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I've read a couple of posts this week, whose authors gave some great examples of what **"Reputation"** really is, and if it should be taken seriously or not. So, from my point of view, it should be taken seriously and I'll explain the reasons why.

When a new steem account is given to you, your _reputation_ is **25.** So we all have the same starting point. What people need to understand is that reputation is linked to our wallets. What that mean is that the more **rewards** you have, the faster your reputation goes up. Especially in the beginning it is really easy to reach up to 50. All it takes is a few good posts, some decent rewards and Boom! You reach 50 almost in no time.

But it is also a number that can be gamed. How? By sending Steem / SBD to promotion services such as bots in return for big upvotes. What the algorithm "see" is that an account with millions of SP casted a huge vote on your post. Therefor you have big rewards. Hence your reputation goes up really fast. Now if you've paid hundreds of Steem / SBD's and by the time the post pays out you are on loss is a different story. This is exactly how it works.

And just because it can be gamed easily, at least up to a certain point, some people used their creativity and claimed a lot more **"Byteballs"** almost a year ago, in one of the biggest airdrops ever happened. On a side note its price back then was like 150$....

The rules were pretty simple:

- Is your reputation between 25 - 29? You can claim **X** tokens.

- Is your reputation between 30 - 39? You can claim **2X** tokens.

- Is your reputation between 40 - 49? You can claim **3X** tokens.

- Is your reputation between 50 - 59? You can claim **4X** tokens.

- Is your reputation between 60 - 69? You can claim **5X** tokens.

- Is your reputation 70+ ? You can claim **6X** tokens.

So guess what. They created dozens of accounts, made a couple of posts on each one of them, bidbotted those posts really high and as a result they reached reputation 50 effortlessly....Unfortunately there were no free downvotes back then and nobody was giving a shit...That way thousands if not millions of tokens ended up being in the wrong hands...

Now the real reason I made this post wasn't to tell you about this story. This is probably known to everyone who has been around over the last 15 months. So yesterday in an attempt to find new authors to follow or even newcomers that might need a sort of guidance after visiting the **new** and the **introduceyourself** sections...I had [a mini rant](https://steemit.com/newsteem/@mindtrap/do-you-remember-those-days-when-everyone-was-complaining-that-curation-isn-t-even-a-thing-anymore). Things look..._bad over there..._

So I said to myself. _Today you'll keep searching. You'll also keep reading posts from people you already follow and you'll check the commentators. There is no way you can't find 5 worthy blogs to follow..._ And so I did...kept searching for the past 2 hours.

### And what does reputation have to do with that ffs?

Oh, it does. You see I stumbled upon a few people whose reputation score was 70+. Being a 70+ simply mean that either you are among the very first people who joined this place (trust me I am stuck on 69 for months) or that you used to be / still are a bot abuser. Period. So I digged deeper. You see, blockchain never lies and thank God it's transparent. 

Apparently they were not bot abusers. What that means is that their score reached that high because of their organic rewards. Some of them had pretty good blogs too. But unfortunately _for them,_ they also had...empty wallets. From where I stand it's unthinkable a 70+ account to have an empty wallet and keep being active. And by empty I mean, they are holding something between 500 - 1000 SP. 

Long story short, they had powered down everything. The funny thing is that they still have massive support which is kinda odd....And this is why, at least for me, reputation should still be taken seriously.

It feels like they have no reasons to "build" anything along with the rest of us here. Especially now, where Steem is sitting at the range of 0.16$. This is definitely the kind of people that I won't support or follow.

But that's just me....

Your Steem...your choice...

I am not suggesting that people should stay "vested" till the end of times. But Steem needs us now...more than ever, and by killing the price for a few pennies won't make things better.

Food for thought..

Cheers!