Woahhh, so yeah, @selfhelp4trolls posted here celebrating 6 years on Hive!
I knew we joined at roughly the same time so I had to double check and would you know it, my own 6th anniversary was 2 days apart! So here is my commemorative blog, something I never did in the past but selfhelp's thoughts provoked me into contemplating my own.
How has Hive influenced my life? It turns out the more I think about it, the more unfolds. As I continue writing, it just keeps coming. Crazy. So here's an attempt and distilling it down into a 6-year summary:
History
I can barely remember how or why I joined. I was never into crypto really. But after my sister showed me this place, Steemit at the time, I found myself captured.
I soon joined steemit.chat which is where... a lot of shit went down. But I also found a whole bunch of really valuable people. Philosophically and quite literally.
@acidyo for example has always been an incredible support of my content, as probably 80% of people on the entire platform would also say, and I also found myself feeding my nerdy obsession with science by joining @SteemSTEM, now @stemsocial where we curate STEM-based content.
This was run by a few people such as @suesa, who I believe is living life in Ireland these days doing a PhD or something, and of course the founder, @lemouth, and for a while @trumpman and @ruth-girl. There were also... less desirable people of the team, such as anarchyhasnogods, a super-woke transgender anarchist of a sort who flipped out about pretty much everything and spit at capitalism somewhat ironically, and his arch nemesis who was a co-founder with lemouth (brain fart means I forgot his username. It began with J) who was very high friction in general. Quite the drama.
Ultimately they left, and it was down to lemouth and I, the two stable individuals to continue the project to this day along with @gentleshaid, @mathowl, @eniolw (the true champion), @iamphysical, and occasionally @carloserp-2000 - with also a spattering of @dexterdev, @cyprianj and @scienceblocks.
Although I never managed to do any of the meetups cuz I'm stuck in China, STEMsocial did in fact meet up numerous times in awesome places such as the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland, and lemouth even went to HiveFest.
So right off the bat, from the first few months, this ecosystem was really transformative for me. I had this long-term side hustle of a sort helping and supporting people around the world. with a long term series of friends I'd never meet. That's pretty rad.
Steemit.Chat brought me so many more interesting characters.
There was @berniesanders, the absolute Chaos of a whale who divided opinions about as much as the other Bernie Sanders. There was the ultimate scammer and spammer, Bilal Haider, a Pakistani guy who made constant threats, hacks, and really disgusting but kinda amusing, and surely blasphemous, diatribes against various women. He went quiet conveniently after I started adding all his friends on Facebook. Which I am still friends with, interestingly.
Everyone was interesting there, because it was so global, but for the most part it seems 99% are gone. You get used to that around here.
Boom - Bust
At one point, the price of Steem and SBD went crazy, something like SBD hitting 14 or $18 I forget. It was a golden era for me particularly because @blocktrades decided to follow me of all people, and I received quite a lot of atomic upvotes making my posts absurdly visible each time.
This was the single time I took money out (I told @selfhelp4trolls I never did but then I remembered this one occasion I blanked out) which helped me to finance a year off from work, something I regretted deeply, but had to learn the hard way.
Not having a job or a direction in life is just... pretty awful. It was a complete wasted year of my life and I hold Steem personally responsible! I didn't really learn anything about myself or improve myself. I felt no drive to accomplish anything, or get a qualification. I just kinda wallowed in my own depression for a solid year.
Jeeze, the more you look at it, the more cripplingly bizarre it gets
Well, now I know. Never again. Perhaps this was when I truly became an adult. Perhaps I should be grateful for that - I no longer dream of a utopian society where I get to do nothing until I die.
Then of course, from boom to bust, Justin Sun came along. I'm sure anyone reading this knows all about that stuff, so naturally I quit out and transferred over to Hive, and the rest is as it is.
My writing
I have written a lot. Unlike most people, I always enjoyed writing. I attempted a wordpress blog before Steemit, something that never got a single view, so it was another one of my passions I never really had a proper outlet for. Hive/Steem changed that.
I liked to write in series. I always have more to say than can fit in 1,000 words. So I made a lot.
One or two of them I will, one day, find time to expand them into illustrated books.
- One book-worthy series is about evolution. It's an overdone steak at this point but I think my approach was pretty unique from the perspective of a pleb like me, going step by step from the origin of life down the specific tree branches to humans, discovering what I would along the way.
