“Better three hours too soon than a minute too late.” - William Shakespeare

Steemit is set up to reward new content. The reward system favors new content over “old” by encouraging users to be the first to upvote posts, and by having a payout date, after which the post becomes “old”.

And this gives the impression that only new content has value worth an upvote.

But this is the Internet. This is the blockchain. Stuff stays here for a long, long time. And while it’s true that some content, such as news, can’t help but lose value with time, some content can offer value long past the payout date - an arbitrary point in time, determined only by when the writer decided to post their writing.

Of course, that value is still subjective and dependent on the perceptions of the readers. But, because of the way the reward system is biased, whatever value an “old” post might have for readers has little chance of being discovered.

“Delays have dangerous ends”. - William Shakespeare

So, if your post doesn’t make it to the trending page within 12 hours, you can kiss all your hopes and hard work goodbye. As things stand now.

So it just sits there, buried. Maybe that’s what this short fiction pieceI wrote was getting at. Steemit is like this pile of bodies, all scrambling to be the first to reach a reward that’s always out of reach, for most of them. But if they’d just take a moment to consider that the rewards might be all around them, in the other seemingly average people and the timeless sea underneath them, they might just find a way out of their predicament.

“Nothing will come of nothing.” - William Shakespeare

Fiction can offer value for long periods, even timeless value in some cases. Consider Shakespeare, long dead, but still the best selling fiction writer of all time. He still provides that subjective value to millions of people.

But if Shakespeare were alive today, and just starting out, how well would his work do on Steemit?

“There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.” - William Shakespeare

### “Hey, Bill Shakespeare here. Steemit noob and hoping to become a whale, lol. Check out my latest piece here, and don’t forget to upvote!”

I suspect that if Shakespeare posted on Steemit in its current state, you’d have never heard of him. His posts would be buried alongside the thousands of other overlooked but valuable posts on Steemit, rotting in a shallow mass grave until the day the devs figure out how to resurrect the dead.

“What ’s gone and what ’s past help should be past grief.” - William Shakespeare

So, why do I bother writing fiction? Because the writing process itself has value to me. I have these ideas that just come, I write them down and flesh them out, and I get a sense of satisfaction reading my completed work when it’s finished.

And because I hope that someone else sees value in my work. I hope at least somebody gets it. And I’d be lying if I said I don’t care if they upvote my posts or not. That should go without saying.

“You pay a great deal too dear for what’s given freely”. - William Shakespeare

Published on Hive on 2016-08-09. View the original post and discussion on Hive.