Perhaps what we are really looking at here is that we have the people who only care about the numbers on one side, and the people who have more of an "emotional investment" in community building and social connections on the other.

To be honest? I think it's cool as heck that we get to have this odd "savings account" attached to our blogs... but I don't really see it (directly) as "money."

THAT SAID, my personal "objective" here is to have fun and build connections, while my global objective is to do whatever small thing I can to help the community thrive in the long run.

I still want to be here, doing this, 2, 5, 10 years from now... just like there is a measure of "comfort" in knowing that I haven't had to deal with "migrating" from Facebook since 2006... even though I don't particularly like Facebook.

But let's talk about promoting posts.

I would absolutely be 100% in favor of promoting posts that "announce" something, for example. Let's say you wrote a post announcing the #minnowASAP initiative as a sitewide invitation to action, and promoted it. 100% justified! Just like new apps being announced, or major updates being announced, or major "airdrops" being announced.

In those cases, there is an actually message to be spread, and the purpose is to put it in front of as many people as possible. Totally fair!

Now is you wrote that you washed your socks last night and promote that to the top of trending, that's when it just looks like self-involved greed to me.

=^..^=