Let's All Bash Dan!!!

Yesterday I made a comment on The Politics of Negative Voting by @dan and it drew a lot of attention. I would like to address my previous comment with the post below. @beanz replied that they hoped my comment "doesn't start a Dan-bashing trend". I have posted this in the comments section on the original discussion as well, but that has paid out and is likely not to get many eyes, so here it is below for those interested.

For the record ... I'm not bashing Dan.

I type from the heart on the fly and perhaps my rants read worse than my thoughts on a particular matter actually are, simply because I'm not a writer and I don't generally proofread prior to clicking "Post". There is too much on my plate as it is.

The disapproval expressed above with Dan's voting, at times, had simply been brewing over the past few months and I never have had an opportunity to bring it up in a place he could see it.

My views on the matter are not entirely isolated to me and contain bits of info I've gathered from others in chat, comments and post here on Steemit over time. Dan is the ultimate whale here and what I have expressed above is applicable to any whale and perhaps even Orca's (still whales), a group I belong to.

Recently I was called out for retaliating against a minnow that was abusing the flagging system against my account simply because they did not agree with what I had to say or how I was voting.

Over the past few months I have spent a lot of time (too much) going around Steemit flagging plagiarism, catfishing, spam and other attempts to game the system. Flagging people from the tuck-fheman account cost a lot of voting power for quite some time and I took a lot of heat from scammers for catching them.

I'm fairly certain the person that made the post saying I was a "bully whale", after they flagged me 6-7 times for no good reason and I retaliated, is simply someone I had caught gaming the system in the past and they saw an opportunity to try to make "tuck-fheman" look bad.

Then I had a run in with someone else recently who got upset because I simply questioned the veracity of their reporting. This person starting accusing me of "attacking" them simply for asking questions about their "report".

They made several videos where they attacked the tuck-fheman account with childish name calling, false accusations and played the victim card simply because I called them out on their fallacious "report", asked tough questions and when they responded saying they were not attempting to provide any facts, only "entertainment" I asked them to please put a disclaimer on their post up front stating that so investors and bloggers didn't get the idea that they were actual vlogging about reality. They were hurting the platform in my opinion.

Combine all of that together with time and you get my rant above. I saw Dan downvote someone, ruin their reputation instantly and it all came out in a matter of minutes because I simply needed to release some steam (pun intended).

So, although I can see how it looks like I'm bashing Dan, in reality it's me expressing my frustration on the current voting situation on Steem (mainly) and the best target for that frustration is Dan.

I cannot thank Dan enough for creating BitShares & Steem

Dan has single-handedly (well, he's had some help) made my life and wallet much happier over the past three years. Outside of BitShares & Steem I do nothing but praise Dan and defend his platforms and decisions on various social media outlets, most recently on Youtube. When and if I have a complaint, I keep it in house. But overall I am thoroughly satisfied with what Dan has created and my numerous post promoting his platforms can attest to that.

What's funny, and discouraging at times, is that I rarely, if ever, see anyone mentioning how much I promote and defend Dan. Most people want to focus on the few times a year I express my displeasure with a single action Dan has taken, yet rarely say a word about the countless times I have stood up for Dan and his platforms as a whole.

In some ways, I apologize that my rebuke above made such a splash and drew so much attention, but overall I think it turned out positive. Criticism generally draws in more eyes than approval and I do far more approving of Dan's work that's rarely commented on or upvoted. That's just human nature I guess, but I don't know for sure so I'll leave that question to the numerous philosophers here on Steemit. ;)

Dan's the man!