My purpose for being on Steem has fluctuated so much since I first came here. The return on investment that I get is the social capital that I gather, and the wider socialising that the Steem blockchain enables me to do is the biggest ROI.

I've recently restarted posting my photography on Instagram, and the engagement there is hollow, and bot driven follow for follow stuff. ... And there's no money at all involved there, unless you're an influencer.

My goal with Steem is not ROI, but obtaining stake - which means that as new users are onboarded, I can help give smaller authors a boost that hopefully lets others find them and give them a bigger boost as my stake grows.

I've recently been using OCDB on my own posts, and it has been ludicrous how quickly my SP has started to grow based on the votes, and the "slow burn" instead of just powering up post rewards via the SBD is starting to compound a fair bit now.

I'm at a crossroads with Steem at the moment. I feel my regular content is okay, and everynow and then I'll try to pump out something exceptional. When you've been writing stuff almost everyday (or in my case, recently; sharing gameplay videos with me rambling about what I'm doing and why) - you get into a space where, like all things, you feel like you have plateaued.

Having said that, I'm not doing posts about every drug wars fight or giving away a single steemmonster card just to get ROI on my signed blockchain transaction.

Everything I etch into this chain is a reflection of me as a human being. It has my name on it, and one day, could be my legacy.

What you've described is people tagging walls with a graffiti can - something I try to avoid on chain.

Sorry for this response being super long! :D