Ulog 28: Passion

Today, I logged into the Vietnamese Steemit Discord Channel and man, was I surprised. While I don’t want to get into the details of the issues, I find the argument for and the counter arguments highly stimulating and well laid out for many of the points discussed. You can easily get persuaded one way or another. I thought it was best not to get involved since I don’t know the full story. From my perspective though, I truly appreciate the passion of the accusers, defendants, and participants.

The internet is still fairly anonymous. People create their own persona when they’re online in a forum, website, or social media site. If you don’t want to deal with someone anoying, it’s fairly easy to tune them out in the internet. Not so much in real life. Yet, what I have seen discussed indicate that the members are passionate about the issues, care about its members, and want the best course of action moving forward. That speaks volume to the type of communities that Steemit has built around the world. I am sure many other communities beside the @TeamVN have that kind of passion and truly care about what they’re doing as a group.

When I first joined Steemit, it was by accident that I found the Vietnamese Steemit Community. I entered a contest and thought it was meant for something else. In any case, I joined this community and found its membership consisting with mostly Vietnamese in Vietnam. There were some members from countries such as Australia and UAE and I even managed to find someone who work in the same company as I do (hey @trang). It was a shift from my early years on the Internet where Vietnamese membership consists mostly of the diaspora community and rarely do you have any Vietnamese from Vietnam.

Secondarily, most of the members are about a generation younger than I am save for the founder and an admin. So at first it seems odd to be on the internet and have to think of my role as a senior. But that is how life is. You have to play with the cards you’re dealt.

Mistakes are often made. On the internet, that mistake can take many turns. If the people you’re dealing with don’t know your true identity, you can always create a new username and start over again in that community. On the other hand, the internet never forgets. The mistakes that you made will haunt you again and again at every turn. You re-live it until the end of time. At least with my wife, Even though she like to rehash my old mistakes, she will only tend to remember at most the last three. On the internet, they are there for the enemies to sucker punch you just because they can. Good luck to the kids who grew up with the internet and posting instantly. Tellthem and teach them for being accountable for what they write. It just isn’t going to happen. Perspective starts to come in after experience. And by that time plenty of mistakes has occurred. Is it fair to judge them for something that they did at a time when they didn’t know any better?

So in conclusion, I really appreciate the great discussions that are occurring in every corner of steemit. They’re stimulating and the issues are as real as the ones in my real life. As in real life, the people who make the better cohesive argument and who can articulate their position better will likely come out on top. It’s probably not fair. But that is how life works.

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