- Another series was about absurd celestial objects, from hypothetical doughnut-shaped planets, to legit 7-star solar systems.
I also wrote a 'crazy evolution' series which dived into, well, crazy evolution. I liked to go a bit beyond the kind of pop-science viral media stuff which to me resulted in way more interesting stuff.
I also wrote a mini sci-fi novel
A lengthy series on debunking Chinese Traditional Medicine which really trained my skills of research and critical analysis of research papers, and genuinely helped me understand the world of science and its inherent flaws.
I did a history of music series
A second, still ongoing musical theory series I dabble in every few months here
A 'what I learnt this week' series
- A travel series in which I spin the google globe and stop at a random point, take a look on street view or whatever I can, and write out everything I can learn about the place. No matter how dull, I would strive to make it interesting.
There were several others, but you get the idea.
What keeps me here
I suppose one thing that keeps me here are that 1% who have stuck around as familiar faces, even if we're not exactly zoom calling each other every day. @gtg is my personal secret hero, and all the other witnesses are fascinating personalities - much of them pretty abrasive, but nobody voted them in to be a fake politician.
Another thing is just the occasional reminder that this ecosystem is still being developed quite substantially. You'll occasionally come across posts by blocktrades, gtg or others just showing how much work they've been doing behind the scenes. It's all over my head but evident that there's a lot more to come.
I'm not somebody who expects or hopes for this place to explode. I don't like the idea of the platform becoming big. When it becomes big, it becomes scammy, botty and beggar-y. Drama will come that will toy with your account's value like a yoyo on a spring. Coups and division will ensue, greed will dominate.
If it pleases y'all, just let me enjoy my little community! I like it.
I also still believe in the dream that is @stemsocial. It can coast for as long as it needs to as far as I'm concerned; we are still helping people every day, and one day things will come together and make a bit more of a footprint on the planet, or maybe just the blockchain lol.
It's my home away from home. I've invited personal friends and family on, and none of them stayed, so it's like my private little island where I get to live a separate personality, a little more free than the one I've crafted over a lifetime of peer pressure, job expectations and social contracts. I'm still me here, very much so. But a little bit more... curated
So yeah, I have written a lot, changed a lot, learned a lot. I've written Hive on my resume before, and most importantly it's been a creative outlet I would otherwise not have. Thank the heavens I never had to resort to medium.
I often wonder whether all this writing will come back to either vilify or vindicate me when I'm old. Will the total sum adequately describe who I am, or will it be more an abstract painting of somebody I wanted people to see? Perhaps a blend of both? Will the content I wrote 6 years ago stand as an accurate representation of who I am 30 years from now, or simply who I was over a brief period, and does my writing explain in any way how I became who I will be, as I lie in my death bed, desperately trying to pretend like I'm not afraid of the end. If this blockchain is still out there, will it be a comfort in those last moments, knowing that my words are still out there, even if nobody cares an iota to read any of it?
What if I become famous, will I be cancelled for my views over the years after somebody digs this account up? Maybe I've not said anything too controversial by todays standards, but who knows 10 years from now? Perhaps the word years will become taboo and hyper offensive.
Clearly, I have no intention of leaving any time soon.
So here's to another 6 years!
Left: Me. Right: all the abandoned autovotes
Quite an emotional beginning and an ending full of nostalgia, I really feel that I missed a good bottle to celebrate while reading.
Damn 6 years is easy to say but the absence of that 99% contemporary with you being gone says a lot about your perseverance and encouragement to be here.
Meeting and working with cool people is exciting, stalking badasses maybe can be enjoyable, but joining a (nerd) community and fighting for it to the point of being one of the cornerstones is admirable (even reminded me of a certain nerd movie I can't remember the title of).
I am not as old and active as I would like to be after reading your article, however after reading it I have received a lot more desire to be active, I also liked the small community perspective, projects that tend to rise disproportionately tend to die out in a relatively short time.
I could go on adding lines but this is a comment not a post! In any case, I'm glad to be here to read your unique anniversary statement after 6 years of learning and experiences. Happy anniversary, may there be many more to come!!!!!!
Glad to hear you enjoyed the read so much! I don't think you need to envy being on here slightly longer than you though haha... you will soon be able to say the same and have an equivalent journey, if you haven't already in a shorter time. There was a fairly big period where I was pretty inactive until fairly recently.
But yeah even when I stopped writing I never felt like it 'ended'. Just couldn't be bothered at the time cause life got in the way. Still feel there's no reason to 'quit'.
