Nostr is a potentially neat architecture for when you don’t need a global state and there is no temptation to try and achieve one vis a vis crawling and indexing. (But you do need some of the other stuff, like the individually signed JSON events and the multiple dumb relays.) That’s what I would call Honest Nostr.

The Nostr that tries to sneak in a global state (i.e. by having UI elements that only really make sense in light of one) without being willing to pay the price for said global state is what I would call Sneaky Nostr.

The Town square use case is Sneaky Nostr through and through, because it results in an large number of UI elements that are essentially lies of omission. It also rewards indexing, and therefore creates a temptation to index, which means a perpetual wild west standoff between opposing principles.

So what would an Honest Nostr use case be? I really don't know. Maybe there is one. Maybe there isn't. I wouldn't be surprised if there is one, the world is full of esoteric cases in search of quick-to-tweak existing architectures. But it wouldn't be the advertised use case, that's for sure, it'd be something a little out of left field.