reframing

Okay, so it turns out, I am still constantly thinking about the right thing to say here.

welcome to FC, @vatika! same. 🫡

and i've got a theory i've been developing for a little while now — especially watching crypto folks speedrun the history of social media apps in the last couple years.

in a word? 

"yearning."

but in two words?

"context collapse."

and in twenty-four words?

"oh no, i'm about to slaughter my poor, baby thesis by trying to boil it down to a cast thread on a saturday afternoon."

let's get into it. 👇

Excited to be on a platform away from all the people I already know. Why?
So that I can unlock my unhinged self without the need of "always having to say the right thing".

i'm gonna try to cut right to the meat, here — maybe i can skip the background or work backwards if i need to.

so at the core of my argument is that what @vatika (and, really, all of us) wants is not MORE anonymity, but LESS.

it's not we want to be able to *say whatever we want*.

it's that we want *whatever we say to be understood*.

no kings. only working on impossible things.

i'm gonna try to cut right to the meat, here — maybe i can skip the background or work backwards if i need to.

so at the core of my argument is that what @vatika (and, really, all of us) wants is not MORE anonymity, but LESS.

it's not we want to be able to *say whatever we want*.

it's that we want *whatever we say to be understood*.

https://warpcast.com/vatika/0xa2f7944b

the problem with social media is that we can't read the room.

you don't get to address your audience. when you post online, you have NO idea who you're talking to.

this problem specifically is known as "context collapse", and in formal contexts, it's when "content intended for one audience leaks to another audience."

but, disclaimer: i've been kind of co-opting "context collapse" as the umbrella term for this whole theory of mine, though, so i'm probably gonna refer to it that way, mostly.

the reason we like the feeling of jumping onto a new social media platform or starting an alt or joining a new discord server is that there's a brief window of time riiiiight at the start where you have a VERY high degree of clarity about:

- what the group's niche is
- how much the group knows about you
- how they respond to that persona

and (if your understanding of those elements aligns) you can usually get pretty positive engagement from that group, especially right at the beginning.

"engagement" might be, idk, likes and recasts, sure — but let's even try reframing this onto something else entirely, like joining a city softball league. 

maybe "positive engagement" is being well-liked and having good chemistry with the team so that you get to play shortstop instead of outfield.

k, now that's great and normal and all...

...but now imagine you have to be that competitive, high-intensity person EVERYwhere — or you'll lose the shortstop position that you worked so hard to get.

on campus, in the grocery store, at the f'king Red Lobster — if you're not a softball SAVAGE every time you step into public (the internet), well... then the team just might find someone else that IS (and unfollow you).

so the result is that, in order to preserve the utility of our relationships, the "context" that gets collapsed is actually *us*.

we begin to caricature-ize ourselves over time as we discover what things reliably yield the positive engagement that we're looking for.

and the more that we value our position on the softball team, the more likely we are to be willing to compress our persona into that box.

here, then, is the central tension that @vatika has uncovered (at a breakneck pace, i might add):

1. "hooray, i feel so free to express myself here!"
2. "oh dear, what am i going to be known for — and thereby commit myself to?"

in other words:

"what kind of success am i willing to curse myself with?"

i think the kneejerk, trying-to-be-constructive, be-the-change reaction to this is: "oh, just don't do that here!" 

like, "yeah! this is farcaster! be yourself! enjoy the fact that this place is still relatively obscure, and let emergence build a new audience around... whoever you wanna be!"

which is... a pretty good strategy, tbh. 

in fact, if you're reading this thread and still aren't really sure what you're doing on farcaster, then i fully recommend just casting into the void about whatever shit makes you happy — and giving your joy an opportunity to become a "homegrown hero", as @accountless.eth might say.

BUT. 

this framing also COMPLETELY sidesteps the "what's my reputation gonna be?" anxiety — and i think failing to address that feeling gives it a prime opportunity to work against us.

i also think this kind of anxiety is an automatic and subconscious reaction, rather than a conjured worry (i.e. overthinking), so logic won't defeat it — a need needs to be addressed before it will go away.

so what's the need?

well, at risk of projecting my own insecurities onto a total stranger, ... 

(@vatika, i'm so sorry, lol)

... i think it's about belonging. 

and i think the /reframing that feels most right to me is that the social order is crumbling across so many surfaces that people are fleeing places where they had a reliable and comfortable sense of belonging, and they're latching on wherever there is match-my-freak energy.

and farcaster has a LOT of match-my-freak energy.

which is great!

it's really, really awesome, actually.

but i think for anyone looking for acceptance into a new social scene — rather than just a safe avenue for self expression — then a little bit of match-my-freak in just the right spot can be what hooks them on a persona that... might not actually BE them.

and, now, i know it's been a journey, but let's wrap back around to my original thesis:

what we want, as users, is less anonymity.

we want:
- the people we interact with to know us.
- to know the people we interact with.
- to be identifiable by like-minded people.

and, tbh, i think this thesis is going to wrap up with a huge caveat that privacy infrastructure appears to be a functional requirement for this version of the cozyweb.

yeah, one possible /reframing is for sure "users want more privacy."

but i'm not rewriting this thread to be less clickbaity, it's nearly done now, lol.

anyway, "being better known online" checks this "belonging" box pretty neatly: the more confidence we have that our audience is actually SEEING us, the more we can be assured that their match-my-freak is actually for *us*.

and when our identities are less present in what we do (ie. our "context is collapsed"), we start to lose our humanity. our spark.

that's why we work so hard to find our tribe online: masking is exhausting.

that's where i'm gonna end this thread, actually — i think i just bumped into the max number of casts for this thread.

so yeah. there's still a bunch i'd like to keep expanding on here, but i think i was able to broad stroke most of it. idk if it's a revelation, but hopefully this /reframing of "just be yourself here!" is helpful or interesting or thought-provoking to people and not just a long, disjointed rant, haha. 

i've thought a lot about context collapse, but i was definitely shooting from the hip on this one.

anyway, thanks for reading!

lemme hear your thoughts!

the problem with social media is that we can't read the room.

you don't get to address your audience. when you post online, you have NO idea who you're talking to.

this problem specifically is known as "context collapse", and in formal contexts, it's when "content intended for one audience leaks to another audience."

but, disclaimer: i've been kind of co-opting "context collapse" as the umbrella term for this whole theory of mine, though, so i'm probably gonna refer to it that way, mostly.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Context_collapse