Open a bottle, celebrate and keep up the community writing!
Welcome to the 6 year club, I was getting tired of waiting for you :-P
Hope you are out of the depression, I know how THAT is.
Speaking of development behind the scenes, what are they doing? Most of it goes over my head.
And as for your Hive legacy, I'm really looking forward for GPT5 or whatever which can analyze all my posts and all the other posts on the blockchain and our interactions and analyze which posts may have had the biggest impact on people. Damn....strange world we are entering.
That AI image of dude in bed is amazing hahah
Happy Birthday!
Yeah I mean, I can never tell and never admitted to any such thing but in hindsight it sure looked a lot like depression. Nowadays, no chance:
Literally don't know. I take the effort to physically read the words in front of me and string them into sentences in my brain, but the 'meaning' part slips by. You can try and read Btrades updates, which all I got from it is something about a wallet he found on the floor.
Tbh at this point I just assume GPT5 already arrived and assimilated us into its matrix software and we're just not aware of it. But yeah I definitely would like some massive set of statistics on what I've done, if nothing else but to demonstrate how much time I've wasted hah.
That's a photo of me.
Happy aniversary! Didn't know about all your series and writings that even include a sci-fi novel. It reminds me of Octavia Butler, one of ChatGPT/Bing's favorite. I need to find some time off to read one of her novels.
Thanks for the shout-out. I've been around at #stemsocial for a while, too, first as an author in #stem-espanol and occasionally in English, then as a mentor, then as a co-writer of the distilled and now as a curator. I should follow your steps and celebrate my anniversary some day.
You've really done it all haha. I'd really like to see some of those old initiatives back, but I guess the platform on the whole is smaller than it used to be, no demand for things such as mentors.
But, still room for regrowth I reckon!
That was probably my least interesting one tbh. I found my evolution and pseudoscience series easily the most fun to do, digging up obscure papers and trying to understand the lingo, spotting the biases and uncovering underappreciated facts about natural history. Not sure how much others cared but oh well lol
Has it really been that long? Man...
Yea, I'm still alive more or less in Ireland, 1.5 years left on that PhD. Maybe I'll be more active again after, but until then... We'll see
Lol I 117% didn't expect a reply from you haha - long time no see! Jeeze, PhD's are slow. Though I heard Ireland is the richest place on earth these days so that's nice, take your time in that context!
@ginabot doing her best!
Ireland is expensive and great if you're in IT. For PhD students it's not great! But alas, gotta get through.
Embrace the PhD Grind, as they say XD
@mobbs @suesa Hi :) I think we will see a new era of great activities again. <3 I am going to start getting active slowly. Mobbs: I just read your post. Let us hope that our community will do a magic. Let us bring the "utopia" back. Seusa: good luck with your PHD.
Post-graduate studies take so much effort. They change you as a human. Good luck sticking at it.
I guess a "happy Hive birthday" is in order :)
I still hope to have time to come back... But my life is just getting more and more hectic :/
You've been getting busier for like 2 years - at some point you're going to collapse in on yourself and become a singularity XD
A mouthole... :D
Congratulations :D
I just finished the 5th one.. Let there be many more !
and a 75 rep to go with it! Nice!
... indeed :D
Been quite active since I get back from a intense writing period !
Have a good day ✌️
Happy 6th year anniversary to you. It's been quite a journey and an experience. I will also be 6 years on this platform come November this year. Hopefully, I will have enough inspiration to put up a writing such as this.
Hurry up! You're lagging behind the rest of us old timers XD
Hey, at least a dozen Nigerians got a house or two thanks to you back in the good old days, for writing shitty wiki articles and pretending to care about science
Don't forget the Indonesians
Hahaha. One was even hitting on my wife online and then got marriedn with some chick and stopped. Fun times 😂😂😂
Hahaha that I didn't know. Congrats to him
seriously? LOL
Yes
No Indians or Bangladeshis? +_+
I don't remember having problems with them! Actually is there even a significant Indian audience? I haven't seen much in my circles. Maybe a good audience to tap into XD
Scammers and spammers I meant. no conflicts
Again I don't remember much of that in Stemsocial?
