Linking The Real World Human Behavior With Steemit's Steemians (Sndbox Summer Camp Quest - Task 1)

This term Sndbox Summer Camp Quest is interesting with the topic circles around philosophy, psychology, and sociology. I would like to share my personal view and see whether I could earn a place in the next @sndbox cohort too :) Great appreciation to @guyfawkes4-20, @anomadsoul, and @sndbox for providing such great opportunity for the little guy to share some thoughts and have a chance to win some perks!

Here is the link to the announcement for the quest and here are the rules for the quest.

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I would like to relate the topic of newbie onboarding, retention rate and also the basic understanding of the social structure of Steemit with real life experience which is moving into a new city.

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1. Newbie onboarding = A young and wild guy like me, moving into a new city to search for opportunity

2. Retention rate = A good city could provide good accessibility to different resources, from our daily basic necessity to personal development opportunities.

3. The social structure of Steemit = People in Steemit are just the same in the real world, there is the classification in terms of financial status, reputation and interest group.

Isn’t this sound familiar to you as all of these phenomena are something we see around us and why not we use this perspective to understand more about the platform we are in. I do believe that blockchain is just a technology that enables more productive social and business activities to be done, yet all of these are run by humans. With that being said, these are all the natural process that we will go through and the behaviors that we tend to bring along with us.

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Philosophy, psychology, and sociology are always my favourites whenever I read.

• Through philosophy, we can understand the macro view of the whole structure of knowledge.
• By studying and understanding psychology, I could become a more matured and wise guy.
• In sociology, I could see how people interact with each other, on a macro scale.

All of these are applicable on my professional practice as a graduate architect as well as tools for me to deal with future business challenges.

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So here's my story for the challenge.

I had joined Steemit for nearly 250 days, just like me settling down in the heart of Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur, everything is new to me. Adapting to a new environment in real life is somehow similar to the virtual world. In my real life, I have to deal with the accommodation, accessibility to food and other daily items, entertainment, and most importantly, the opportunity. On Steemit, I have to set up my own account (home), create contents and interact with others (to get ‘food’ which is attention and support), new source of knowledge (understanding more about blockchain, crypto is kinda like entertainment to me) and of course, opportunity to improve my value in order to give more back to the community (personal development opportunity, as there are just so many people out there that are doing great and they are all my learning model).

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Who are the newbies?

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There are different kinds of newbies with a different background in Steemit. Similar with real life, in a city, there are different kind of person (young blood) flowing in and wanting to realize their dream, earning big bucks. On Steemit, I believe people who join are people with some understanding of the potential of the platform, the opportunity to earn big bucks and realize our dream. One important thing everyone should know that we all started as a newbie (plankton), even for the Whales out there! So there is ABSOLUTELY nothing wrong to be a newbie.

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How do we adapt?

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Talking about adaptation, humans are pretty good at this since we had outlived so many species and stayed alive until now. When we come to a new environment, we will seek help from your friends, your colleagues, or even the community you are in. However, there is no obligation for others to help you if they do not have the time and intention as we need to respect everyone’s time. Everyone has their commitment and bills to pay. In Steemit, it is just the same. We started with a reputation of 25 and start looking around and asking silly questions. We may not get the answer that we want and it may take more time than expected to go through the process.

I do find that some people love to spam messages to different accounts just to get attention. In real life, spamming around is just like going to a party and saying the same thing to all the people around. I am sure most of the people will just smile back or greet back as a courtesy. There will never be any in-depth interaction.

The right way to do it is by asking the real question that you need answers and want to get it solve. In that way, people might help you by sharing their experience and give some tips. Psychological speaking, seeking help from a person is a sign of showing modesty and willingness to learn. This makes others feel accomplished by helping you too. It is definitely a mutual way to interact.
When we get a clearer view of how things work, it means we already started to adapt. This is one way to go.

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How long can we hold on?

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When we adopted, we will start to expect more from the platform or the city. Unfortunately, we should not have this kind of mindset, as we are not entitled to anything. The reward comes when we work our ass off and create real value for the community. Thus, when we are minuscule, we need patience. So, how can we hold on to that without getting some tempting reward that we see others are getting?

