There's a bunch of buzz bouncing off the boundaries of this brainy brotherhood (you sisters are my brothers too, but I didn't want to botch my alliteration), and again I'm confused. Of course, I'm easy to confuse. I'm in my mid forties, so some people think I'm too old, some think I"m too young, and the rest just want to reminisce about the 90's. I smoke weed, and drink more than I should. I don't sleep enough.
...but I didn't come here to talk about my faults, I wanted to talk about yours.
No, not your faults, personally. You're an example of perfection, like your heroes from days of yore. I meant you, as a community. There always seems to be a lot of talk in this community about how to grow, or save, or improve this community. It's confusing, because when most of you say community, you mean token price.
I see it happening again now, with all this vibe about the VYB. I see a lot of excitement about how it's just the thing the POB community needs, when it seems like people really mean that this new token will bump the price of the old one, and it will rain money on everyone.
Maybe I'm wrong about that. We've already established that I'm easily confused. What I'm sure I'm not confused about is that talk of the community increases with price movement. When the POB price goes up, everyone talks about how well 'the community' is doing, even though the feed fills up with a bunch of spam posters hoping to cash in quick. When the price goes down, everyone talks about how 'the community' is in decline, even though we FINALLY get to hear the worthwhile voices that we've actually attracted to the community.
If we want to grow the POB token price, then this VYB... spinoff?... sequel?... stunt?..., whatever we want to call it, it will probably help for a while. Everybody loves an airdrop, right?
If we want to grow the community, we just have to keep being a community. The people who come here because they think this is the best place for their voice will probably keep coming even if the POB price drops to zero. The people who post a link to a ScrewTube video and a dozen crypto addresses I can donate to (if I support their cause) will probably disappear.
Of course, it depends on what kind of community you want. If you want a community that mostly rewards talk about crypto speculation, and focuses mostly on their HE token price... well, we already have LeoFinance for that. POB could still do that, if that's what the community wants, I just think you should know that there is already some well entrenched competition.
I think Proof of Brain's most stunning achievement is that it still is a community at all. It's not easy to be a community with no niche. It's almost like trying a hard fork, but without actually forking it. By not declaring a topic, you're basically declaring the community open to anyone who feels that they have no other community. That's ballsy. I would expect an unintelligible disparity of thoughts, degrading to a shouting match that slowly faded away.
Obviously, that's not what happened at all.
Somehow, a group of folks with little more in common than thinking Proof of Brain was a catchy name and a desire to see something a little different in their feed managed to overcome culture barriers, differences of opinion, and good old human nature to create and maintain one of the most active communities on Hive. Even though a solid half of the people here care nothing at all for the content, only the fiat they can trade for the tokens.
Forget about the POB token price. Natural Medicine has a full, active, engaged community, and their LOTUS token is worth less than pennies. People go there to share common ideas, to learn and grow their knowledge. They have little spam, because there's no value to it. Very little quality content 'falls between the cracks' there, because people are constantly looking at that feed.
Proof of Brain is a community where people come to share uncommon ideas. It's a land of revolutionaries, and dissenters. I know there's a good share of get-rich-quick folks here as well, just cashing in on excitement and opportunity. If we want to court more of those people, we can keep doing that. I won't even argue against it, if we all just agree to be a bit more honest about it.
Just say it's about our wallets, not that it's for the community.
I'm not against chasing profits, I just prefer to see it done honestly. Lure people with a straight promise of a rising token value, not a community for alternative voices.
Of course, this is just my alternative voice. I know it's not usually a particularly popular voice, but that's why I came to this community. People came here to argue their unpopular opinions, and despite being immediately muted by a flat-earther and a boot-licker, I felt right at home.
This is my unsafe space. Fill it with junk posting gamblers if you want, just drop the charade. That kind of deceit is an early step toward pacification.