Pointing at the Irrelevant

The family weekend together has been nice, where for three days we have been relaxing with good food and warm weather - some might even say "too warm" and complain, but I don't mind as it is only for a few weeks of the year, if that. The house is a a little toasty however and it is a little uncomfortable to fall asleep, but I have to say that since getting the CPAP machine, I have felt more "alert" during the days, though I am still going to bed very late - as weekend or not, there are still work things to do.

Work mostly being hobby related.

Hive is a hobby, right?

Splinterlands? Trading? Farming?

What isn't a hobby?

I think it has been quite interesting over the last five plus years, as I have both found a new hobby (writing) and monetized it. More than that though, it has led me down a hundred rabbit holes that have ended up creating other hobbies and, making some pretty decent friends along the way. I find it quite interesting that just like a group of friends who play some football together on the weekend, I have a group of friends who are all into crypto, playing around in all kinds of Web 3 activities.

But, one of the interesting things is that globally, this isn't uncommon, but it is uncommon that people are actually able to monetize their activity, as we do here. Not many games out there allow a person to manage their game assets and earn an income from them, even though the games themselves are turning over hundreds of millions in revenue. At some point, people are going to wake up and say "my time and attention are valuable" - aren't they?

Hasn't happened yet.

But it will...

One of the reasons is that people are feeling less relevant in the world today, meaning that more and more are feeling disconnected and disenfranchised from daily life. And, this has been amplified by the digital loop, where people are spending increasing amounts of time on digital media, but not actually building lasting relationships. Instead, everything is transaction based, where unless there is an immediate return on investment (including in interpersonal relationships) the relationship is left to die.

This makes relationships disposable, but because we are social animals, we don't want to stay irrelevant, so we look for ways to build attention for ourselves, one way or another. We see some of the extremes here on Hive where there are some very poor actors behaving terribly, because they are still playing out the idea that "any publicity is good publicity", without looking at the results of the attention they receive.

They can still possibly get some drama attention in the short-term, but it will die off very fast as people get bored with the constant attention-seeking behavior and the ramping drama machine, until they just ignore it all. The irony is that as far as I have seen on Hive, without exception, the attention seekers lose attention in the longrun. They were looking for relevance and ultimately, made themselves irrelevant.

I think that this is going to be increasingly common in Web 3 circles though, as people will be looking for attention, but focus on the reward as their indicator. What they will find is that drama doesn't pay for the most part, which means that while they might generate activity for a short period of time, they will burn relationship bridges that would have been their support.

For example, the accounts that support the drama makers on Hive, ultimately have very little stake (not all of course), which means that they can't support with financial reward. What people don't seem to recognize is, it is very easy to support verbally when you have no skin in the game and remain relatively anonymous.

Talk is cheap.

But, this is the thing with attention - while it can be valuable, it doesn't mean it is valuable for the person who receives it, especially in this day and age, where cancel culture exists. In many instances, people are getting "unwanted" attention and regretting it, which throws a bit of a spanner in the works for those who want to monetize, but don't have any skills other than generating drama. At the end of the day, drama doesn't give a fincanical ROI for most people.

It is going to be an interesting digital landscape over the next half decade, as more people move into the digital economy to earn on their activity, whilst feeling less connected to people in general and trying to get attention at any cost. If you have a look at a lot of the mainstream media articles that they take from social interactions, they are nearly always drama related in some way and as earnings start appearing on the table, it is going to spiral even further, much like the ramping up of terrorist activities in order to get media attention.

Yet, while I am confident that the mainstream media will focus their attention on these people, the ones who will consistently earn will be those who build their income streams around their hobbies and skillsets, as they will attract an interested audience who get something out of what they provide - and be willing to pay for it.

I think that when Web 3 will be at its strongest, won't be when there are global stars who take 99% of the attention and money, it will be when normal people make themselves relevant, to a supportive and engaged audience who appreciate them for who they are and what they deliver. These people will build their hobbies into income streams alongside their professional activities and in time, fall down many rabbit holes that expand their portfolio also, which will allow them to become more relevant in other people's lives too.

It will be tens of thousands of communities, tens of millions of creators, all building their own little group of people who are relevant in each other's lives - no matter where they might live in the world. Which I think would be pretty cool.

It isn't about making ourselves relevant at any cost, it is about offering people what is relevant enough to them, that they are willing to pay. This is a supply and demand market after all.

Taraz [ Gen1: Hive ]