Well, 9 days actually. But close enough right?
My journey on Hive started with a desire for decentralization in my life. Inspired by Yanis Varoufakis and Cory Doctorow, I did some searching, found Hive, and made an account.
I think it's because of this path to joining the platform that I had such a difficult new user experience. I wasn't on-boarded by an existing platform, or delegated any HP by a friend. I was alone in this new digital sea, and it was sink or swim.
My first thought was to migrate some of my old posts over from my website. Then I immediately ran out of RC. So, over the next few days, I spent the meager RC I was earning to follow some people and communities, as well as to vote on a few posts that I was passionate about. I looked on the Hive website for any New User guides, but outside of technical advice, my search came up empty. I should have known to look on-platform, but without experience there wasn't an easy way for me to find guides, and learn the etiquette of Hive.
When I finally mentioned this slow existence in my first comment, people were kind and delegated some HP to me so that I could get started in earnest.
I still have yet to earn a payout, but that isn't my primary motivation. My goal is to find like-minded people here. To share ideas with them, and to replace the traditional social media networks that were feeding on my depression, anxiety, and anger.
Hive isn't perfect. For one, I doubt that my initial experience is unique, and I assume there are a lot of ghost accounts of people who never overcame the switching costs to commit to the platform. Outside of that, the discussions on Hive tend to be very niche. Hive-based games, Cryptocurrency discussion, and self promotion tend to be the bulk of the content that I see. There is a fair amount of spam as well as posts which in my opinion lack substance or personality. There is also some blatant platform manipulation, such as the Liketu community, which provides "synthetic on-chain reacts".
For all of my griping, there is a lot of genuine humanity here. I see the potential for Hive to become a platform where real human people come to be themselves. Away from any algorithmic curator, and away from any dogmatic moderation or censorship.
I'm bought into Hive as my new home for my musings. I hope you like reading them as much as I like writing them.
