There's a lot of advice I'd give my kids, but as far as the above statement is concerned, I would not encourage them to get into gaming or being a professional Youtuber or any of the online money-making stuff the younger generation is into these days.  Would I discourage gaming in general?  Hell no!  I spent a lot of time playing video games as a kid, but doing it professionally--even if it's lucrative--is a waste of your brainpower.  The world needs the younger generation to get into STEM fields and teaching and all of those other professions that actually benefit humanity in a significant way.

How much does anyone benefit from someone becoming a professional gamer/social media influencer/whatever other than the person whose career choice that is?  Answer: very little.  I see a lot of intelligence being squandered just watching Youtube videos about how people have dropped out of medical/vet/dentistry school to pursue a career as a Youtuber, and I find that utterly repulsive (and if I'm being honest, selfish).

Yes, there's a lot of money to be made by gaming or other online ventures, but money isn't everything and even those careers in gaming and related stuff aren't guaranteed to be there forever.

Mark my words: NFTs are a fad (or at least they're not going to be worth a hell of a lot in the future).  They're digital tulips that people are going out of their minds for, and once those people wake up and realize that a digital representation of art doesn't have the same value as physical art, the market is going to crash.  If you tell your kids to invest in NFTs, you're out of your mind.

990th most earned merit, and you've earned a total of 160 so far?  Holy crap, if that's true then that tells me that there really aren't that many members who are accumulating a lot of merits.  There are certainly a lot of merits being sent, but there are also tons of Jr. Member accounts with 1 merit and probably a lot of accounts with fewer than 100 that have gone inactive for various reasons.

If you're in the top 1000 merit earners with only (and I don't mean to belittle your merit earning) 160 merits, then I'd guess that most of the merits in existence belong to the profiles of a relatively small number of members.  Crazy, isn't it?

And I did take a look at BPIP, which I don't normally visit, and when I checked the list of top merit earners that does seem to be the case.

Eh, that would seriously depend on what country you live in.  1BTC in the US wouldn't level you up on any kind of ladder unless that ladder measures how nice of a car you drive, and even then at bitcoin's ATH that amount wouldn't exactly buy a Bentley or a Rolls.

As to the question OP is asking, I agree that "make it" is a term that's up for all sorts of interpretation.  Could it buy you a mansion at some point in the future?  Maybe, but again that depends on where you live and of course how much bitcoin's valuation goes up by.  I've learned never to underestimate how high it can go, as there were a few times that I thought it could never get to $10k, $25k, $50k...and it hit all of those prices.

Whether 0.1BTC is going to make you wealthy also depends on its continued popularity with investors.  It's true that there's not enough bitcoin such that everyone in the world can own 0.1, but so far it's been the case that most people don't own any at all.  If that changes, we could see bitcoin rocketing to the moon, but I think that's still a long way off, if it ever happens.

Hmm....the first part of the quote above doesn't jibe at all with the second one, does it?  Relying on religion for anything isn't exactly "thinking outside the box" or any kind of new method whatsoever.  Hopefully nobody fell for that crap; I expect no one did, as it was a retarded scam attempt that even the most gullible sucker would see through.

LOL.  I love it when you see someone completely writing things straight out of their ass in order to increase their post count.  Maybe he meant to write 2018, because that was right after the huge crash in December of 2017.  Who knows.

I just woke up and am too lazy right now to un-ignore the sections I usually do when I review post histories, but I just gave him some merits for a few of the posts I was able to view, most of which were older (but that's OK).  Later today, when I'm more awake, I'll probably take a look at his full post history again and see if I can help him out some more, because it does appear that he's a pretty decent contributing member whose posts I've obviously overlooked.

OK, well you did bring it up as well as lightlord's alleged health issues, which I have my doubts about (but to respect you and this thread, that's the last mention I'll make of the latter).  If you do, in fact, have evidence of Poker Player and naim027 being alts that you could present within minutes--as you said--why don't you just do that?  It's not a witch hunt, and it would explain what everyone here is spending time speculating about.

Saying something like "Oh, I could instantly prove so-and-so are alt accounts but I just don't have time for that" is just a backhanded slap in the face to whoever it is that's being accused.  It would be better to either not make a statement like that or show the evidence if you've got it.  Just saying.

Hmm.  Poker Player registered in 2020 and naim027 in 2017.  That doesn't mean the two accounts couldn't be alts, but in this case I find it unlikely based on writing style.  I know that could be faked, but I just have the feeling Poker Player didn't use an alt to make a quick reply to your post, lock the thread, and then merit his alt. 

I've been wrong before, but I think you're way off base on this one.

I'm not asking this in a challenging way, though it might look like it when you're reading it:  Do you know for a fact that lightlord truly has health issues?  I know that was what he claimed, but has that claim been substantiated?

Yep, that's true in real life and it's certainly true on this forum.  You can tell when someone is enjoying his/her power when they act like assholes when exercising it.  I've acted like that a number of times with respect to shitposters, which I used to tag prior to the merit system, but that was just my irritation coming to the surface and not me being a power-hungry DT sadist.  There have been a number of those in the past, though I won't name names.

