I know it has been a minute, but that’s because I’ve been updating me! Well, not so much in a glamourous sense, but working on my Javascript skills, particularly ReactJS. So, while taking a break from writing, Let’s face it, I’ve got an occasional reddit addiction. Being a moderator for /r/bitcoin likely doesn’t help curb my time on the site either. I even went so far as having a mini mental meltdown on productivity and taking a leave of absence from the site. I went so far as to install a site-blocker to prevent me from inadvertently autotyping my way back to the place for that little taste of orange box ‘you’ve got mail!’ dopamine that muh brain feeds from as a result of stimulating a response from the hive mind that is the harbinger of said former orange boxes – in conjunction to the outpouring of eli5s, tils, itts, etc. (👨👨👧👦 ah the family of reddit 💺)
That lasted maybe six days. I found that I was just adjusting my attention to other places to discuss and learn about bitcoin. Places like bitcointalk or letstalkbitcoin (those are both different communities for example), or more so on twitter or facebook or even sometimes on telegram messenger where me and the boys would palaver jabber over price talk or technology development and speculation. As you can see, it was a portion of my life, I can’t separate what I enjoy, so rather than taking the full two weeks I mentally thought I would plan for, I only took those six days vacation from redditing before giving back in.
That was two months ago roughly. I don’t reddit as much and I spend more time on other communities, though sometimes I’ll binge. Also, the thing is, as I mentioned above there are an immensive number of tribes for us to all subscribe to. I haven’t even covered MadBitcoins and/or World Crypto Network segments, Bitcoin.com, bitco.in, IRC, there’s here(via disqus), we’ve got the audio circuit which includes the latter mentioned letstalkbitcoin and slew of other podcasts I haven’t even heard of yet because I’ve spent my time telling you about them here. So taking a break last week, I had this idea:
Spend Rest of Week on Zapchain instead of Reddit.
Why? Well, you can earn bitcoin through zapchain. For a Quick primer: Zapchain is a community driven site where users and post questions, replies, articles, and links to share with others.
Not a bad arrangement considering you were going to peruse the site either way. Zapchain came around (last year I think?) and had touted themselves as ‘conducting the largest bitcoin interview in the world!’ That single statement hooked me in. I think the Bitcoin tipping portion wasn’t emphasized right away, but see it more now. So off I went. Now, the community itself is segmented into different concentrations of focus, such as 3d printing, drones, or even Virtual Reality if offered as community to learn from and contribute towards.
I myself am a lover of all things futurology and dream of the concepts of 3d printed goods that are essentially capital goods quality but consumer goods cost and can degrade safely or be recycled and reconditioned continuously. Why not give it a shot? So there I went, to Zapchain, for use, to get my Bitcoin fix, instead of Reddit. Whenever I felt compelled to take a break from learning about JSX or Test Driven Development concepts for the job I am attempting to earn, I’ve been reading some of the concepts littered here and there on Zapchain.
Similarities:
- There were companies and news blogs (I suppose I count as a sort of newsblog, though that isn’t my main aim here) there to earn social engagement for their brand.
- There is great content on the site.
- The mechanism and linking (this seems new) is identical and its easy to see the activity of others on the site
Differences:
- There are fewer trolls and complainers overall, but at the same time this comes off like an echo chamber. Sometimes people are blunt, but usually it’s pretty likeminded from most (from what I’ve read and seen anyway)
- Feels smaller and thus there aren’t as many newer users present
- There are changes often (the look of the site has adjusted since I used it last – maybe 3 days ago)
- There is a tipping system built in so its easy to give and receive bitcoin (1 bits = .001 Bitcoin)
While I thought I would have much to talk about, I found that the truth is most of my time commenting on the internet is spent in giving clarification on subjects or concepts or speaking my mind on those given clarifications. That’s my personal bread and butter. I can and do write creatively such as these articles here sometimes, but my preferred medium is to act as a responder and to give clarification, rather than to outright write an Article on a topic. That likely is reflected in my profile on zapchain I give replies more than articles or posts.
I ended up giving responses to topics and ideas – just the same as how I do with reddit. This also shows me that perhaps my ideal medium as a responder and clarifier is twitter, rather than reddit or facebook (comparing the largest of the industry rather than our Bitcoin circuit)
Why would I have bothered discussing main stream social media when this is bitcoin? Well, because I don’t like myopia. Commonly known as echo-chamber effect, myopia is the problem where we see our own actions and get confirmation bias – we think, look at all these people confirming with me, I must be onto something! In fact, you may be missing many of the answers from the average person who has no idea of Bitcoin nor any care to learn of it. I’m interested in having feedback from all perspectives which is why I’ve included this research of comparing the Internet at large to the bitcoin communities mentioned prior. As observed, we’re tiny, we’re not even a blip in comparison to some circles. Ideally we should listen to all perspectives and viewpoints to understand where we are and where we’re going. Do you have your own Bitcoin communities or circles that you participate in that weren’t mentioned that you would like to share about? Let’s discuss in the comments!
Oh right: I also earned 500 bits for 4 days of my time (I only did one half of a week) but gave away 1000 Bits 😔 It’s fine though, next round I’ll put in an article or two perhaps (now that I know about the 3d printed houses, I’m certainly interested if anyone has one for sale or lease 😄)
