This is a phenomenal piece articulating exactly what I was trying to explain the other day regarding “mainstream users” expectations for online earning. There’s this idea that once you “hit” viral or eligible to monetize on mainstream you all of a sudden are making cash. Absolutely not. Exhausting & exploitative, most of us are spending HOURS on their app doing full time jobs beside our full time jobs make pennies we can’t even access until they say we can & all of the content must be approved and pre censored. View article →

Oh that’s a fantastic idea team… @chad @lemon @MK Fain View quoted note →

*The Whimstr Fairy of Nostr has been summoned* Tis' I dear Nostr Starlet, I sense the spark in you is strong and it must be fanned a'flame here in the land of Ditto! Join us in the whimsical journey to reclaim your inner child's cringe, YER'A'WIZRD https://blossom.ditto.pub/40c7cf1ce0783889a649c028c3ff4b1b24340be7a7b52fc5f64bb34f23377985.qt View quoted note →

I’m not gonna lie I can’t help but giggle just a little bit because as I browse through here, I see a lot of Nostr/BTC and advanced tech people making all these comments about “mainstream users don’t want this from devs and Nostr!!! They want this instead!!” and me, a mainstream user/big time newb being like “actually…that’s exactly what we want and we don’t want what you said like at all…?” and it makes me realize every time how HUUUUUGE the gap is.

I quite literally cant imagine I ever would have learned any of the things I have the last few months, unlocked the creativity & skills and broken the doom loop on mainstreams if I had not found Nostr (specifically Ditto). I have found so much value all over Nostrs community, but the way Ditto has me playing productively again + exploring my own self through goofy and uncensored expression. I never thought I'd find this lil part of me again at 32 with online game play and cute community connectors....it feels like if the world kept going how I thought it was going to in 2005 when I was 11 with the Profile Id as "ManEat3r" and trying to use Eminem's "FACK" as my profile song. One day I was literally coding and hacking my own little world on a friends home desktop, then we skipped about 20 years from 2005 to 2010. All of a sudden I'm blue or beige like everyone else, have no idea wtf is going on other than what the "algo" approved for me & was using the word GRAPE to discuss mine and millions of other women's horrifying life experiences to avoid hurting the sensitive men who wanna keep doing it...just like..without us TALKING about it. Anyways, I just learned how to get Barbie Horse Adventures Race & Ride that I would have DIED for in 2002, Baldurs Gate, Animal Crossing AND Sonic on my computer to play. Then I got rewarded a special badge that shows on my Ditto lmao cause Nostr recognized the achievement. Nerdy af, Nostalgic af, and I never would have challenged myself to figure it out if I were on TikTok watching a curated "life in motion" ad trying to get me to buy a plastic $14 bowl for my ramen. I love it here. Yuck a yum all you want, but this shit is WAY more fun.

When I exist without masking, it’s generally somewhere by someone called cringe. Once I realized that cringe for some others really just meant free & authenticity for me, I literally can’t exist anymore in a way that doesn’t honor that. I’ve started to catch myself talking without a filter & noticing how “masking” takes more out of me than it EVER did. It physically will start to make me sick it is so at odds with myself to be disingenuous, if I need to let my freak flag fly I have to. If I need to be a feral asshole raccoon in a trash can I have to. If I need to disappear into my head I have to, (how this works as a parent to a five year old with no support or co parent is a whole different ballgame for another day lmao) but the point is. A big part of really getting how this is present in ALL areas of my life was deconstructing from mainstream tech & having somewhere to learn from/go to like Nostr. Removing censorship/control over creativity/ community includes accepting those you don’t quite get/like and watching others escaping these systems WILL often look cringe to you. My advice is to get over it, try some cringe yourself & be a community worth coming to for the diverse masses out there needing us.