There is no Attention Economy on Hive
And that makes us worthless in the world of art.
What is art without attention?
If there was no-one to consume your art, would it be valuable?
The current economy on hive is very painful. It feels very extractive, rather than one that adds value.
Think of it this way, can you remember the last post that you read, the last video you watched, or the last music you listened to -- was it on hive and did it have any meaning to you?
If not, then what are we even doing here?
Can we call ourselves artists if there's no meaning to what we do?
No essence of the creation process? The enjoyment it gives for someone to create?
I've been tapped out of the writing game for a long time; it's been many years since I have wrote with meaning, put my scribe to paper with the intention of drawing in crowds.
I've used it to write something decent to attract rewards but not have any lasting effect on that which we do here.
Think of it, a post that only retains rewards for seven days then gets lost in a sea of meaningless other posts has absolutely no value.
It's why people don't come here.
It's why people stay on Facebook and Twitter and look at us and go glazy eyed. A lot of us have long since wondered -- why do the right people not come here? We are ripe for the picking!
It's not about the rewards, it's not about the structure, it's about the psychology of it all.
I said in my last post that crypto has no meaning without participation, and we become worthless here on hive without participation.
We don't lack authors, for that we have many, and good ones too.
But we write for rewards and not for attention.
This is what the whole crypto world completely misses the point on -- as web2 primes itself for attention, we fight over graphs and charts and green candles -- and whilst that has meaning to some, it means very little to 99% of the world.
I can guarantee you that.
People read and watch to imagine, to feel, to be heard.
Most of my art is a reflection of the burning desire most have in their souls -- I can reach deep down into those dark areas where people are scared to go.
But my art forces you to go there. Reading my work has depth, reflection, and intention.
But my work is meaningless without a pattern, there's no attention where I have not thought out a plan for where to go next, no-one cares unless I make it meaningful.
Hive gives us a real opportunity to be free with our art; to speak meaning into our souls when there was none -- and yes, I have The Flame but that is but one tiny spark of what this place can be truly be in the future.
I guess my advice to you hiveans, because what I'm creating it's about to change the face of hive forever -- whether you like it or not -- it's coming. I've laid the seed, you won't be able to stop this growth.
Is stop putting weight on all curators and start elevating artists too. Making art? It's something that takes years to get good at; lifetimes to learn from.
You make a community all about your artists then Hive becomes about art and good art at that -- than whatever the fuck we have right now.
Because right now it's just a garbled mess lol.
And to be fair I mean that with no ill will, because for 8 years I've added to that garbled mess.
But now?
No more.
You're about to see what elevating true art does to a community and the wider area.
Peace!
I think most of us that actually care about the platform have been bitching about the lack of engagement and attention for years. Of course, the whales will go and cherry pick a post to show engagement from those that kiss their ass for upvotes. There are very few actual active people on the chain. Most 'active' accounts are just old auto-voting accounts at this point. I still play around a few communities and post things that I actually like to post like drones, 3D printing, and homestead posts, but my days of trying to 'be somebody' on the chain or even in the crypto space are long gone.
I think the lack of engagement comes down to there just not being enough people actually here. Communities are a great feature of Hive but there just aren't enough people to form very substantial communities about specific topics with few exceptions. Hive has always had this sort of chicken in the egg problem. How does it attract more users without more high quality content and how does it get more high quality content without more users? I'm not sure what the answer is but maybe we could at least start with better search functionality. I can't even find my own posts very easily...
This is truly the main problem.
We can't have as much traffic as Twitter without allowing the noobs and shit posters in.
I'll continue posting and sharing, yet I just wonder how long things on here might last.
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This is certainly an issue. Like with my FPV drone crew, they are all stuck on Instagram because it offers the features best for them. I tried to bring a few to Hive, but as soon as they got a look, they were like, neh...
I think we really do need something where people can have posts suggested to them to check out. Not necessarily an algo which decides what gets seen and what doesn't, but something that maybe pulls from certain tags you select interest in. A little thing on the homepage that shows you people you aren't following that are posting similar things to you. Even if they're posts from a week ago.
Another problem is that 7 day window. Everything that does get seen is only seen within the first 24 hours, after that the post is just thrown into the void. Nobody is going to curate, nobody is going to comment.
At the same time, when there are these niche topics with a thin audience, it's not enough for them to support each other because the big curators just stick to the big communities. And what curation guilds consider high quality definitely won't match with other topics. They're looking for a great epic adventure into the mountains. Not a drawing post that took someone four months to perfect.
I hear ya there!
I know you know the feeling!
This is so insanely accurate. I can't stand seeing it. Especially that first part regarding engagement.
Yeah this doesn't happen unless you post the right stuff, we see so much shit on here because it actually gets curated. The same "How to start blogging on Hive!" posts. Being more niche with your interests on here just means you're posting to a select few. Which is fine, that's how it is. But the worst thing returns to what you said before: the people that get all the good treatment will consider you the problem when you mention how discouraging it can be that there's no engagement because in their eyes they're a gold standard of how a person on Hive should be. In reality their posts are shit, nobodies really reading, and they're just gaining interest because everyone wants some of that trickle-down upvote.
I tried to educate people on blockchain operations, trading, mining, etc, but yeah, nobody actually reads the blogs or watches the videos. I have built various businesses and front ends on this platform just to get swept aside. So I just use Hive these days as a generic social media platform that mines me some crypto that I then turn into LTC, BTC, or XMR, lol.
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If you look around there are tons of artists that burn with passion and do so daily with little to no reward.
We've become a bit of a clique us popular hiveans and we fail to see the true beauty of what is underneath.
No more -- I'm picking up all the bright stars that shine brightly.