I tend to agree with you that low-ranked accounts with no merits and a very recent registration date probably shouldn't be tagged simply because it's a waste of time.  On the other hand, if they didn't get tagged they might just keep getting used in perpetuity and in the process they might rank up.  So there's an argument for tagging those noob cheaters, though I don't know if I'd keep bothering with them.

Over the past couple of years I've seen a few new members arrive and start to make a name for themselves by being one of those "forum cops".  If I'm not mistaken, at least one of them turned out to be a cheater himself (but dammit, I forgot his username).  Anyway, that's one of the ways a new member can establish a reputation--whether it's intentional or not, it really doesn't matter as long as they're not looking to become trusted in order to pull off a scam of their own. 

Wanting to be recognized is part of being human, and if someone wants to achieve that by sniffing out bounty cheaters or scammers or whatever, I have no problem with that.

Yep, that lack of communication which would be so helpful to so many members seems to be a pattern with him, and there's nothing that would make me think that's going to change anytime soon.  And one of the reasons why him communicating would be so helpful is precisely because it would let people know whether they can stop advertising for his service(s) or not.  It isn't fair to keep campaign participants hanging like that.

I wouldn't change your feedback if I were you.  I changed mine once when I probably shouldn't have, but in lightlord's case, two strikes and he's out.

Well yeah, that's definitely what he should be doing, but that's not exactly going to help him rank up.

OP, you've been a member of the forum for about 2 months, and in that time you've made 159 posts, which is roughly 2.7 posts/day.  If you consider the fact that the vast majority of posts don't earn a single merit (even some really good ones), it shouldn't come as a surprise that you haven't earned any yourself. 

There are three factors I can see as far as earning merits and ranking up:
1) Make quality posts.  I can't stress the quality part enough, because a merit-worthy post has to stand out against all the other crap on this forum.  Related to that, quantity of words does not equate with post quality.

2) Post frequently enough such that your odds are better of having a post merited, because as I mentioned above, you aren't making that many posts and obviously they either aren't getting noticed or aren't good enough to earn merits.

3) Stay away from the spam-infested sections like Altcoin Discussion/Speculation, Bitcoin Discussion, and a few others.  At least don't keep your hopes up for earning merits if you post in those sections, because it's pretty much guaranteed whatever you write won't be read and will be buried under an avalanche of shitposts within seconds of you hitting the post button.

I haven't looked at your posts, but just from what you wrote here my guess is that you're just an average rank-seeking, bounty-hunting shitposter who's just here to earn money.  Am I way off base there or what?

You better believe there would be serious implications if all those truckers suddenly walked off the job.  Before this supply chain problem cropped up, I don't think many of us ever gave much thought to how important that supply chain really is--if any of us thought of it at all.  Truckers are an extremely important component of that chain, and they wouldn't be able to be replaced immediately.  Even if there was a week's delay in replacing all of them, I think we'd be in for some serious shit.

Highly doubtful unless the government suddenly relaxed the regulations on what it takes to drive an 18-wheeler across the country.  There are schools for truck drivers, did you know that?  And there's a special license truck drivers have to get in order to do their job, and in addition to that if replacement truck drivers had never done that job before, that lack of experience is going to show up as a bunch of mistakes and delays being made, and probably a lot of road fatalities too.

Even though I think the consequences of a walk-off would be dire, I admire those guys for standing up for themselves.  It seems like there aren't enough people doing that these days with respect to all of these COVID mandates.  And by the way, LET'S GO, BRANDON!!!

Yep, you got that right.  I wouldn't even consider the recent drop in price over the last day or so to be all that significant (probably because I've seen crazier swings before).

As far as the stock market being "down the drain" I'd say we've only got one day's worth of data on that.  Today was an ugly day in the market, but it's also the day after Thanksgiving and volume was pretty low if I'm not mistaken.  That new strain of COVID may or may not have been responsible for the drop.  I'm pretty sure it played a part, but I don't think it's the whole reason.

Speaking of variants, all I've heard is that this new one is more transmissible.  OK, so it can spread more efficiently, right?  But I've heard nothing about any increase in virulence, mortality rates, or anything that would suggest that it's going to kill more people than the previous strains.  And all the while I keep thinking to myself that this is a virus that most people recover from after a period of mild to moderate symptoms--and that the media and governments around the world just want this pandemic to keep going on and on.

I'm sick of having to wear a face mask to work and tired of vaccine mandates.  Just thought I'd add that in.

That's surprising, since your English is excellent.  I haven't merited many (or any) of your posts before, and that's probably because I have a lot of sections on ignore and if I'm not mistaken when I looked at your post history, you made a lot of posts in those sections.  And a lot of the merits I just gave out in the last few hours were in the altcoin section.  I noticed that there don't seem to be a lot of merit-givers around those parts, because there were some pretty good discussions going on but very few posts received merits.

I'll take a look at your post history after I finish writing this, because I think I ought to be able to give you at least a few merits right now (and I'm assuming you've made some merit-worthy posts since last time I looked).  And you don't have to thank me; it's my pleasure.

