Hi Steemians!
This is my first post ever on Steem after having been a member for around a week or so now. I have read tons of posts, even voted on a few (for some reason I was nervous to upvote the first time...strange, I know), but finally felt the need to share with the community. I wanted to share my experience with trying to introduce Steem to my coworkers who have zero knowledge of cryptocurrencies.
As we all know, trying to explain Cryptocurrencies to someone that has never even heard of them before is one of the most difficult things to do. For me, when I first heard of Bitcoin five years ago, the hardest part was trying to wrap my head around how something that isn't tangible can have value (I occasionally still feel this way when I hear of new advances).
I expected the typical questions from my coworkers surrounding how something that isn't an actual "thing" can have value; however, the response that I got when I was trying to explain Steem to my coworkers was almost an attack on me wanting to try to be a part of this community and try to better myself outside of my day to day work. Things like, "this is just a bunch of computer mumbo jumbo", "this will never become a big thing", "why waste your time on something that doesn't actually exist", were said by my coworkers, what a blow to my ego...
Now I love my coworkers and they aren't closed minded people so I am going to chalk it up to them "lashing out" against something that they didn't understand, but I just wanted to know if anyone else has experienced something like this when sharing Steem with others?
I personally am so excited by the prospect of Steem growing and becoming something much bigger than it already is, so sharing it with others that have never heard of Steem is important to me. The question remains however, how do we bridge the gap between those of us that have already discovered the amazing world of cryptocurrency, specifically Steem, with those that wouldn't necessarily seek out this community on their own. I feel that Steem will eventually need these "casual fans" to truly grow and go mainstream, but how do we get them to the adoption point? Obviously forcing something on people rarely works for adoption so I am going to leave it be with my coworkers for now. Hope to hear from others on ways that they have "spread the word."
Thanks for reading everyone! So happy to be a part of this amazing community, even if I am just a little minnow at this point!!