Yep, and without people focusing on those with the passion, they will move along the way just like the rest of us. I appreciate your efforts for sure.
most people are not proud of the content they put out here so it is nearly impossible for them to share it, and also the blockchain to an extent has lost it soul. I am basically using the chain to journal at this point. Except some dapp comes up with something new, this is going to be the state of the chain for a very long time.
Why not join us on The Flame?
Scanning your posts about yourself (not the football posts lol) you seem like the perfect candidate for the flame.
Someone who burns with passion of life.
It's an invite only community -- posts get muted if you aren't onboarded.
Only for people who burn real: https://peakd.com/c/hive-170744/created
Join our discord if you're interested: https://discord.gg/ourbrotherhood
Bro... Bring it on. Can't wait to see "true art".
The very existence of the word "true" makes me tremble.
Most of what passes for art is just a conglomeration of posers.
Hard to find anything true.
Although some art does make me smile^^
True art should come from the soul sir :)
I think you understand that one :)
Attention economy is far too based on fads and comfort.
FB, Insta, TT, etc are comfortable to people and easy to use, thus retain eyes.
NFTs were a fad and exploded before withering and losing the bulk of the attention, just like so so many other "trends" online.
Each has or had a massive A.E. but the comfortable easy ones seem to be the stalwarts that just remain. The learning curve to Hive is FAR beyond many people's capacities and when lured with "rewards" they leave quickly when that doesn't manifest itself quickly. We could have the best artists in the world on here but without eyes what's the point? If you can actually bring eyes to this place then please by all means, things are too fractured for me to see a possible way to make that happen and retain those eyes for the long term.
That's because no-one writes with purpose here.
There is no real gravity to what we're doing. Just writing with reward. I'm going to infuse purpose into writers.
i think the hive eco system is outside the capacity for most gen zeders brains, they want everything on a plate served up yesterday without doing anything for it. I bet the average age of people on here is over 40 yrs old.
Although I'm a gen z(on Hive), I fully understand what you're saying here, I think on average, our brains have been rewired with so much short form content consumed these past several years that we've become delusional on how reality really works!
Good point well made @takhar
It's our job to teach them, no?
I mean we are the elders of their lineage and what do we do but complain at them?
We should guide them, nurture them, help them. This is the way :)
Nah, just give em a kick in the bollocks LOL
I have put a lot of work and thought into why that is. Seems like the more monetized a system is the self censoring ramps up to not offend anyone especially those thinking about setting up an account on an auto voter. They were picking to see if they could trust you with votes for the next several months to years. Then they don't want to have everyone else seeing them voting for some loose cannon who might write something offensive to all their supporte tors.
I think partially the game theory kept changing and broke down
That system breaks down when we stop writing for votes and start writing with flame.
Given my interest in photography I still have some connection to many posts I stumble across. But yeah, the blogging side of things is significantly less interesting to me. In terms of videos? None. This place doesn't have the right support for videos still, the time it takes to shoot something and upload it with Hive exclusivity is pointless. It remains best to build your YouTube channel and just link the video here in a post. Especially given the seven (one because so few will bother voting after 24 hours) day window of curation. Plus, nobody is really viewing videos to begin with, there's too few people on here for a video to actually be interesting enough for someone to watch the whole way through.
I have often reached burnout with certain topics I'd enjoy writing about because the engagement wasn't there, that was due to the nonexistent interest people had in the subjects. Too thin of an audience for there to be anyone with anything to say about it. The plus side of an algo on web2.0 is that it'll at least push that to someone with a similar interest. Here? It just gets buried for good.
Perhaps we should start sharing content that would pull readers into hive possibly?
All of us here (including me) complain a lot about no-one coming here -- but none of us share anything worth reading.
Perhaps that should change first then the rest will follow :)
I think we're a bit stuck in some ways. The rest of the Internet is pushing for short form content. People do engage massively with the topics we share here on Hive elsewhere. For example, the photography I have posted here that gets little engagement actually surprisingly performs well on Tumblr of all things! And on things like Twitter or Instagram/Threads, there is an algo which will slowly shape a feed for you and promote similar topics to you. Which means the same for your posts, eventually someone will see it and engage with it. And those are posts that have less than 100 words to them, sometimes even no words at all!
Social media has changed massively in the past five years in particular, and Hive in some ways was/is ahead of the game, but in other ways we're actually now behind. Some people can now make a living on web2.0 from something that costs next to nothing. On Hive, to make $1000 you may have to post daily for an entire year. Whereas someone in their bedroom making art tutorials can make that in a month. There's luck involved (even here), of course. But maybe my point is coming across?
But there's also the video side of things. Most of this short form content comes in the form of imagery now. Either literal images or videos. We don't really have the tools for this, and people end up just linking YouTube videos here. Naturally, because YouTube is easy to use and also offers growth on there too. But on here, that 7 (one) day window will screw you over. No more reach after that. Which also brings in the quality problem: would you spend an entire week preparing a high quality video with good lighting, good videography and lots of research and editing just to post it here and maybe make $20, or would you post it to YouTube and link here knowing that the YouTube channel, while making nothing at first, could grow in time? Then there's the question that's big now of what can a person do with the rewards? All that effort but you'll get downvoted for cashing it out? Not gonna work.
And through a lot of these teething problems, we end up quite limited in what we can create here, without burning out or getting discouraged. We are human after all ;^)
I think I remember peakd talking about an ad revenue concept a while back, which I think would actually be really beneficial to certain people in that sense. If we could work hard on creating engaging content that does appeal to the masses, while properly getting rewarded for it, we'd see a creator economy on here boom. People reinvesting into their gear and skills to improve. More engagement as the topics change and people can get rewarded even for niche posts since they'd get discovered and picked up on web2.0, bringing in that ad revenue.
What do you have in mind for this anyway? I rambled on quite a bit haha, but yeah maybe there's something I could do as well
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