Our middle son turned 32 yesterday, which called for a short visit to Facebook for the usual blah-blah-yadda-yadda that goes with such occasions.
Not that he's actually on Facebook much... but like many folks in the world, we use Facebook for one of the few things it's actually good for: Catching up one the latest "How's your ingrown toenail?" chit-chat and sharing pictures of the grandkids' Easter Egg hunts, new kittens and what have you.
Way Back When...
Just to be crystal clear here, I will confess to being one of the early adopters when "this new thing called Facebook" showed up sometime in... in... when was it? 2005? Something like that.
The attraction was pretty lame really... mainly due to MySpace having become an unparalleled shitshow of profile customization that rendered the site virtually unusable, and the standardized blue/white layout of Facebook was actually slightly intriguing in the sense that it suggested that you actually needed to provide a tiny measure of originality in order to be seen.
Yeah, well... so I was wrong about that. At least in the long term. Believe it or not early Facebook wasn't so bad...
So what's my point here?
Well, for one, I don't miss Facebook in the slightest, even though I recognize that it does have its purpose. I also don't miss a feed filled with "Betty Sue invited you to take the quiz 'What Color Unicorn Poop Are You?' and share the results with your friends!" and similar intellectual offerings.
And no, I'm not revealing what color unicorn poop I am. That's for me to know, and you to never find out...
Anyway, it was a good reminder of why I was very ready to create a Hive account back in early 2017.
But Here's the Thing:
Of course, the other thought running through my mind was this: the more mainstream adoption anything manages to achieve, the more said venue will be populated by... well... the mainstream who adopts it.
At the moment, Hive remains small enough that it still has a measure of weird authenticity going for it. Which all makes me ponder whether — if we actually succeed in drawing in, let's say, 10 million users — substantially growing the community will that also mean that we'll lose a chunk of our uniqueness; our edgy identity?
Maybe not.
Here's the thing, kids... Hive isn't actually all that different from the pre-Facebook social blogging we lost when MySpace and Facebook became a thing. As in, the stuff a fair number of us were doing circa 1999-2005. In fact, Hive is enough like those old formats — which I really enjoyed — that it's substantially why I even made an account here, back in early 2017.
And That Means...
That there are still a lot of people out there who are not brainless morons who'd come and be part of a community like we have here, precisely because they are sick to death of quizzes about Disney Princesses or the color of Unicorn Poop.
Do I have a point here?
Well just that there's a decent place between Facebook-style mass adoption and and being so far off the beaten track that nobody even knows Hive exists.
Just consider this place with maybe five million active users (rather than a few tens of thousands) and what I difference that might make.
Sure, Hive needs to grow. But we can also afford to be somewhat picky about who we invite.
Discernment matters...
Thanks for reading, and it's almost the weekend!
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Created at 20210409 16:32 PDT
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