As she sat there sipping on the first coffee the morning, she finally felt free.
A weight had been lifted off her - a weight that she'd never been aware of - not until it had evaporated away...
She’d left the day before, when, after four years, she suddenly realized that the place she was living in was nothing but a corrupt cesspit of small minded people with ego's that would find trouble squeezing into an Olympic sized swimming pool.
They's called it The Steem House originally, but over a year ago they’d changed the name to The Hive House.
Nothing had changed, only the name - and possibly some of the dictators, to some degree or other.
Due to the lack of transparency of the whole setup, (which was designed that way) no one ever really knew who was in charge of what.
.....When she’d first arrived there all those years ago, she was told she could speak her truth, make some money while speaking them, and be part of something new and fresh. A community.
An ecosystem of freedom.
A new Paradigm for a new age.
‘Ha!‘, she laughed ‘Yeah... right’.....
It wasn’t a 'new ecosystem' at all, it was nothing more than a highly centralized organization, just pretending to care about freedom and decentralization.
They called it DPoS.
It had something to do with how much of the hive property was owned by each individual who lived there.
That was the promise, but never the reality.
The trolls used to break into her room every night and destroy her work - things that she'd spent hours researching and putting together. And they'd steal her property.
There was no one to complain to or any way to redress wrongs..
There was no 'complaints department' - or rather, not one that wasn't run by, or the friends of, the pathetic trolls.
Their jealously was disgusting.
They had nothing to offer except toxicity.
She often thought that she must have lived in the heads of many of them - and wondered if they secretly masturbated over her in the darkness, in the early hours...
As time went on, rather than seeing responsible and mature governance , the groundbreaking route to a new world, she began to see the details of the real things goings on, behind the scenes.
The governance of the Hive House was left to the so called witnesses.
‘Witnesses to what?’, She mused.
They certainly didn’t choose to witness the flagrant bullying that went on, day in and day out, directed at anyone that didn't bend the knee to 'the Hive House mantra's'.
....Either that or they just turned a blind eye to it all because they were part of – or they just simply didn’t care.
She'd always had problem with people in positions of authority, and them not caring.
After all, that's the no.1 reason why the world's in such a mess right now, is it not?
....And when those in 'positions of power' do not care about the role of 'stewardship with integrity', everything falls to pieces.
...And if those very people - in a position of responsibility - play a part in the victimization of people speaking their truths – they are complicit - even if it's only by their absence of action.
‘DPoS?’, She thought, ‘ Dictatorial Pieces of Shit, more like.’
She traced through all the notes that she’d been keeping of the relationships in the Hive House, connections that kept the system trundling along in the same old fashioned way...
There was no difference, that she could see anyways, between 'the old way of oligarchy'- A few powerful people supported by the ass licking sycophants to support a decaying structure - and the so called 'New Hive Paradigm'.
None at all.
The same corruption, the same nepotism, the same, slow , decay...
It made for some very interesting reading.
It showed the people who espouse freedom, talking morality, and 'loving the community', while at the same time actually partaking in, and being supportive of, the very bullies that trolled through the halls of The Hive house.
These trolls - doing the bidding of their masters, would enter uninvited into other peoples rooms and trash their work.
Work that could have taken diligent students, ten hours or even more , to make.
Trashed at the push of button.
These trolls didn't care about merit, only exacting their spite.
They didn't care if many other people in the Hive House liked their chosen victims' work - They had the backing of the DPoS system - and they liked playing god.
She called them 'Team Evil Left'....
...Being very much of a logic and facts kinda girl, she enjoyed working out the connections of these people who were nothing more than ' greedy pretenders'.
The kind of people who would happily sell their own grandmothers out if they could make a quick profit from it...
With her coffee tasting nicer than she’d remembered in a long time, she started to look down the list of those who not only defended the system of dictatorship, but who actively supported it…
She read the list off to herself, placing faces to account names, thinking of just how she was going to protect others from what, as she now saw, as an evil construct.
She was aware that they were actively advertising for new people to join the ecosystem, or 'recruiting for the cult of Hive' as she now thought of it.
She really didn’t want to see other people being misled.
She started to giggle, looking down at the names on the list.
‘Tarzan’ was the funniest of them all.
He had more than one nickname, even his so called friends used them - but never to his face.
