What The Alliance Means to Me

For those of you that don't know, The Alliance is a group of non like minded individuals from all walks of life and all areas of the globe here on steemit.

First, a little history...

Not long after I began my steemit journey (June 2017 i believe) and was advertising some of my posts in groups on Facebook, I was approached by @enginewitty about a group that he wanted to start. The groups we had both been in were not maintained well and seemed to always get cluttered with crap and dead users.

At first @enginewitty created a facebook group that was proving fairly useful but still very detached from steemit. Being on facebook posed it's own limitations also. He called it The Alliance.

The idea was born and in motion yet we still needed structure and meaning. I started helping him with ideas for how to grow and structure the group.

Many pow wows @enginewitty and I had about how to grow the group and what direction to take it. What our visions for the future were and how to reach them.

From the beginning the group rules were very lax, more like guidelines. We wanted to keep things loose and free while still building a strong foundation for growth.

The main focus of rules for members was to post on a regular basis and post something worth viewing, no spammy bullshit posts. This way we could ensure that all members of the alliance were valuable steemit community members.

As it grew closer to 100 members it became obvious that we needed to begin structuring the group so that members did not get lost in the fold and could be given the personal attention they deserve and that had made the group great from the beginning.

From that necessity we developed Syndicates.

Syndicates are offshoot groups contained within The Alliance. We kept the core at 100 members and set the limit for each syndicate at 100 members as well. Each syndicate was assigned a leader, someone to handle new accounts and filter information down through the ranks. Syndicate leaders were all picked from within our core.

Great, you guys have a cool little group but what does it do?

Individually our members simply do as they already would, they post and curate as usual.

As a group we support each other. We also support a few steemit charities like You are Hope and Ho Ho Hope.

We have a few contests ran by the group, including the kareoke contest started by @enginewitty and I, Crypto Guess Contest and Killer Pix from @enginewitty. There are also many that have been started by our members like @detlev's Beer Satruday Contest, @rumplestiltskin's Killer Poetry to name a few.

There are many members hosting raffles and even a steemit lotto from @pisolutionsmru.

There is even a steemit radio station ran by one of our members @sircork called Steemstar Network. In fact, another of our members @topkpop has a show on there on friday nights called All Play Friday.

@ma1neevent does interviews with steemit users on MSP Waves radio station.

We have members running curation trails and frontrunners, @shadowspub with her steemit rambles, many writers for adsactly.

@bearone has designed several of our logos as well as the design for the pure silver 1 oz steem coins that are floating around, minted by @phelimint (another wonderful member with great content). These are wonderful by the way, top notch stuff. If you didn't get one... shucks lol.

I run @sneaky-ninja and @themothership personally.

So, it's easy to see that we do a lot.

The real question is though...

What does The Alliance mean to me?

In order to understand what The Alliance means to me I need to explain my steemit journey.

This is the first time I have made my story public.

I have had some real rough times here on steemit. I gave my life up to be here. I quit my job, I sold my property and I started writing and learning. Ever since I started it was like this entire site was against me. Not long after I started I bought a ton of delegated sp (4000 steem) using money I had made from selling my property. At the time it cost me $1.60 each. After a ton of research I made a plan to use that delegated sp (160,000)sp to get my posts noticed and eventually get them seen by the folks that could start voting them with good votes. Of course without knowing any of these people at first it was apparent that I would have to do something to make ends meet until they did eventually notice me. So, the plan was to make up whatever difference I could with self upvotes. Little did I know there were people here running bots to strip rewards from people self upvoting. To me at the time it was merely a way to reduce losses while I waited to get noticed. Well, I began being hit kinda hard by these bots so I started searching to see why. What I figured out made it so I had to stop doing it and just let my delegated sp (that I had paid 4000 steem for) run out. By the time it did I had only gained back about 2200 of it. I was devastated. I was hurt, pissed, confused... I felt totally crushed, abused and taken advantage of.

During that time I decided to at least give out any extra voting power I had each night since it would be taken away if I upvoted myself. So I began surprising alliance members with sneaky votes toward the end of their posts. Big ones, like $20 each. I called them Sneaky Ninja Attacks. lol. Thus the sneaky ninja idea was born.

It was fun and rewarding to see people surprised at their payouts the next day lol. I regained a little stamina and confidence and decided to make The Sneaky Ninja a real thing. I started an account and started using the last of my money (2000 steem) and was only letting alliance members use it at first. I finally got someone to help me turn it into a bot but all in all it was just hemorrhaging money. I was losing a lot with it so I opened it up to the public. Then both of my accounts were hacked, likely by the guy that helped me set the bot up to begin with. I was robbed for I believe 400-500 steem/sbd between both accounts. Again I was crushed, defeated and beaten. Just when i had recovered from that theft I was actually hacked again this time for almost 800 sbd. It was then that I realized who had done it and how. By the time my delegation on that account had run out there was only 500 sp left. I had lost about 1500 sp.

Again I was crushed, devastated and just plain fucked up from these experiences.

I have sat in my apartment, with my son beside me wondering how I was supposed to make it here so many times... ready to give up.

Ready to throw in the towel and settle for a life that kills me to even think about and I had left behind because it was affecting my son in horrible ways as well.

I can remember taking over a month away from steemit, crypto, all of it. During that time I was depressed basically every day, sleeping a lot, drinking heavily, angry at the world and mostly at steemit and myself for believing in steemit to begin with. At this point I had lost a total of nearly $8000 USD, from my own pocket just here on steemit alone, not including the bad trades I had made because of how I was feeling and being out of focus. I saw no way out, I put everything into this and it was basically all gone. about 75% of what I had started my crypto jouney on had either been stolen, lost through dumb trades or wasted away due to bullies that enforced rules that were never made clear to me going in.

Why am I telling you all of this?

Because one thing helped me to get back on track more than anything else...

I don't think any of our members or even @enginewitty was fully aware of how bad it actually got. I did my best not to show it but it definitely read through.

Every day that I bothered to show up and login during that time I was greeted warmly by members. People saying genuinely nice things to me that did not even know what I was going through. Asking me when I was coming back, leaving comments on old posts telling me that they missed me and couldn't wait till i did. Many of our members have picked me up unknowingly many times, brushed me off and let me know that it will get better and that I must keep fighting.

Without The Alliance I would likely now be frequenting food banks and sleeping in my truck somewhere with my son. They gave me the strength and fortitude to continue. To push forward and solidify my presence here.

So, back to the reason for this post...

What does The Alliance mean to me?
...

Strength

Unity

Fellowship

Friendship

Courage

Togetherness

Family

Fortitude

An Extended Hand

A Thoughtful Word

Appreciation

Dedication

Humor

Fun

Love

Life

Warmth

Support

You never know, maybe it will mean something to you too.
@thealliance

Thanks for reading,
@michaeldavid
Master of @sneaky-ninja
and
proud member of: