The Content-filled Personality

A few weeks ago, I got fortunate with deciphering a password for a locked account and was able to get in, change the keys and save the HIVE that was sitting in there from being bricked. The account belonged to @yahia-lababidi who was offering a 1000 dollar helper's fee to anyone who could get the account unlocked, but since I turned that down, he sent me three of his books instead. I only picked them up from the post office tonight, as they had to first go through customs (new laws) so haven't read them yet, but at least I have space on a bookshelf to hold them for when I do.

This might seem like a bum deal to some, considering there was 1000 dollars on the table, but for me, this is far more meaningful, as it is about connecting and affecting someone's life positively. Someone I have never met and may never meet. Someone who wouldn't recognize me if we passed on the street, yet we still have a relationship and a trusted one at that. In my opinion, that is valuable.

And yes, it does return the favor because to me, this highlights what I have always believed about on Hive - relationships matter. A lot of people think relationships on Hive are only as strong as the stake voted between them, but that is not the case much of the time, There are many genuine relationships on Hive and I am fortunate enough to count myself as someone who has a lot of them. There are so many people here that I could happily sit and have a beer with and talk about all manner of life, and many I would be happy to have in my home, even if I haven't met them in person yet. I find that interesting.

But, relationships on Hive do matter for economic reasons as well and it is because of the relationships I have built over the years here that I didn't feel like I needed a reward for helping someone who needed help. The time I spent working on it was time well spent, even though it didn't return anything directly to me that I could use. Well, now I have some books to read, but that wasn't known prior.

On Hive, stake is your voice and as @azircon was talking about in his recent post on different earning options, it is a vital part of governance on Hive. If you want to affect governance, you have to earn stake - but I will add the caveat, if you want to affect it directly you need stake.

I believe that through building relationships, it is possible to affect governance and decisions on Hive by influencing stake. For example, I started with nothing on Hive and while I have some HP now, it wasn't always the case and it took a long time to build to a level that it moves the needle. However, through my content I was able to build trust, relationships and some social capital which gave me an outsized voice compared to the direct stake I held.

It is actually an interesting thing to consider on Hive, especially back in the early days of no free downvotes, as like I was saying in this shared wallet article explaining some of the things to consider, each piece of content is a proposal that can attract stake. When there were no downvotes going on, people could vote for their own proposals with little repercussions, and many did in various forms. However, many also voted for content that wasn't their too, which meant technically "taking a lower payment" on what they could have got by voting on themselves instead.

The interesting part is that while people can argue what is valuable content or not, the people who voted for other people's content back then valued it enough as a proposal to take a "loss" in earnings on it. When considering this, it is actually quite something as it goes against the entrenched idea that people only work on Hive in their own economic self-interest. This isn't true a lot of the time, at least not directly.

Indirectly though, stake supporting content that adds value to the community and blockchain, is a decision of self interest too. For most large stake holders, while they don't mind earning daily on content and curation, they would much prefer the token value of Hive to sky rocket, as that increases the value of their entire stack. Getting a ten percent reward increase on weekly amounts is a tiny gain compared to a 10% increase in the value of the token.

If the content supported is detrimental to the value of the token, it is going to have the reverse effect, at least over time. When value-degrading content is incentivized, eventually it will affect the price of the token and a 10% loss on the entire stack happens. For those counting, when HIVE increases 10% in price from where it is now, the blockchain technically becomes 23 million dollars more valuable. Because that is on the total supply with most of the supply being in the hands of larger holders, that means it is in their best interest to support content that supports the growth of the ecosystem, which supports the demand on the transactions, the tokens and eventually increases prices.

Now, content doesn't have to be a post or comment these days, it could be the millions of transactions on Splinterlands for example or, personalities and behaviors themselves. People forget that the way we conduct ourselves is indeed part of our content, even if it doesn't appear on a transaction directly. For example, the time I spent systematically deciphering the key was an "off-chain" activity, but it did add on-chain value to at least Yahia. Similarly, the majority of the relationships I value on Hive do have a paper-trail of comments, but the value of the relationship is intangible, it is held in the head and heart off-chain.

