https://i.ytimg.com/vi/5UQTSNL_688/maxresdefault.jpg

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The term "steemit purgatory" was introduced to me a fellow steemian yesterday.  @ozmaga referred to his low voting power as steemit purgatory.  When you get too low in voting power it is a battle to get out of that hole, due to the fact that VP in regenerated at a rate of 8% per hour.  If you only have 20% VP left, each hour it will only climb 1.6 points.  It takes time and self control to come back from.  If you keep voting, it will take forever to recover.

I see a lot of accounts that have had a difficult time recovering from the "hangover" they received after HF19.  Minnows' votes gained 4X their previous strength after the HF, but at the cost of how frequently one can vote and maintain VP.  This has become a bit of a problem for the small minnows, the ones with less than 500 steempower, for they do not have the sliding scale to control their vote's weight.

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<center>https://media3.giphy.com/media/xT5LMD3hQ7OzEAcCnS/giphy.gif</center>

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Every time they upvote they will be voting at 100% which allows them only ten votes every 24 hours if they want to keep their VP near 90%.  Prior to the HF, the typical minnow could upvote 40-50x/day without doing much damage to their VP.  Now it's in the 10-15x/day range.  This, to me, is a problem.

Proponents of the HF changes have argued with me saying that fewer votes for accounts is a good thing, it'll make people more selective on what they upvote and in the end it will only reward the best content.  Ergo, the platform will only improve since the top content will be rewarded and the shit posts will get nothing.  In theory that sounds good, but the reality of it is, that people are motivated to succeed on steemit.  Two of the best motivators in the world are sex and money.  

<center>**Since steemit isn't offering sex, money is the biggest motivator**</center>

Now the smaller accounts have their, more powerful, 10 votes per day, what will they do with them?  Try to find the best return on investment.(ROI)  The likelihood that they will search out a diamond in the rough when they could just auto-vote the next @jerrybanfield or @dollarvigilante post and be assured that the blog will make $1,000.  In practicality, their share of the curation rewards won't be tremendous, but they know there will be a return.  The other options include upvoting yourself all day.  Again, you know you'll get that reward money.

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http://www.phneep.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Hard-Fork-Cafe.jpg

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I have felt the HF change quite dramatically.  The number of upvotes I receive has diminished in a noticeable fashion.  Also, the number of people that leave comments and don't upvote on those posts has increased.

So, what appears to be the new paradigm is that the most popular accounts have stayed popular and the small accounts, that the HF was meant to help the most, are suffering from it.  Voting strategies have changed and there doesn't seem to be enough love to spread around.

To alleviate the changes from HF19, my solution would be to give everyone the sliding scale on their account from the beginning of time, or at least lower the threshold from 500SP to 200SP.  People need to be able to moderate the votes they give out, or they will only vote 10x/day and have to forgo curating as much as they might like.  

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<center>https://media3.giphy.com/media/cw3b2naibx9D2/giphy.gif</center>

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It's actually counter intuitive to change steemit in the fashion that it was done.  By limiting votes, it leads to limiting communication as well.  I don't like to show up at a party without a gift and **I don't like to comment on someone else's post without upvoting,** therefore, with limited votes I'm less likely to read as many posts because I know I won't be able to leave a comment since I may be out of votes for the day.  The alternative is to throw caution to the wind and vote 30x in a day with 100% votes and drain your VP down to nothing and end up, like so many, that end up in **Steemit Purgator.**

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### Conclusion

I'm not a fan of the new paradigm on the platform.  I think the changes do more harm then good and overall create less community and sharing.  I'll grant you, that it is nice to give out nickels versus pennies while upvoting, but it's forced the smaller accounts to become very judicious with their votes and more likely to want a "sure thing" when they do vote.  

This doesn't mean I'm going anywhere else, what other platform is going to reward me for blogging?  I just want to throw my two cents in, in regards to the recent changes.  Maybe @ned can find a tweak to mitigate this issue, one that I believe to be a real problem.

#### Please use the comment section to leave your opinion!

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<center>![Bonnie's 35th Birthday (1).png](https://steemitimages.com/DQmSPUnMVMabAETvfzk5SFDvTMuZLCBtWmb3vJzQHbCL4q1/Bonnie's%2035th%20Birthday%20(1).png)</center>

Other wakeupsheeps posts you may enjoy:

https://steemit.com/independence/@wakeupsheeps/time-to-declare-independence-from-big-government

https://steemit.com/politics/@wakeupsheeps/congress-gives-the-stop-arming-terrorists-act-3-support

https://steemit.com/marijuana/@wakeupsheeps/negative-effects-of-smoking-marijuana

Image source: [1](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/5UQTSNL_688/maxresdefault.jpg), [2](http://www.phneep.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Hard-Fork-Cafe.jpg)

Gif source:  [1](https://media3.giphy.com/media/cw3b2naibx9D2/giphy.gif)