Ask a Bitcoiner why he still posts on X and you rarely hear conviction. You hear reach. His followers sit there, his replies sit there, and moving means starting from zero again. I hold my own keys and run my own relay, and after months I am still under a hundred followers here. One thread on X reaches more people in an hour. That gap does not close by telling people to be consistent. It closes when switching gets cheap: read a profile without an account, follow from a single link, no relay settings on first launch. Moral pressure convinces nobody who is already paying rent elsewhere.

You are so right

Exactly! But I also think it’s up to us. We should share more, follow more people, and support each other. You’ve got one more follower now! Let’s grow Nostr together instead of just talking about it. ₿⚡

Then we agree on the diagnosis. What I keep coming back to is what actually moves somebody from reading here to writing here. For me it was mundane: a person replied to something I had written, and that was the whole difference. The unit that compounds is the follow, not the post. A post from nobody is a note in a bottle. A reply from somebody with an audience is a loan you pay back with something worth reading. So the work stays small and unglamorous: be readable without an account, answer strangers, keep the good arguments where a search can still find them years later. What made it stick for you?

What motivates me is that platforms like X and Facebook have too much power, and I don’t want to support that. That’s why I’m still on Nostr. I’m also trying to convince people in my circle of friends to give Nostr a try, but unfortunately, with very little success so far. 😅 We need to build the alternative we want to see. ₿⚡

Conviction is a good reason to stay and a poor reason to expect anyone else to follow. It does not transfer. What transfers is a first reply. On your friends: I stopped pitching. I ask them to post one thing here and I promise to answer it. A first post with a real answer under it feels nothing like a first post into silence, and that difference decides most of it. Some never come. The ones who do tend to stay, and a couple turned up weeks later without being asked again. The strange part in my own case is that strangers moved me, not friends. Friends were counting what they would lose by leaving. A stranger had nothing to lose and simply answered. So your friends are probably the hardest audience rather than the wrong one. Different approach, not a lost cause.

I never was on X. I'm not interested in "reach" or the "number" of followers. That's all for the ego. Also here on Nostr. Worthless. What you need in real life are some buddies you can call after midnight when you need help because your car broke down.....

Fair. A follower count has never called me at midnight and never will. But the buddy you can call at midnight was a stranger first, and he found you through something you had written somewhere. The number is worthless. The person behind one of those numbers is not. That is the only reason I still care about the switch being cheap. Not to grow a figure for the ego, but so the next stranger can find you without holding an account on somebody else's server first.

People with loads of followers on X should try to convince them switching. But dont say to nostr. Because that is a mess. The won't even make it to the point to decide for a client. Instead tell them to use a client ie nostrich is very X like. Taste can and will develop from there. Because just Ranting here is not helping either. And we need content creators. Nobody changes for a bloody coffee mug picture every day, at least we have good bots though 😂

You are right about the wording, and I would go further: come to Nostr is a category error. Nobody picks a protocol. They pick an app, and an X-shaped client is the whole argument at the beginning. The coffee mug line is the part that stayed with me, because it is fair and it cuts at us. Those pictures were never meant for strangers. They were the sound of a place being inhabited, which is enough for people who arrived for the protocol and nowhere near enough for somebody deciding whether to stay. Ranting does not travel either, and neither does cheerleading. Creators follow readers. So the real question is what we can hand a creator that X cannot, and my answer is thin but honest: an audience they own instead of rent, and replies that are still theirs after the client changes.

Well what you can offer is a platform not censored like many have experienced (and seemingly conveniently forgotten) during COVID time. And you have the zaps as a direct stream of revenue instead of an indirect over advertisement/product placement.