It is the lack of transparency on these relationships that can make people believe that there is "funny business" of some kind going on, but that doesn't mean it is true. Doesn't mean it isn't true either though, and generally people who believe they are entitled to or deserve more than they get, think those who are getting more are doing something underhanded.

However, our behaviors are part of our content, yet they are not open to the same possibility that a post or comment is. While people think downvotes for example should only be used for something like plagiarism, in a community, we also want to think about other aspects of value than straight monetary considerations. An economy after all is driven by consumer behavior on supply and demand, not just the suppliers. So, while many will disagree, if content is the only way to affect behavior, than when people behave badly, that is the string they will pull.

A person can be a dick on Hive all they want, as there is nothing stopping them from behaving in that manner, but there is nothing saying that they need to earn on their content either. Generally, the people who are being dicks tend to at some time or another run afoul of people who get tired of their behavior and with no way to to affect them other than what is open to affect, they get downvoted. They might claim that it "isn't fair" because there is nothing wrong with the post, but that is what I was saying, the post is only a part of the content for the account, the behavior of the account is part of it too.

AS I have stated many times before, personality matters on Hive in regards to rewards and those who have a personality that people enjoy for some reason, tend to do well and get support. However, this works in the negative also, so the personalities that people don't enjoy, are going to be negatively supported. This is because the personality of the account is part of the account itself, meaning that it is open to judgement in the same way a post is. Be a dick, and expect to be stuck in a hole.

Personality is a far harder component to measure, which is why people like the tangible evaluation of posts themselves, but, this is a community, so behavior has to be considered in the mechanisms, as it affects the value of the ecosystem as a whole. Behavior of others affect us too and we react in various ways due to it. If a stakeholder comes across behaviors that are financially incentivized but are in their opinion, degrading the value of the blockchain and therefore their investment potential, the only logical thing to do is to clip the behavior, to disincentivize it. As reward earnings are the only way to possibly affect behavior, it makes sense to take rewards off the table.

The thing is, people can complain and troll for free on any number of centralized platforms, but Hive is one of the very few places where content is rewarded. But, it isn't just content, it is the personality too and I suspect that if people did have to pay for content they consumed on Twitter and they were invested in the success of the platform itself, they wouldn't be rewarding the trolling either. While it does create drama and generate clicks, a platform with only drama gets tiring very fast and ends up having a tiny minority of very outspoken personalities, polarizing arguments in the hope to get paid in attention, which they can then convert into add revenue of some kind - sounds healthy.

But anyway, this post is getting really long and I am getting tired. There are many topics embedded in here but if you only take one lesson away from this, it is Don't be a dick unless you are very good at it and witty enough to build a personality around it. From my experience on Hive so far, very few have been anywhere near clever enough to be amusing, let alone deserving of support.

In Yahia's inscription inside one of his books he gifted me, he is wrong. I am not good, but I am a thinker, which is based on my observations. BY paying attention to the world around us we can learn what behaviors work and what do not and just like learning to walk, with practice we can improve ourselves, improve our behaviors. While we may use rolemodels along the way, this is not about mimicry, it is about discovering who we are and who I is, in order to find a place in this world that empowers us to be our best, and inspires others to be theirs too.

In my opinion, this is the sign of a valuable relationship, Two people working together to be their best as individuals and ultimately, for each other. A community is a more complex entanglement of many relationships and while there will always be conflict that drives change and innovation, part of building a healthy group is demonstrating healthy habits.

Gandhi said, Be the change you want to see in the world, but this is only part of the story, as people seem to think it means that the only way they can affect the world is through their own actions. However, each of us have the ability to influence others in the network through our actions, which means not only do we demonstrate being the change, but we can also support the change that we want to see. This creates a change economy and on Hive, we can both use the voice of our stake and influence the minds of stakeholders to support the changes we want to see on the platform.

Our behaviors shape our world.
Our relationships make our world worth living.

Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]

Thank you @yahia-lababidi for the books, they will be treasured.