Wow! This comment alone was sufficient to get me excited again. So thank you for that!
I know, the desire for instant gratification is more common than ever, and expressing oneself creatively has gotten far behind the superficial consumption, that is being epitomized by the bored scrolling through the shorter and shorter clips. Combine that with passing on the work to AI, and it becomes no surprise people on a large scale are getting discouraged to do anything at all. I'd say, this is just as dystopian as any potential war, economic crisis, or authoritarianism looming on the horizon...
The truth of the matter is, however, that it is precisely one's work that causes others to comment, which in turn causes those dopamine kicks we all long for. This post and its comments are a great example for this. And it works! Seeing three comments after the first hour has done its job to inspire me to post again, and I already have something in mind, hehehe!
So thanks again for your interactions, and I'm happy to follow you back. Let's go ahead and make Hive big and strong, and a vibrant place for authentic interaction, so once the aforementioned dystopia envelopes us in darkness, our blockchain may become a brighter light than ever!
np at all, gave it a reblog as posts outside of communities are hard to get views these days I feel like but I understand not everything may have a fitting community anyway so it's all good.
It's easy to complain about things, I know many do about Hive, prices and stuff, the general sentiment of the world has made many pessimistic which is understanding that it'll carry over to here too. We're also quite in the early stages of this platform and technology that it may not always attract the "normal" people that may use the space in a healthy way as they maybe restrict themselves to do on other socials. Not trying to offend the majority that are here now but it's no surprise that "earning" and "censorship resistance" may attract those primiarly focused on those two things rather than the general stack of everything else it offers people.
Take me as an example, I'm just a regular person with no real skills. Flunked out of university cause I didn't wanna learn german any longer, went into IT but got hooked on blockchain so dropped out and when I found out about this place after being a very active redditor I thought this is where I'm meant to be so I focused all the attention I had to do things here and more importantly to do them right, partly cause of immutability and everything being carved on stone forever but also cause I thought it'd be the next best/big thing so best to try your hardest and best to present yourself, even though I prefer to remain anonymous.
The opportunities and connections this place has granted me have been enormous. Sure I haven't always made the most out of it in terms of personal gain, the way the rules of the chain have changed and formed over the years have also created some form of opportunities to sway away from my conviction in remaining as genuine and dedicated as possible to seeing this through, but I've tried my best to keep at it and it has rewarded me not only financially but also with a sense of wanting to create things that'll last and have meaning.
In many ways, it has given me reasons to come back daily and have hope for the future even if "web2" hasn't and didn't even before I stumbled upon this technology. I thought to myself, do I really wanna become a teacher in german or a translator as those were the only two options at the time as I was studying the language I really liked. At the same time knowing that technology will surely replace translators in the near future and that teaching as great of a thing as it may be on a moral level, maybe wasn't going to be right for me after all those years having been at school to dive right into again.
Anyway, even though things look bleak now, I know that the world out there is still quite the same. Most of the projects and people you see entering this space aren't here for the true vision of the future Satoshi may have hoped for, most are just here to enrich themselves and walk away thinking they "won" over the others who remained holding bags. But every now and then we do find the people who stay because they like this place, irregardless of rewards or value and learn more about the way things work, what many here are aiming to build and how it'll help others in the future, maybe even different generations and they start seeing their presence and activity rewarded, even if many of them never sell or plan to sell the stake they earn. Over time we'll get more and more of those people until the switch occurs when even if we don't manage to get another theycallmedan millionaire to share the same vision as us and invest deeply, or some random rich gamblers off of memecoins wanting to settle down and aim for long term stability here, we'll eventually beat off the "selling" that may keep our project down and share the future inflation with people aiming for the same things as us. It's in a way coded into the blockchain with a reduced inflation over time and all we can do is try to find those likeminded people as many come and go.
I'm a bit weirdly philosophical lately and my English isn't my first language so apologize if it may come off as weird, haha. Just really passionate about Hive and things I'm trying to build here in hopes it'll make life for humanity better in the future. Where with AI and automation we can hopefully take the time to just be human and tend to human things and be rewarded for it rather than stressing and slaving away our life energy so someone else can buy another yacht and gamble with it.
Oh wow, so we are colleagues, sort of? Because that's what I do for money: teaching English and German as foreign languages. That wasn't my intended career plan, but things tend to work out in their own ways, right? What's your native language, by the way? Your English seems deceivingly native!
As for Hive (and crypto in general) I realize its GIGANTIC potential, which goes so much further than moon-shots and lambos. In fact, I'd say it's part of a well functioning free society, no matter that after a decade (more or less) it's still mostly misunderstood. This is partially the reason why I remain in this space. But I also realize the reason why it hasn't become the social transformer it could easily be. There are currently very strong interests out there that can't let it happen. So in the meantime, we'll keep going sideways, and publish more posts about art, and beer, and beaches, and stuff.
As for the money, I am actually really happy about every single HBD that is spent on cups of coffee and the like. Similarly, I am happy when people convert their daily earnings into Bolivares or Cuban Pesos to make ends meet. All of this only works in favor of stability for the blockchain, even if on the immediate term it means withdrawals and thus a decile of the coin's value. For people like me, who have the luxury to accumulate their Hive, staking it is the way. So it is to each their own.
Finally, I can only second your last paragraph: We are humans, so doing human things is what we should be rewarded for. Apply that to the largest scale, and there would be no point in having yachts, at least not for the purpose of status gambling.