It almost doesn’t matter who you are, what your political position is, who your friends are, you are going to get flagged one day. This is almost a guarantee on Steemit, but what do you do? How do you survive the flag? Should you stack up on canned food? Should you build a nuclear bunker?

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<h1>I know... It Hurts</h1>

&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;I’m not trying to downplay it, or at least I’m not trying to say that... I’m not acknowledging the fact that getting flagged feels bad, it hurts, and it hurts right in the feels section of the chest, but why does it hurt so bad? What <b>firewall</b> is letting this pain through?

&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;I want to explore those two questions, but first give me two minutes to setup frame of mind, a <b>"perspective lens"</b> with might have stored in the back of our mental closet, go get it before you continue reading, I'll wait for you.... 
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<h1>The "Give me back my money" fallacious fallacy of lies and deceptions.... of the none true kind</h1>

&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;I used to work at a retail store, quite some years ago now (I feel old now... here goes the feels again), and one of the things that always urked me, was this fear of loss people would have almost on the daily, specially if they were attempting to return merchandise to us. 

&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;A customer would walk in with a return, sporting a negative attitude as to protect themselves from anyone trying to change their mind, and after a couple of minutes into the transaction they would ask the manager on duty with deep concern.

<h1>When do I get my money back?</h1>
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&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;There is nothing wrong with the question itself, not intrinsically, but in those common instances when they had purchased the product with a store credit card, the question made as much sense as mayonnaise on pizza. (don't do it... don't you dare!!!!)

<h1>What do I mean, you say?</h1>

&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;If I walk into BestBuy and buy a brand new phone with a 12 month promotion on their BestBuy Credit Card, only to return it a couple of days later, because I changed my mind.... <b> How much did I just spend?</b> 

I’m no math wizard, but lets work out the complicated equation.

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<h1> 0 = ?</h1>
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&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;I don’t know, I could rework the math, but it seems pretty solid to me. It makes no sense to think, we spent money, because until the moment we actually started making payments we had not spent a dime.

&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>Do you see where I’m coming from? </b>If anything when we returned the item, we did not get our money back (there was none to get back) we got out of a legal promise to spend money which is completely different. 

You might be asking yourself…

<h1>What does this have to do with Steemit @meno ? you are short circuiting the internets again with your Ramblingseses?</h1>

&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Lets use the same frame of mind to look at upvotes and downvotes. If I make a post and I get lucky enough to catch me a whale vote (it's happened before) and I see my post with a $100 pending payout, how much money have I made?

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&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;If you started to calculate curation rewards and current SBD price you are missing the point. Until the day the 7 day period has expired, I have literally not made one single cent.

<h1>How does this help us survive the flag?</h1>

&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;I guess the point I'm trying to make is that we might be thinking of the payout in the wrong way. It's not money that we have, its money that we could <b>potentially</b> have, and this distinction is key.

&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Let's say the reason why my $100 post was flagged down to $50 was because another whale thought it excessive that @meno was getting $100 for his post. Imagine that the post pays out after the seventh day, <b>how much money did I lose?</b> if you said or thought $50 you are missing my point again. I lost nothing, because I never had $100 to begin with.

&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The same post could also have been ignored by all the whales, and only because of my Steemian friends and a few dolphins collect say $30 on seven days. Does this mean that I lost a hypothetical $70 of the alternate dimension?  Potential Payouts are just that, <b>"potential payouts"</b>, and if we are making plans with money we don't yet have, we are in for a rude awakening.


<h1>What about the haters?</h1>

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&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;There are bad Steemians of course, there are people who love trolling, love to pick fights and overall have no one best interest in mind, not even their own. <b>But what can you do about that?</b> not a thing!!! You seriously have to ignore them and move on, in other words, don't feed the trolls.


<h1>So what can we do, what can you do?</h1>

&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The short answer: <b> Don't stop!</b>

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<h1>Are you doing what you love? Are you finding value on Steemit? Are you learning everyday? Are you making friends?</h1>
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&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;If you answered yes to all of those, then you have the luxury of ignoring the flags, ignoring the haters, ignoring the trolls. They have no power over you... and that is all kinds of ninja in my book.


Just remember when you get flagged, everything is going to be OK...  open up a cold one, and write an even better post next time.


Much Love

![meno logo.png](https://steemitimages.com/DQmW2fijoxrybX3Kg83HCgZZmZwF8SujXWvr3tn8YCUPCsw/meno%20logo.png)

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