Purple

Purple’s goal is to proliferate and expand the Farcaster protocol and ecosystem.

So, this happened. For too long, I was tied to my follower count on X. Letting go wasn't easy, even though I value composability more. Ironically, I fell into the very trap I warned others about—an 'Icarus moment,' getting too close to the allure of validation and losing sight of what truly matters.

in what way is twitter still validating to users such as yourself? open question; haven't been a user in quite awhile and lost touch.

well; the metric itself was validating. Twitter just happened to be where I built that audience from 81 followers to 15k when I began my cryptoart life in 2018 (lurking) and 2019 (participating).

today/the last two years i was mostly just addicted to seeing the follower count. prior to that the engagement was what I was drawn to. my cryptoart community was fun and challenging.

and while my tastes changed didn't change, the engagement on my timeline moved far away from what was important to me like pushing boundaries, challenging the status quo, innovating, and using technology to lift people up. 

the timeline ultimately became a copy of itself stuck in a 2021 theatrical play on repeat. with everyone chasing a dragon that had long been slayed.

"growth" specifically was never top of mind. my account grew when I was just being myself. experimenting and being a part of the community in a way that was true to me and my values.

oh gotcha. so follower count specifically or engagement in general?

twitter is an interesting quandry. engagement is... odd... over there. anecdotally, engagement looks too low for high-follow accounts and too high, too often, for weird small partisan accounts.  

those "growth" numbers are important to users tho and twisting them twists their expectations. musk and co know this and use it effectively to keep people on-platform imo.