My other account @chaospoet and the early days of that incarnation

When I was in my very late teens and early 20s I was involved in some early college BBSes which were essentially forums before such a word was used on the internet. Web pages didn't exist yet, just FTP, Archie, Gopher, etc. We had forums/bbses on campus where we were anonymous other than a handle. A fun game that spun up from this was people on campus trying to put faces to the handle. Could we put a message in an email that would cause their terminal to beep a lot so we'd know who they were? For awhile that worked, until we learned how to turn off the beeps on the terminal. It became a goal.

When the BBS system that was there the day I showed up to campus as a freshman was taken down, I made another one and replaced it with a 20 topic set of what were like Forums. I was young and the first handle I used was Metal Master which was a handle I'd been using since I was a freshman or sophomore in High School so it wasn't something I put a lot of thought into. Also I was still very obviously a metal head, so it wasn't exactly the best name if I wanted to hide who I was. Eventually everyone knew who I was so I couldn't really get in on these games.

I had access to other accounts. I created three personas that I tried to make VERY different from the person I really am. I pushed things to extremes. One was called Bandaid and I treated that account like the always agreeable echo chamber that springs positivity and listens and tries to be helpful, but mostly doesn't actually do anything. I was inspired to make that account from the group called Hearing Aid in John Brunner's book Shockwave Rider. The second persona I called Techno Terrorist, and this was a decade before 9-11 so there was very little danger in using such labels back then. That was my opposite of Bandaid. That was my always the Devil's Advocate, Dark, Morbid account. I didn't Troll (we called it Flame back then) as I was not a fan of flamers, and I knew a few. The third was ChaosPoet and with this account I let my mind off its leash and just rambled off strange prose as it came to my mind. I found if I did it very fast I'd often surprise myself at some of the strange things I'd come up with. It was also quite fun.

No one ever identified who those three accounts were. I guess I was successful at being very much not like myself at all.

After a couple years of that I stopped doing it. For years I packed around print outs on green bar printer paper of some of the dialogs we had back then. Yet moving from apartment to apartment, city to city, over the years my wife finally asked why we kept hauling big boxes of paper around. I agreed and we tossed it. I actually wish I had that stuff now as I'd use the steem blockchain to reshare some of it and preserve it.

I didn't really mess with ChaosPoet for a very long time. Yet something about the wild and crazy environment that was Steemit in July and August started kicking open long forgotten dusty doors.

At first I wanted to make an account and play the old game of people not knowing who I was. Yet I'd sometimes make mistakes and have @ChaosPoet on one monitor and @dwinblood on the other and I'd respond on the ChaosPoet account with something other than poetry. Eventually I decided I'd still use that account that way with that kind of nostalgic/novelty approach, but I would not try to conceal that I am that same person. I don't sometimes recognize myself when I get in the ChaosPoet mode, I often find myself thinking "Where in the hell did that come from?"

I haven't written as much with ChaosPoet of late, but I know I will again. I need to be inspired. When I feel it, I do it. The more I do it, the more I am inspired. I actually stopped it because a lot of people started posting poetry and it was really good stuff, and had a lot of thought put into it and was not stuff made on the fly instantaneously like I tend to do in ChaosPoet mode. So I took a break. Yet that also sealed that door shut again, so I don't get inspired to kick it open as often. I am sure I will.

What inspired me to write this post? I read @thecryptofiend's post Would Greater Comment Voting Help The Community?.

It made me recall an @churdtzu post The Steemit Ponzi scheme discussion - some common questions many months ago where ChaosPoet was in the highest of form and the comments were flowing like water. It ended up being the single most profitable day I ever had on Steemit and it was all from comments.

Those three comments and me riffing with @najoh gave me $789.97 as the author payout. Now keep in mind the trending page had many $10,000+ payouts at the time I made that amount. These days that would be a lot lower, but that was still the single best day in terms of payout I've had on steemit. It was all from comments.

I had other successes with ChaosPoet in comments, but that back and forth flowed well and I consider it one of my crowning achievements.

Comments seem to be making a resurgence for rewards, and this is a good thing as it leads to engagement, and it gives opportunity with people who like to discuss and engage, but do not like to make their own posts.

This is a positive direction. Yet it made me think of those crazy spontaneous comments that were heavily rewarded many months ago.

Steem On!