Methinks the lady doth protest too much~ genuine responses to genuine behaviour! No, tagging people you met in person isn't flamboyant, and the rest of the rhetorical questions dance around the crux of it in the same purposeful manner with the same dismissive attitude. Much as I responded to you on your last post, it's hinting at the slightly revisionist painting of an entire chain of thousands of people posting every minute as dead, useless and full of big mouth people from one dinner at the end of a long conference where a few community members were happy to have you along and didn't pin you down to lecture you. It reads a bit as though you feel a touch slighted because somehow the global audience on chain didn't notice you on one random first post looking down on them and the ways they build in interact. Much as with any other platform, shouting any message without working to cultivate an audience shouldn't be too much of a surprise in terms of the levels of engagement being below where you had hoped.

Where our paths diverge on the voluntary social actions and the way we build personal relationships is in the way we interpret and act on them. Pretending that saying 'hey follow me!' is the inflammatory part here is quite a purposeful framing and cop out. The hours spent at dinner for most everyone else seemed genuine hours of interpersonal interactions, not a task to be slogged through for effort credits surrounded by big mouths preaching Hive at you and stomping on your attempts to be heard. That's perhaps a subtle distinction, but for me is the one that matters, as trying to start a convo with you wasn't really recognized or welcomed- I won't speculate on the whys. However, sitting at your end of the table, speaking with two other non-Hive natives for the bulk of dinner about nothing to do with Hive at all, and being also around your convos with our other lovely new friend, the bits that you lean heavily on as a 'challenge'- how you had to leave to be free of the purported hard sell but also now expect an instant audience, don't really jive.

It's that sort of 'prove yourself to me' style of declaration, paired with a bit of aloofness and disinterest in speaking further (at least to me) that are now being repacked with slight insults to an entire platform of people who weren't at dinner and who aren't me, revised into a curious take designed to goad a defensive response. I guess for me personally that's a little bit bad faith, and doesn't give me much insight into who you are or what you want to build as a superstar. Where I bristle a bit has nothing to do with any interactions we did or didn't have, but is approaching a whole online network of people as if they're an extension of a few individuals and need to be... Shamed? Prodded? I'm not sure...into behaving the way you expect. Perhaps it's just tone or the lack thereof in writing, but I suspect a lot of it is improvisation the ways that most social media works, and it just happens to be one I personally like the least 😂

The things that do engage me personally and the way that I work around the chain are far from perfect, especially as I get more and more moved towards doing offline and off-chain work on the behalf of those who want to just use the online, on-chain space. What I value above all is kindness, curiosity, and personality. I do hope a post that is centered on those things about you is forthcoming, as those are the ways that we find the people in our tribes to interact with. The beauty of truely owned web3 is that you could happily proclaim that the dinner was on the moon and we spat in your food and you took a Ferrari to the after dinner rooftop date, and there will always be a place for you to say that. I can't ever stop you, and my identity and opinion mean nothing when it comes to you finding those that that style of posting resonates with, and that's specifically why I love Hive so much.

When I started here, I fit the definition of maven. Perhaps I still do. After 7 years in the web3 space, my path has ended up leading me to often doing unglamourous work, versus spending time building my personal brand alongside Hive's. Perhaps the choice is wrong, but that's also a struggle I've written about for years now and I still don't have the exact answer that's right for me. The more you learn and the more you fall in love with people, the harder you want to work for them. I suspect my maven balance will always teeter on that turning point, and after this year's work I plan to sit down and have a think on which makes me happier and has a better impact- being content creation centric, or taking on some of the things I love less because I love Hive more. Tough to say!