What happens when we financially reward casual conversations?

Steemit is revolutionary in many ways but perhaps most interestingly is the idea that casual conversation and engagement often classified as a waste of time on traditional social media now has a monetary incentive. There is an old saying that if a product is free, then you are the product. Steemit is taking that one step further and giving us a stake in ourselves. Seems like a win-win situation. Who wouldn’t like to have been paid for all that time spent liking cat pictures on Facebook? But psychologically it creates an interesting thought-process which could very well prove to be the make or break of the platform. Will users naturally adopt this incentive and produce genuine, authentic content or will this monetary incentive flood the platform with insincere, inorganic insights masquerading as authentic blogging?

3 consequences we will almost certainly observe:

1. The good: Great quality posts with insightful engagements rising to the top, and everyone that contributed to the conversation receiving a monetary reward.

2. The bad: Insincere, spammy articles with a whole lot of buzzwords which seems to be talking a lot but saying very little.

3. The ugly: Users seeking out the newest trending stories motivated by the idea of being part of a financially rewarding conversation as opposed to genuinely contributing with quality in mind.

Whatever the case may be, Steemit is a fascinating social experiment with an undeniable potential for disruption in the current social media space. Who knows what the ultimate consequences will be for Steemit itself and indeed for the way we create and interact with content, but this writer will be watching on with great interest!