It's raining again

I think I should go to bed because I am pretty broken and my daughter seems to be getting ill which means, up again most likely before the alarm wakes me. Her cough isn't sounding to great. I was going to write the lessons from GoT but I think I will do it tomorrow night and give it a better effort than a half-assed post. I generally go full-ass on a post so I don't want to let myself slip.

By the way, this image is from my sink. I thought it would be interesting.

This is what I was shooting , some of which I posted the other night.

Interesting things are everywhere if you care to spend a little time to discover them. There is a lot of boring as well. My life is pretty boring of late and has been this way for what feels a very long time. It is not that nothing has happened as there has been a great deal but, it isn't the kind of thing that is built for social media, built to be consumed.

I haven't been on Facebook for ages because, I just haven't had any reason to for years. I used to use it all of the time to post photos and even engage with people but, the comments got like Instagram and the posts in my feed were shares or attempts to personal brand in various ways. The "friends" I have there are much less so once one takes away the interaction of the various forms of likes. Giving me a hart on an Instagram image isn't akin to maintaining a friendship.

Today, I was talking with my boss about the challenges in raising children these days as the advice we can offer from our own experience leaves out some of the 'critical' points in theirs. The pressure to conform is increasing across the masses and "life curation" is a necessary feature. While it has always played a role in society, the integration of digital media and the move away from in depth conversation has meant that while people have more social connections, they have less intimacy, less meaningful relationships.

This in my opinion is creating gaping holes in human experience and it is putting pressures on us in ways that haven't happened before. We know that lonely people are often unhappy and depressed yet, we are fashioning last swathes of our communities into disconnection and encouraging and incentivizing them to move away from who they are to benefit from becoming what the crowd wants them to be.

Tonight, @llfarms moved her account to a more personal @justineh, and @apshamilton commented that he felt like a nerd for using his real name to signup to Steem but is glad he did now. This is something that I believe is going to continually happen especially on the blockchains as people are going to want to secure their own little bit of personal digital real estate. Not only that, they want themselves to be known:

"The average person is more interested in their own name than in all the other names in the world put together." - Dale Carnegie

That is a quote from how to win friends and influence people and was written some hundred years ago. Carnegie would have been a master of social media - and if we paid more attention to the world, we would realize that we are being influenced (manipulated) to make friends with versions of people, not people themselves. Through the design and algorithms we are nudged into identifying a person's digital social persona as the person themselves and then, through the stories weaved make assumptions that we know who they are. I am glad I me both @justineh and @apshamilton at SteemFest in Poland last year, as well as many others because, they became real.

People these days crave connection and even the young are starting to mimic the old and lonely retired and single who hold up store lines as they seek for attention from the person behind the counter. Of course, the digital counter has take the place of the real so now, there isn't even skin contact. It doesn't stop the attention seeking behavior though.

I have always used my name on Steem because I never really felt the need to hide away and, I don't want people to connect with a persona, I want them to connect with me, the person behind the content. Yes, I don't put everything on chain, I write fiction and poetry that is not about me too but, there is me in there, there is me sitting behind the screen typing each night and I think that having a name to connect it to helps people better understand the content itself. It is not that they have to agree of course but, having humans interat with humans is a natural process.

Have you noticed that we use "human interaction" because on Steem we have a lot of bots? That isn't just on Steem though is it and technically, the bots are human interactions via proxy anyway. It is quite incredible that one of the core features of our species, communication, is being lost by our attempt to communicate better. It seems though that we have classed volume of communication as better rather than quality or clarity of communication. But, this is the consumption model we are nudged into.

Monetized platforms that rely on ad revenue aren't interested in quality or clarity of communication, they are looking to push ads through feeds and into eye-lines to increase return. This means that there is no need for depth of information and the faster people scroll (and stop at particular points) the better as this means more eyes on and, time on site can increase. The consumer walks away feeling like they have got a lot when in actual fact, there is very little of value at all. Instead, it is all polarizing and severely limited depth that encourages argument and outrage by people who haven't understood the problem well enough to be so outraged.

Personally, I like dealing with humans, not content produced by humans and this is why I believe that the person behind the account is more valuable than what the account posts. While I reward the random posts because of what it is, I reward most of the people because of who they are. People who write good and under-rewarded posts might be "outraged" by my behavior but, that is the problem right there. In this world, it is the quality of relationship formed that drives purchasing behavior, whether it is with a person or a brand, and those who are unable to develop relationships that compel me to read and vote, don't get me to read r vote - most probably.

As I have said, it isn't the job of curators to chase content unless they choose to do so but, if one wants to earn on their own content, it is the job of the creator to chase the curators. I don't mean in dropping DMs and links begging for votes, I mean building the relationships with the audience that the audience values. Remember, the internet crowd is a fickle bunch for the most part.

I really should stop writing so much because I don't think people are able to come close to actually reading it but, this is the way my thoughts come out so, that is the way they are written down. You might not like to read so much but, I don't have to worry about personal branding myself because, I don't care about such stuff. It is a kind of take it or leave it position and, many leave it. I notice my follower count go down almost as often as it goes up - I am okay with that. I would rather have people engage who appreciate the effort than those who are here looking for votes alone.

It would be nice to not to have to write so much though because it take me a great deal of time o get it all out but then, why do it half-assed? Well, that depends on who you are doesn't it, with many of those who are targeting only for the income not looking to express themselves fully in the moment but instead, maximize their time invested with the return of reward. In my opinion, those that tend to do this are pretty easy to see and in the long run, do not develop a great deal of lasting relationships. I wonder if they are the same in the real world and if their circle and depth of friendships reflect that.

Anyway, back to my boring life.
Work, sleep, don't sleep - repeat.

Taraz
[ a Steem original ]