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Danica Swanson
@danicaswanson
Second prompt for this new season of /words: Is writing your livelihood, or part of it? If you want to get more specific: -What kind of writing do you do? -How do you think about the value of writing + editing on Farcaster? -How can crypto fund high-quality writing sustainably? Please respond with either a comment below or via quote cast here in the channel, whichever you prefer. ✍️
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Trigs
@trigs
I've done a lot of different kinds of work in Web3 over the years, and I am shifting almost entirely to research and writing this year for one reason alone: The war for our digital sovereignty will be won via narrative. I think that writing is the single most important thing that value-aligned individuals can do in this stage of ecosystem development. The potential of this ecosystem is entirely nascent and, honestly, completely incomprehensible to the average person. What even does sovereign digital identities mean? Very few are building and funding this development, because there is no cohesive narrative and use case development around what that looks like. Few truly understand the value to be built here. It isn't flashy, like the casino games are. To drive the ecosystem in the direction of true change, we have to craft the story people need to hear. And it will come as no surprise, it has to come from all of us! No single person can cover the breadth of this narrative and reach every nook and cranny.
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Danica Swanson
@danicaswanson
Love this. Thanks for responding so promptly! If you'd like to say more, where are you planning to concentrate most of your research and writing time this year? I'm asking more about the research questions that drive you than specific projects.
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Trigs
@trigs
We are just beginning to draft the foundation of this, and we will be building this openly to get input from everyone, so I'd love to hear your initial thoughts and reactions as well! Mainly my mind is focused on uncovering what drives high quality contributors to be a part of their communities. Getting paid isn't an incentive to be a high quality contributor, it's a reward. The incentive comes from within. This is the missing narrative, I feel. We need to de-protocolize this process and refocus on the passions of individuals. What drives them to care about their communities and shared interests? Beyond that, I want to know what stops these individuals from contributing? I think the modern web2 tools have disincentivized the highest quality contributors in favor of the ones most willing to play engagement games. I want to understand how these barriers create disincentives so we can design better protocols!
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Danica Swanson
@danicaswanson
Happy to talk more about what you've got planned! I appreciate your framing of the question of intrinsic vs. extrinsic incentives. I think ideally we'd have sustainable ways to enable intrinsic motivation to thrive, with extrinsic incentives used only in *service* of contributions driven by intrinsic motivation. There are deeper layers of questions here, too, in relation to motivation crowding theory and barriers to contributing. For example: some writers aren’t in a good position to prioritize intrinsic motivation over extrinsic, because of constraints (time-wise and financial) related to earning a living. I don't see this talked about too often, which is one reason I wrote this prompt. I agree that web2 platforms favor engagement over high quality. This has been an ongoing thorn in my side as someone who left Patreon and Substack after becoming disillusioned with their business models. Much of web3 has "inherited" the focus on rewarding engagement, so we’re seeing similar issues play out.
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Trigs
@trigs
Would love to take the discussion deeper in whatever medium is most comfortable, at whatever pace is natural!
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Trigs
@trigs
Very much so, re: same gameplan, same results. You nailed it with the intrinsic/extrinsic relationship. We keep starting from the wrong end of the stick, and wondering why we aren't getting quality results. Could not agree more on the unspoken truth of financial barriers. How can people have the mental clarity and focus to contribute something of value when they are consumed with the burdenous need for survival? This is something I've felt very heavily, as someone self funding my way through web3 because I refuse to play casino games. It's exactly why I was pushed to finally start fundraising for this work so that I can afford to focus on it to actually make progress, instead of just reinforcing silos by working privately for projects that want to keep the value locked behind a walled garden. That isn't accessible for most people, and honestly probably isn't for me either. The ecosystem isn't focused on these values because there's no token they can buy to get the upside.
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