On the Importance of "Being Bothered"
What is the cutoff point at which you can no longer "be bothered" to do something, or participate in something?
What are your criteria?
In this case, I am considering those things we do in the very long term, whether it's investing, pursuing a hobby, friendships or something else... it can lean towards the personal or more global.
We had visitors for the Thanksgiving holiday and I actually got to talking with one of our visitors about Crypto, and even about Hive and my sporadic efforts at blogging.
This person allowed as how she didn't think she could "be bothered" to create and post content to a community like Hive.
I found it interesting and amusing, especially against the backdrop of knowing that this person can be bothered to quite frequently share content to places like Facebook and Instagram, where she gets nothing at all for her efforts.
Which made me think about this strange way in which humans place a completely different emphasis on what we might call "ego rewards," as opposed to financial rewards.
Many people will jump at the chance of doing something if there's even the slightest chance that their peers might notice and say "Wow, what you did there was amazing!" even if there's no monetary reward, at all.
But if you offer someone $1, $5... maybe even $20 for the exact same thing, suddenly the evaluation of value to that person becomes quite different!
Although this would be a topic for a completely different post, it does make me wonder if we could use these sort of juxtaposed comparisons to determine the "price" of any given person's ego?
But I digress!
Personally, I find it worthwhile to continue dabbling in blogging and engaging on Hive after several years, even though my account is worth little more than $265 + about $80 on Hive-Engine, as a result of aforesaid dabbling.
In the greater context of life, that's not much! But the rewards — on the scale I manage to scrape a few of them together — may well be financial, but I'm not really here for the money.
These tiny amounts I find that I can be bothered with are about the challenge of it, more than the actual value in dollars and cents. Although — at the purely functional level — I am often dealing with a few cents (or even fractions of cents) I find it "worthwhile" to dabble... perhaps offering evidence that the whole idea of "gamification" really does work!
And so, I find that I can "be bothered" for reasons that are neither entirely financial, nor entirely psychological.
But because I can be bothered, I tell myself that I am building something that is worthwhile, at least to me. Even though it is very unlikely that I will ever "cash out" — except maybe my HBD savings to help pay for a new computer — I like the idea of feeling like I am creating a small "savings balance."
It all seems strangely symbolic and hypothetical, if you think about it!
Regardless, I plan to keep on "bothering" and building. Because if you don't bother it is a certain way to end up with nothing at all!
Till the next one... I hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving. Feel free to leave a comment — this IS "social" media, after all!
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(5% @commentrewarder bonuses activated for this post!)
Hive can become an addictive game. My dad is addicted to Duolingo. It's not a bad thing until you ask him a question while is is trying to gain XP. At the end of the game he gets XP and gems, but those tokens are useless. You can't trade them for anything. All you can do is keep playing the game. At least on Hive I was able to cash in the HBD and pay for my son's braces. One day he will have straight teeth and have Hive to thank for it.
That's pretty cool that you were able to pay for your son's braces!
I'm quietly "saving up" with an eye towards replacing my aging (desktop) computer, one of these years... and I feel fully aligned with the idea that it might take three years, and it might end up only being a "subsidy" towards the final price... but yes, it does have value!
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Like the choice of this word "aligned"
I started in 2017 with nothing. At first I put in a lot of stress and tried to follow what everyone was doing. Later I learned to just use it for myself. Anyway over time I found some spare change. It was my first to change to fiat and literally cash out. We changed HBD to Bitcoin and then sold the Bitcoin. I wish we had held the Bitcoin until after the election, we could have cashed out more, but we needed it then.
Computers might be a waste of money, but if you need it then you need it.
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I often muse over how people spend so much energy on many negative engagements on FB and Istagram and love to post all their business to the world and get nothing in return. I agree with you, it is mystifying. I have been on here since steemit launched or 8 years now since the split. I love the Hive community and so enjoy the uplifting atmosphere of all the wonderful friends I have made over the years.
Everyone is so supportive of one another in so many ways that does not happen on other social platforms. It is too bad they are missing out on such a great world-wide community. Hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving with your feline babies.
And you point precisely to why I chose to become part of Hive... sick to death of rude people on other social media, and people here seemed a lot more engaging and respectful, even when they disagreed with something.
Hoping your Thanksgiving was a good one, as well!
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Yes, I agree totally with you. I love the Hive community so much and haven't engaged in any other socials in a few years now.
I had been posting much the same content on FB but they were blocking people seeing my posts because they thought I was a Business. Someone told me about Steemit and I decided to change over. The only difference is people can't comment unless they have a HIVE account. But I have a lot of people who read the post each day that don't have an account.
The bonus was I do earn something and it's slowly built over nearly 7 years. If it ever goes skyhigh like it did a few years back, it will truly be worth something. But that's not why I post...
I post as a sort of diary or memory because mine is ripened by Lyme disease. Each post is first written in a word.doc and saved in files. So I can access them relatively easily. And mostly that's why I post. It's decidedly worth the effort.
For me, it's very much worth the effort; I just seem to relate a lot better to people on Hive than on legacy social media.
I still use Facebook, X, Insta and those, but it's only for business purposes — I manage a couple of business pages, and it's the best way to just put one's name in front of a LOT of people.
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I think the sense of gratification is quite different. People feel that they have wider audience for their photos or stories on mainstream social media. They have wider ‘exposure’ on Fb.
People posting on Hive for a few years seem to more comfortable with themselves and didn’t need much ‘reassurance’ from wider audience or the numbers of ‘likes’ .
Ironically, it's a lot like the way most of the world runs: People consider the quantity of the experience more important than the quality of it.
I have always found Hive to be far more about quality engagement, and actual dialogue.
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The difference between posting on socials and blogging on Hive is that people think blogging is much more like 'work', but off course this isn't true. Hive also have short form options like #ecency Waves, #leofinance Inleo and others where you can post short form and get rewarded. Most use IG, FB and X because of theirs popularity, but it's the wrong way in the web3 world, in my opinion
I guess a lot of people neither care nor even know what Web3 is... their social media "goal" is along the lines of "100,000 followers, yay, I'm popular!"
Which is quite different from the Hive experience.
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Thank you @ewkaw!
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@curatorcat.pal, I paid out 0.367 HIVE and 0.116 HBD to reward 6 comments in this discussion thread.