> Finding real people to have real conversations is more difficult because so many want your engagement/attention for their "brand".
Humanity breaks into three groups: originators, amplifiers, mimics.
Probably 95-97% of humanity or more are mimics. They will never produce much of anything original, that includes writing long-form blog posts or original media content (eg YouTube). They have little to no interest. This is backed up by stats on pretty much every platform, including Reddit and HN (the extreme majority are voyeurs not contributors). It's one of the reasons TikTok was so successful, it enabled the mimics to easily participate and pretend they were creating something new (while they were actually doing nothing but copying what someone else created, and getting a mental reward for it via likes/watches/followers). It's also why modern cameras in smartphones are so popular for the masses (+ Instagram), anybody can take a photo and feel at least ok about it (you don't have to be an expert photographer, you don't have to really create anything interesting and or new).
It doesn't matter what you do or what you change, the extreme majority will never meaningfully contribute. Even on services like TikTok and Instagram the masses have little to no interest in meaningful contribution, they produce a couple of videos or photos and then largely stop; the same holds true on Facebook, most people don't contribute very much into the network. They don't want to. They lack the desire to put in the time and effort (people are tired after work, have children/lives to tend to, etc etc), and they lack the creativity to originate persistently (the feedback isn't there because what they're producing won't get much attention).
Everybody isn't the same. Everybody isn't Picasso or Hunter S. Thompson and can't be. So what you're mostly left with are the people desperately seeking attention/self-promotion and the rare slice of originators.
You have to specifically build a platform to cater to the smaller slice of originators and intentionally block/disrupt the aggressive self-promoters that often don't contribute much new value. And if you do that, your platform will never be overly popular (which isn't what most VC backed services aim for obviously).
Hm, I doubt that not actively contributing on a forum makes you a "mimic". Perhaps your wording is a bit too strong?
I agree with you that these people may lack the energy or creativity, but there could be dozens of other valid reasons for not contributing. For one, I think most people who ignore social media are quite wise. A lot of time is lost here on more important matters.
As long as we're throwing out stupid triadic models of humanity -- [Pythagoras said that] human life seemed to him comparable with the festival to which people flocked form all over Greece in order to see those magnificent [Olympic] Games. This is an occasion for which some people have gone into physical training in the hope of winning the splendid distinction of a crown, while others are attracted by the prospect of buying or selling for profit, whereas a further category again – and these represent an especially good class of people – are interested in winning neither applause nor profit, but come merely for the sake of the spectacle, to get a thorough look at what is going on and how it is done. And we too, said Pythagoras, as we enter this life from some other kind of existence [as he believed in reincarnation], behave like people who have moved out of town to join the crowds at this sort of show. Some of us are enslaved to glory, others to money. But there are also a few people who devote themselves wholly to the study of the universe, believing everything else to be trivial in comparison. These call themselves students of wisdom, in other words philosophers [“lovers of wisdom”]; and just as a festival attracts individuals of the finest type who just watch the proceedings without a thought of getting anything for themselves, so too, in life generally, the contemplation and study of nature are far superior to the whole range of other human activities. (Cicero, Tuscalan Disputations, 5.9)
Bizarre or no, they explain their reasoning, so it's worth explaining why you disagree. The "largely voyeurs" effect observed on Reddit is well attested to, and the idea that TikTok targets those is interesting (though I have no idea if the numbers agree).
I think the phrasing is what’s objectionable here. Sure most users are lurkers, but does that mean they’ll never produce anything original? Give me a break. This is just a roundabout way of calling other people “NPCs”
I disagree with their term “mimic”, as if anything mimics would be their own social class (see for instance clickbait/“prank” channels on YT, content creators on TikTok), but the underlying principle is correct.
He is not stating they will never produce anything original ever, that’s simply absurd. However he is saying consistent content creation is few and far between compared to the masses who lurk. And that it’s unreasonable to expect different given that real life obligations such as work sap away a good portion of our energy.
All three terms are a bit odd to me, but I think the theory is valid. In the advertising and fashion worlds don't these map to "trendsetters", "influencers", and "followers"?
Fashion companies look for trendsetters to see what may be coming next, and pay influencers to advertise to everyone else (followers).
Humanity breaks into three groups: originators, amplifiers, mimics.
Probably 95-97% of humanity or more are mimics. They will never produce much of anything original, that includes writing long-form blog posts or original media content (eg YouTube). They have little to no interest. This is backed up by stats on pretty much every platform, including Reddit and HN (the extreme majority are voyeurs not contributors). It's one of the reasons TikTok was so successful, it enabled the mimics to easily participate and pretend they were creating something new (while they were actually doing nothing but copying what someone else created, and getting a mental reward for it via likes/watches/followers). It's also why modern cameras in smartphones are so popular for the masses (+ Instagram), anybody can take a photo and feel at least ok about it (you don't have to be an expert photographer, you don't have to really create anything interesting and or new).
It doesn't matter what you do or what you change, the extreme majority will never meaningfully contribute. Even on services like TikTok and Instagram the masses have little to no interest in meaningful contribution, they produce a couple of videos or photos and then largely stop; the same holds true on Facebook, most people don't contribute very much into the network. They don't want to. They lack the desire to put in the time and effort (people are tired after work, have children/lives to tend to, etc etc), and they lack the creativity to originate persistently (the feedback isn't there because what they're producing won't get much attention).
Everybody isn't the same. Everybody isn't Picasso or Hunter S. Thompson and can't be. So what you're mostly left with are the people desperately seeking attention/self-promotion and the rare slice of originators.
You have to specifically build a platform to cater to the smaller slice of originators and intentionally block/disrupt the aggressive self-promoters that often don't contribute much new value. And if you do that, your platform will never be overly popular (which isn't what most VC backed services aim for obviously).