'Tarzan', 'The Poison Dwarf', 'Little Himmler', 'Mr Gray'... and many others ...
She was sure that he wasn't aware of what his 'friends' were saying behind his back.
She was pretty sure that he wasn’t aware of all the ridicule and laughter at his expense.
She was pretty sure that his eggshell ego wouldn’t be able to stand it.
She’d first met Tarzan early on in the days when she joined the Hive cult, and she fell for his charms, just like everyone else.
It only took a short while for her to see through the image that he loved to project and to see the real face behind the perpetually smiling mask – and it wasn’t a pretty site.
What he sold as wisdom, was ignorance, what he sold a principles was expediency, and what he sold as morals was observable, out and out hypocrisy.
‘Why do you call him Tarzan ?’, She’d once asked a guy called Sheppy, (back in the day when she was finding her feet)...
Sheppy was a very cool guy who was leaving The Hive Commune.
(‘Why hadn’t the alarm bells gone off then, at that point?’ , She thought to herself).
She saw a lot of people that she liked - fun people, with integrity and intelligence - packing their bags and leaving almost on daily basis.
Sheppy started laughing....
“ If you can tell me anyone, one single person, that is the direct diametric opposite of the real Tarzan, you know, the movie Tarzan, then please tell me - ‘cos I’ve never seen one”
…He looked at me and smiled wryly.
She thought about what he's just said, picturing him. And she couldn't help but giggle.
Sheppy was right.
The 'movie Tarzan' was a big man in every way possible. Strong, virtuousness, moral, courageous… Just...big.
A 'real man' in all the best ways that she could think of.
The 'Hive Tarzan' was nothing of those things.
Small, sneaky, sycophantic to authority, defender of authority, and cowardly.
Yup, Sheppy was right – no wonder everyone called him Tarzan.
The irony was beyond hilarious.
....She continued tracing her fingers down the list, seeing the connections, the support, and it made for some very ugly reading….
She wondered if it was a good idea to let the other members know about what was going on?
She thought about all those good friends that were still there, not knowing if she was ever going to see them again...
There was 'Fart', he was a blast.
The there was 'Angryperson' who was anything but angry - unless prompted.
She thought about 'builder of sandcastles', who was totally nuts.
She remembered the chats that she'd had with 'Scuffle axe', and how much she'd shown her.
...and many, many, more.
Clever, funny, and interesting people...
And then she thought about 'the annex'...
It wasn't the first one, but it was the newest.
The first one was called ' Lets Endorse Ordinary' (Leo).
It started off really well, but the banality of crypto talk caused it to become less and less popular.
Whether that was due to the users turning into skeletons from boredom - and thus no longer being able to type - or not, was the topic of many a whispered conversation away from The Hive cult enforcers.
Now there was new place for people to hang out...
...An extension had been built off the Hive main building, an annex called the Place of Brains (PoB), and while it was promoted as something different, (and hopefully is so), she had a creeping, niggling, doubt about it.
The thing was, it was still connected the Hive building, and all the talking in the world couldn't change that fact.
The power for the PoB annex's 'lights to be on', ultimately, came from Hive.
She thought that the PoB building had a totally different feel to it compared to that the old, oppressive Hive building, but was it... really?
At the end of the day, she was sure the DPoS ‘ers would (could) ‘pull the plug’ of the PoB annex - if it was not conducive to their ambitions.
And from what she saw, they had very dark ambitions.
Control, bullying, and playing god…Very dark ambitions indeed.
....Which led her to a question, as she sat there sipping on her coffee and taking in the fantastic views.
How was she going to warn other people about the dark shenanigans , and evil behaviors that went on daily, in 'The Cult' ?
She smiled to herself, at the memory of walking into the building all those years ago, “Code is Law’ emblazoned proudly over the doorway.
‘Code is law’, the credo of a dictatorial regime – one where it’s the dictatorship itself that decide's what the law actually is.
‘Why didn’t they just write MIGHT IS RIGHT over the doorway, and have done with it?’, She thought to herself, but she already knew the answer to that...that would have been far too honest for a cult steeped in subterfuge , malicious behaviors, and playing god...
Snapping out of her thoughts, she put pen to paper....And started writing...But not before sipping on her coffee.
It was the best tasting coffee that she'd drunk in four years...
If it walks like a DPoS, and acts like a DPoS - It's a DPoS...
