Communities Within Community

Anyone who knows me would not be surprised to know one thing I believe strongly in is the importance of community. It’s a concept that seems almost counterintuitive coming from a person who is very much an introvert. From a person who manages to cope with not leaving home for days, weeks, months, even years on end.

I’ve often wondered over the last couple of years if that would be true without the presence of the online community? Even though I don’t socialize with people in my offline community, I do with people online. In multiple communities.

In many ways we’re one huge community, broken into smaller more focused communities of people. This thought has come to mind often as discussions about Justin Sun and the Steem community situation which prompted the creation of the Hive community. The feature film currently being worked on by @filmmaking4hive has prompted the discussions.

We talk a lot about the role the huge Steem premine played in the conflict following the sale of Steemit Inc and the stake to Justin Sun. The conflict really wasn’t about the premine as much as how the use and potential misuse of that stake would impact the community. Sun’s actions showed he cared little for the community around Steem. His real concern was doing what he wanted to with the chain and the stake.

Even before communities were coded into the chain, there were many communities formed around topics and shared interests. Most of them came together in Discord and were reflected in the content they created on the blockchain.

There were groups for writers, foodies, travelers, photographers, coders, weed, music, comedy, faith, no faith, language based, country based. You name it and someone had a group for it. There were groups for projects like curation projects seeking out new and promising writers on the chain. Our diversity was our strength. If you wanted to write, you did, if you wanted to do video, or audio content there was space for you.

As host of Pimp Your Post Thursday, which was then in The Ramble discord, I had the privilege of being neutral ground. People showed up who aligned themselves with different communities. They shared, chatted and got to know each other. Discussions were held on a range of topics. We learned from each other.

Steem wasn’t kumbaya all the time. It was rarely so, there was always drama happening in some corner of the chain. Arguments, disagreements, tiffs, sides taken and wars fought. Sounds just like the offline world eh?

When Sun showed up, attention turned toward what he was going to do. No where was the coming together of multiple smaller communities into the larger community of Steem more obvious than the daily townhalls. Two to three hundred people gathered in voice chat to hear the latest developments, discuss and debate what was going on.

Sun could own stake, he could own the sock puppets, but, he couldn’t own the community. You can’t own community. It has to be nurtured and cared about to be a community. It’s the people who are the community. Without the people caring and dedicated to growth, community dies.

That is why Hive thrives. The community owns it, cares for it and nurtures its growth. Within the greater community of Hive, there dwells many communities. Some thrive and some languish but they remain part of the whole heart. That is why it is all about community.

NOTES:

1. This is day 19 of 30 in the #HiveBloPoMo Challenge for April.
2. Original header images from Pixabay.com -- reworked by author.

Shadowspub is a writer from Ontario, Canada. She writes on a variety of subjects as she pursues her passion for learning. She also writes on other platforms and enjoys creating books you use like journals, notebooks, coloring books etc.

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