Ecency Observations #3 | Social Persuasions - To Follow or Not To Follow

Hello Hivers 🤗

I am back again with another Ecency observation. Unlike my previous mini-blogs, this time I do not focus on Ecency per se, but rather on the psychology of “follower” and “followed”. This dynamic (of followers, likes, subscribers etc.) is entrenched across social media platforms.

Before delving into this quagmire, It would be remiss not to mention that I’m am not a qualified clinical psychologist and I do not offer any advise pertaining to matters related to psychology.

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Apart from my personal information being used as leverage by social media platforms, one of the main reasons that I decreased my footprint on traditional (centralized) social media is because of the lack of authentic interactions on these platforms. It seemed everyone wants to have a piece of the influencer pie. This need was is so great and so twisted that I could barely recognise some of the people I grew up with.

To give a thorough background as to why I’m so appalled by this egocentric approach to interacting with people, I must transport you back to when I first learned about the internet (roughly 30 years ago). Like everything technological, the internet was slow to arrive in Africa, and even when it did, it was very slow and even more expensive. It was not until I attended university that I had unlimited access to the internet, and my world changed in so many ways.

The internet brought my small little hostel closer to the world out there, I interacted with, and learned from people I will probably never meet physically. A quick tutorial from my friend from Germany made me look like a genius before my lecturers and a wealth of knowledge next to my peers. The power of information, and freely sharing that information for the betterment of mankind is what I associated the internet with. There’s also an intrinsic joy associated with this kind of altruistic engagement on the internet, doing something for the greater good is what motivated most of the people I interacted with in those early days.

I would say such people are not very egocentric, and lack all the self serving traits associated with the modern social media experience. I’m forever grateful to those people who cared more about the number of people they touched rather than the number of people who followed them.

This brings us back to out topical discussion; the prominent desire to gain followers in our current digital sphere. This desire as I put it, is more of a mental struggle for many. It can induce many unwarranted feelings of greatness, achievement and so forth. In others, it may also arouse feelings of worthlessness, being left out, being unnoticed and so forth. It all depends on where you land on the popularity scale. Coupled with this psychological desire of being liked, is the potential for monetary reward. Influencers all over the world earn money for their “influence", and it seems like everyone with a smart phone wants to cash in.

Decentralised social media platforms are no exempt from this digital phenomenon. After all, the community ultimately decides what direction such platforms take, and thus users decide how they interact with each other. Some interactions are authentic, some are not.

Today we benefit a lot from people who did things because those things needed to be done, and not only because they would personally benefit from doing those things. Alan Turing (Father of Computer Science), Nikolai Tesla (Inventor of AC electricity), Satoshi Nakamoto et al. (Inventors of Bitcoin and blockchain protocols), all these people and countless others were selfless in their endeavour to create something meaningful for mankind. Perhaps we can learn something from such people, even as we continue to benefit from their efforts.

It is my hope, and the primary reason for this blog, that we do not forget why we are innately compelled to interact with other human beings. It is in our nature to socialise. It is also in our nature to fall victim to ego and all the entrapments that come along with it. Let us not forget, even as we are rewarded to interact with each other, that we need each other for more than just monetary gain. We need each other to survive.

Thank you for reading. Please follow if you're interested in a meaningful interaction with me. I always follow back. ☺️

Keep swarming Hivers!

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