindset followed over to hive, sadly, they are "think like me or else"........
For real, their "insider's" white paper is the communist manifesto!
They seem very self destructive, up to them.
Just as a side note to this post. @practicalthought mentions the use of gaslighting as another form of abuse delivered from "them" to their victims. Part of that gaslighting is to convince people Blurt as a platform for "salty" reject losers that could not make it on Hive. A total psychological attack on the already abused. As I mention in the post. Blurt is a place for Winners and there are a million things I can point at to prove it! Now lets all keep up the great work and lets Grow Blurt!
a group of ppl on there are the worst of the worst and out of principle I won't even use the platform, it would be easy just to get random accounts there and post pics and farm money but I wouldn't even do that because it feeds into the system. I just wish all the really awesome people there would finally wake up and come over here then we would not only have a free and fair system but a well developed one and a high price point.
Exactly and the good news is people are waking up, seeing people they liked get abused, and bit by bit they are trickling over here. Another thing working for Blurt is the price of hive continuing to go down. The further it drops the more discouraged people become over there and look for a better opportunity. If it goes really low that would create a vacuum to be filled by BLURT.
Salty bitches they call us, sore losers I call them.
Thank you for acknowledging him @world-travel-pro.
I have always followed him closely from my day 1 on Blurt.
@practicalthought is a rare gem who sees things from the metaphysical point of view.
This is not a praise, I must say that he is not biased and his choice of English words have never been irrational.
I also noticed that he is someone that takes corrections, this a very pertinent attribute of a leader.
Men like him who gives maximum tolerance to free speech are hard to find.
He has my unbiased Veneration always 🙏🙌🙏🙇🙇🙇
Well said. I agree on all fronts!
You have made a very informative post among us Very nice to share this post with us Thank you very much and a lot of respect and love for you.
Gracias por compartir tu publicación en #Blurt. Tu esfuerzo significa mucho para nosotros; por eso has recibido un voto positivo.
Te invito a votar por @blurtlatam como Testigo / Witness
Thank you!
We invite you to use the tag #blurthispano. You can find us on Discord.
Manually curated by Geeklania.
We invite you to vote for @blurthispano as Witness.
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I will always be a fan of @praticalthought most times I wish he can host a lecture contest based on writing skills...
and to you Sir you have also got the verse knowledge I wish to learn from,
from the way you pattern your words...
I'm glad we have you both here.... to enlighten us.
Thank you so much. Really appreciate your kind words!
It is great to have you here also as another travel writer. The best revenge is your own success so you win. And we all when when blurt hits $1.
Were you ever able to identify what set them off on the campaign against you? Or was it just your success?
They said my posts became "low effort"......one week after I began a power down and was making "too much".... Meanwhile I had dozens of people come my aid, so they backed off to just downvoting me on day 7 just before the payout window with azircon and others. Trying to make it so nobody would notice. It was just unreal.
Sounds so frustrating, real ass hats will make themselves the judge of effort and rewards. The whole point of the system is if people like it they vote their stake. Anyway it works better here as you know.
They are doing and continue to do Blurt a huge favor. Its the a powerful silver lining.
Just like you, I'm also a big fan of @practicalthought, but in this week I haven't seen a new post from him. And it looks like you've just become his rival in writing long posts, as well as making me your potential fan. Haa..haa.. Nice to meet you.
Thank you for the kind words. I know he started a new job and has been busy, so at least he makes half of this post.
Congratulations, your post has been Manually curated by Blessed-girl. You can use the tag #R2cornell. Also, find us on Discord
Felicitaciones, su publicación ha sido votada manualmente por Blessed-girl. Puedes usar el tag #R2cornell. También, nos puedes encontrar en
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Thank you very much. You're support is greatly appreciated!