Also, to the two of you: Don't give me merits!!!  I know you're thanking me, but just pay those sMerits forward and help out someone who needs to rank up.  I appreciate the gesture though.

Edit: Ah, BITCOIN4X I just hit the 50 merit/month limit again with you.  I was able to give you a few, but I have no idea when I can give you more since it's some kind of rolling limit.

Wow, you registered at 10:05am and posted that just one minute later--I wonder if you're OP's shill alt account?

Come on, OP.  If your exchange is legitimate you'd be making a much bigger splash announcement than this, and you wouldn't be so blatant in your attempt to make it seem like you've got users already.  Big red flag right there.

Could be; I haven't exactly analyzed how they do business or what they do with their cash flow from operations.  I hadn't even looked at their summary on my brokerage account but just did and it looks like their earnings per share are -$45.46(!).  It certainly doesn't seem like they're making a profit from whatever it is that they do for their core business, does it?  That's assuming the data I just dropped is accurate, of course. 

And wow, for a company that has a negative P/E, they sure do have a crazy stock price.  Another interesting stat I just found out is that the short interest in MSTR is 20.28%, so there are a lot of people out there who are just waiting for that stock price to crash--and as much as I support Michael Saylor's dedication to bitcoin and wish him well, I have a feeling that that's exactly what the stock is going to do, crash.  Of course, I've been expecting the whole market to crash for a few years now and it just never seems to happen.

Well, when a company owns that much bitcoin and it's clear that they don't intend on selling any of it anytime soon, it's inevitable that investors are going to see it as a way to indirectly invest in bitcoin, similar to buying gold/silver/copper mining stocks if you want to get exposure to metals.  I don't see that as a bad thing.

Great list this week--I was just able to unload a whole bunch of merits and was actually relieved to do so.  This month I've kind of been slacking as far as my merit source job goes, because I haven't been doing as much reading or posting as I normally do.  Real life gets in the way some times, you know?

So from one merit source to another (if I'm not mistaken), I thank you again DdmrDdmr for giving me targets for the merit shooting.

Those two statements seem to be contradicting each other--if there's no way to stop these bounty buttholes from cheating because they can create an unlimited number of alt accounts, then there's not much these projects can do to stop the abuse aside from requiring KYC in order to participate, and I seriously doubt that's ever going to happen.

Actually, I think there were some bounties that required KYC before payout and didn't announce that fact beforehand, but those cases were the exception and not the rule.  In any case, I agree with you that it's just way too easy to cheat by enrolling multiple alts in the same bounty, because all you need is to be at Newbie rank--and that isn't exactly hard to attain.

Good job sniffing all of these alts, OP.  That must have taken a hell of a lot of time.

I've often written the same thing to newbies when they ask questions like this, but I've come to see it from their point of view as of late.  It might not be obvious to a new member which section to search in or if there's even been a discussion about what they want to know--so at least in this case, I don't fault OP for asking about DT and the use of signatures.

It isn't, but I thought most Hero-->Legendary members did put at least something in their signature space, even if it's not advertising.  Last time I saw threads with signatures enabled, it seemed like everyone--not just those two ranks--was in a sig campaign or at least had a message written in there.  If that isn't the case anymore, then I have no idea why that'd be true.  I have a feeling it isn't, though.  Not with all the bounties and campaigns still running.

And as far as the default trust system goes....I don't care to write much about that one.  OP would do well to check out those links provided by igehhh.  Things used to be a whole lot different a few years ago, and members even on DT2 were fairly well-known.  Nowadays I have no clue who's on DT1 or 2 and if I looked at the list I bet I wouldn't recognize 40% of the members.

You're not providing enough details about what threads you created, what exactly the content of those posts were, and which section(s) you posted them in.  How do you expect anyone to give you answers if you're just making a vague complaint?

And what "right topic place" would that be?  I'm not even sure where discussions about airdrops go these days, but I'm assuming they're appropriate for one of the altcoin boards.  And as Mbitr alluded to, if you included a referral link in any of your posts, that's grounds for deletion since it's against the rules.

If a post was deleted by a moderator and not the creator of a self-moderated thread then yes, you should have gotten a PM telling you that your post was deleted.  If you didn't, it's possible that a post you quoted got nuked, which would nuke yours as well (I'm pretty sure about that).  Did you have a whole thread (or multiple) get deleted?  If that's the case, I'm not sure if you get a PM about that or not.  It could have been considered spammy depending on what was written.  Do you happen to have a quote or something?

Dude, be happy with a 30% return because annual inflation is nowhere near that as far as I know, at least not yet.

And while stocks and other investments aren't included in the "basket of goods" that the government uses to measure inflation, you'd better believe the stock market's sky-high prices are indicative of too much money chasing too few investments, which is just another form of inflation.  And man, I don't know when this party is going to come to an end, but I've had this feeling for at least a couple of years now that we're overdue for a crash or a major correction--it just never seems to come, and I find that ominous.

If I were you, Poker Player, I'd be watching out for warning signs and getting prepared to sell some of your stocks before (or at least shortly after, before prices get really low) that crash comes, because it's coming.  It's just a matter of when, not if.