Struggling to reconcile my love of Nostr with my long and loudly-proclaimed "all social media is cancer" stance. Not sure I can summon the sophistry to square this circle and I might have to admit that I'm wrong about something.
Discussion
Loving it now is one thing
Yeah, screenshot that one - I may end up eating those words.
I find this 'conundrum' and/or rumination resonant, as I too have largely abstained from social media for the better part of the last decade and more.... -- I've peripherally observed the decline of exchange and in the quality of thought and content. It feels, that the stage has been so unfortunately and set, and our populace primed to blindly accept things that ..... staggeringly, and obviously absurd and/or wrong. -- I had early on adopted a personal policy of a sort of 'Damnatio memoriae' with respect to those ideas and the individuals who perpetuate them - which is to say, to not share in the public hue and cry...and the ...creation of occasion and argument for engagement...and the sowing of fertile soil for broad and damaging 'troll-ery.' --- In this time and general context, and with the global consequence of macro happenstance and advancement...I think...it has become imperative to engage in dialogue -- the experiment of drowning out the obvious idiots with silence bears no fruit when so many would suffer fools .... Which is to say, I feel that Nostr provides potentially the tools and context to engage in fruitful and productive engagement, and gradually foster and favor signal over noise. -- Or so, I hope.
Poignant thoughts for a Monday morn. It really is up to those of us who want to engage in dialogue to do just that and not sit back as the lowest common denominator spreads like a mould. Many of the early discussions on nostr in December and January were, aside from the bitcoin/tech topics, very engaging and there were some great ideas being shared about exactly this potential. It is of note that a number of those users did share their fear that as nostr inevitably grew, much of the "deeper" flow of knowledge exchange might get drowned out. Many of those accounts have been inactive for a few months now! Hopefully in an open protocol any type of user can be accommodated as we have a chance to make sure the swimming pool is big enough for those who want to play with beach balls, swim lengths or just float on a li lo.
Do you have any thoughts about the incentives existent on nostr at present. To be honest I'm often thinking about what the outcome of "public zapping" has been. I daily still tip people anonymously for posts I appreciate and only in the last month or so gave in to also publically zapping. I will be accused of not understanding value for value but I'm not sure if that is entirely what is going on. Would value any other thoughts on that as it seems, like others in this thread, I'm also a non social media character. I bailed on most that happened online in the late 1990s, so having never used facebook, twitter, insta etc it's hard for me to get a sense of what users, who have lived in those platforms, are bringing into nostr.
I was horrified by zapping when I first joined Nostr. Watching people openly solicit engagement by promising free sats seemed like the absolute nadir of social media. At the time I commented that it would make whores of everyone. I still worry that it encourages people to regurgitate popular opinions but I think it has useful applications for writers, musicians and all those other applications for Nostr that aren't just a microblogging platform.
As you suggested in your first comment, the culture is everything and we need to stand up for that as more people join. However, I suspect the future lies more with private relays where people can foster the culture they want rather than the town square model which will always be something of a cesspool.
Exactly........"However, I suspect the future lies more with private relays where people can foster the culture they want rather than the town square model which will always be something of a cesspool."
To be honest, I suspect it's about the people involved at the moment. There's a lot I like about Nostr but I don't see that it's currently doing any different which would mitigate the perverse incentives which poison regular social media. That said, there seem to be good people involved on the development side of things right now so I have more faith in the future of Nostr than other alt-tech platforms.
There are a lot of Bitcoin people here dreaming big but personally I hope Nostr stays small for as long as possible.
That is one thing we talked about in January. There was an idea that nostr would somehow be able to accommodate smaller groups that would be somewhat separated from the big pool of nostr general. I remember #[4] being involved in discussions and having some ideas about this. I'm hoping to see him back on nostr as his dev skills and experience are valuable. I recall thoughts that maybe clients based on certain interests or even relays based on certain interests would start to pop up. There were, to be fair, quite a few who predicted that as nostr grew it would just end up like other social media and they were pessimistic about it's ability to maintain the values that have made it so engaging. As time goes on I do see it as the responsibility of individuals to contribute to what we want to see happening and I don't see the inevitability of a large nostr as being a detriment if we are able to perhaps establish smaller groups built on the nostr protocol.
I am hopeful in as much as the basic design of the protocol, separating ID from client from database, has a lot of flexibility built into it. It'll never be just one thing like the old social media model - there will be a Nostr to suit everyone's needs.
That's very much what we hopefully will see. I suspect many might not be fully aware of that idea that, as a protocol, nostr is a communication infrastructure into which we can interact on our own terms. The monetary incentive for certain clients to want to grow into the next big platform and then dominate the on ramps into the protocol do seem worth being cognisant of, which is why seeing some smaller clients being able to attract users is crucial. Again I'll drop #[4] into the conversation in the hope it might pull him away from his other work to share his thoughts with us.