That one specific province in Indonesia, Aceh, was a plague. I dunno what happened but somebody brought it in and it was just blog after blog on like 'how to cut wood into a rectangle' or 'how to paint a bucket', followed by countless beggars demanding votes for their ability to describe their day job lol
It was steem days that HIVE days I guess. I remember less stuff about HIVE days. There were of bangla / Indonesia / Nigeria/ and India + latin America stuff, which is quite understandable. Venezualen people who used to ask for help was common too
6 years? Wow congrats! Happy six years in hive. You've been through a lot and you're still here still growing and more letters, and words to write.
Yeahhh, now have I evolved 6 years worth of life in the same time? Not sure...
Happy Hive anniversary! It is so cool that you have been aorund that long and made it through all the issues. From the whale wars to the big split from Steem. Here is to more years to come 🍻
Yeah I enjoyed being a fly on the wall the whole time, watching egos bash while I used my masterful ability to not care to fully enjoy it all haha
Haha, sometimes being a fly on the wall is the best and only option in those circumstances.
I'll be joining you in the six year club soon.
Bruh, your profile suggests you already passed that date - but either way, high five for sticking it through to now!
I CAN'T READ OR COUNT
Congratulations @mobbs! You received a personal badge!
You can view your badges on your board and compare yourself to others in the Ranking
Check out our last posts:
Support the HiveBuzz project. Vote for our proposal!
Indeed it's really been a journey. How time flies...
It's interesting to see how things have evolved. Amidst the tides, a lot have refused to quit. The moment you think people are not watching, boom, you get a shocker. The addiction of hive for me. Just tag them and you see the resurrection, lol.
Happy anniversary 🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉
We hope to celebrate another decade of existence here on hive. 4 more years to come.
Yeah right?? Suesa randomly dropped by. And A mere mention, not even a tag, of berniesanders brought him back briefly a few weeks ago. Creepily impressive...
Yeah assuming it still exists, I'll be here, hope everyone else will be here long enough to become jaded a-holes too =D
Dude, 6 years is so exciting! I just completed 1 year and I feel like I belong to Hive. The things you mentioned are very interesting. Let's see what I will share here in 5 years.
1 year with 73 rep! Crazy you must have been prolific. Or maybe I'm just slower than I thought heh. See you there, I reckon!
Actually, I couldn't reach 73, but after the earthquake in Turkey, my posts reached many people on Hive. See you there 👋
oh wow right! Hope you and your loved ones are surviving ok! That was unthinkable...
Yeah we are surviving, thanks for asking but we lost thousands of citizens
Happy Anniversary # 6 may there be many more.
Thanks!
Congratulations @mobbs! Your post has been a top performer on the Hive blockchain and you have been rewarded with this rare badge
You can view your badges on your board and compare yourself to others in the Ranking
If you no longer want to receive notifications, reply to this comment with the word
STOPCheck out our last posts:
Support the HiveBuzz project. Vote for our proposal!
Felicitaciones!
Gracias por deleitarnos con tan magnífica publicación, la cual fue valorada por @Womentribe una comunidad para destacar el valioso potencial del ser humano.
Únete a nuestro canal de Discord
Anímate a usar nuestra etiqueta #womentribe
*Sigue nuestras cuentas:
@Womentribe
suscribete aquí @colmena-139925
twitter
Instagram
Happy Hive-sary! I did celebrate my first anniversay here a week ago. Cheers! 🥳 I hope we thrive together with this platform in the years to come.
A year is a bigger milestone than 6! Congrats =D
Thanks. Happy Hive-sary to us! 🎉🤗🍻
Uff! it is easy to say but there is a long trajectory, not only the time but also all the effort invested... Congratulations!
Nice to get to know you even better ( after our recent convos in the #deepshit discord )
by learning about your journey.
I am a month and a half behind, so I might share a similar post about my 6 years on here, at the end of June :<)
If you ever finish and publish one of your books, let me know. As a fellow writer ( and not just a blogger ), I am genuinely interested.
See you around!
🦖 hug,
Hypersensitivosaurus
Cool, hurry up then! Remind me when you post it, i'm particularly bad at following my feed. Only recently trying to push myself to engage more. But I'm the kinda person that can take days or weeks to reply to phone messages so...
@mobbs
Time is an inexorable measure that we must take into account, not by looking at the clock, but in every action of our lives, and even though we measure it in years, it is nothing for the history of time. I wish you a long stay on this platform so that you continue to contribute the best of yourself.
Sincerely, Giovanni Marín
Lovely words thanks!
That being said, I'm saving the best of myself for private =D