We can always try to participate with different contests like this one (organized by @sndbox, @sndbox-alpha) and contribution under @utopian-io, this will give you reward that a usual post can hardly gain for a plankton, minnow and even dolphin. This could sustain our motivation by creating different moments of excitement.

I would like to link this to game addiction. Why some of the games are so addictive and have so high retention rate? This is because the game is able to create moments of excitement and keep you high on dopamine. The game achieves this by creating different stage and achievement for the players to go through. The difficulty to acquire the rewards was engineered and it will not happen in real life or in Steemit! In the recent game like Battleground, gamers can achieve a ‘climax’ within seconds by killing of other players. Yet, in real life and Steemit, we cannot consistently have this kind of ‘climax’. There are ground works that need to be done before we can achieve something and some may take years to get it done.

So, how long can we hold is about how well we understand the overall process and how good we set our milestone to keep ourselves motivated with rewards for fragmented achievement. Perhaps, for a newbie (plankton and minnow), we can use this as a way to stay motivated.

While for the retention rate mentioned, it is not a real issue but a reflection of the platform is not gamify well enough for people to stick on. There will be a need for manual touches like how @ocd and @sndbox approach the issue of retention.

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Circle Jerking – is it a way to survive for such an enormous ecosystem?

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Yes, it could be, in the real world like some elite clubs, businesses are made inside the circle and unlikely to open up for others. As I mentioned earlier, we are a species that live by groupings of similar social status, financial status, interest or mindset. When one of the component clicks, there will be a certain level of trust and people will then share resources among the group. In the business world, it is the same for all the big corporates and startups. All of the founders, directors, employees are in a team because they share similar vision and interest and strive to gain something from the process of achieving the vision.

“Circle-jerking” in Steemit is something similar to the real world’s elite club. The benefit is exclusively available for the members only. There is another form of “circle-jerking”, one that is more positive like @curie, @ocd, @steemitbloggers, and @sndbox itself. In this module, it runs like a company or startup and benefits could be distributed to any participants (employee). Personally, I have no judgment on “circle-jerking” as this is the true reflection of how the reality works. Thus, no matter how hard the “authority” does to inhibit such action, it will still exist and people with that status and eligibility will join without the need to enclose.

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The journey is kinda similar on real life and Steemit.

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In my opinion, joining Steemit’s ecosystem is just like blending in a new community or city. In order to thrive, I will need to go through a lot of training, try and error, networking, and finally, to be able to contribute valuable activities for the community. There are a lot of hidden costs in terms of money, energy and time in this. I have to pay for my professional training, get myself up to date with the newest knowledge and technology. I have to try and error on some business idea I have, it doesn’t guarantee my success. I need to make new friends and get to know people that I admire so that I could learn from them. Finally, when everything connects, I could create value for the community. While on this platform, it is almost similar. We train ourselves through continuous writing, scripting, designing, and doing what we aim to exhibit to the audience. We try different strategies to make our contribution known and getting more support and attention. We network with a different group of people through Discord, Telegram, Wechat, and even on commenting. When everything comes into place, there is a high probability that we can make an impact on the platform.

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Fear not and Steem On!

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To all the newbies out there, hope my perspective could help to ease the anxiousness of yours to achieve something on the platform. As the saying goes, patience is a virtue. We need patience and do the hard work to lay the foundation before we can achieve something. I believe that the whales had been laying a lot of insanely hard work beforehand to be there in the first place. Let's not judge others and take action to make a difference.

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One more thing, slightly out of the topic

The sharing above is my personal take on the topic and it is based on my personal experience and understanding so far on the system. I am working on a community named #archisteem and created an account for it, @archisteem. Putting people together is hard by itself. I need to be the role model for the community and the system itself needs to create enough value for others to join. As of now, I am personally upvoting those who use the tag (mostly 100%).

Personally, I do feel that without attractive perks, there is no reason for people to involve in the community and contribute. Thus, rather than dreaming and seeking others help, I myself take on the hard role of working a consistent flow of quality post for #archisteem. Frankly, this may seem stupid and inefficient. Yet, I believe that solid hard work is the foundation of a good brand. Let's see how it goes :)

A newbie sharing on his dream to create a community.

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Animation By @zord189

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Find me at @kimzwarch