I'll be honest, I'm here because I'm annoyed with bitcoin twitter. There's just so much noise, and much of the culture over there (but certainly not all!) just reeks of fiat thinking and fiat discourse built on a fiat platform built on the fiat internet attention economy—just with a tinge of bitcoinerism.

The difference is between what feels like a rational bitcoiner seeking truth — "don't trust, verify" — and a fiat caricature of this mentality on bitcoin twitter. For the sake of argument I'm going to try and paint a picture of what I mean (to be totally clear, none of these things are precisely my actual stances, they are simply examples of a couple of hot button issues and how the two different mentalities in this dichotomy would approach them):

"Don't trust, verify" on mRNA: There are things still to be understood as to how mRNA technology works, whether it is ultimately conducive to human thriving, in which scenarios it may be effective, how it may have negative consequences, what the risks are in the known and the unknown, etc. That said, it seems clear that in certain populations, a significant number of lives have been saved that would have otherwise been lost. Additionally, no matter the empirical evidence, there are broken incentives at play and malicious actors influencing these systems because of human nature and existing government and institutional corruption. The data as of today suggest that the risk/benefit of the mRNA shots make no sense for many subsets of the population and the government mandates are therefore doing significant harm... (and so on)

Bitcoin twitter: Hurr durr mRNA is a kill shot, I'm fine with vaccines generally but these "vaccines" are a WEF communist plot, if you want to seek nuance as to what that means exactly you're NGMI

"Don't trust, verify" on energy/climate change: There are trade-offs to different forms of energy production and none of them is a panacea; oil is currently the lifeblood of society, and there are many issues that would need to be addressed with renewable sources if we were to adopt them on a widespread basis. It's also likely that rushing to move away from fossil fuels may cause substantial near-term human suffering. That said, oil is a finite resource and sunlight—relatively speaking—is not. Either way, it's clear that people with significant power would like to preserve that power, and it tends to be the case that subsidizing certain approaches to energy and climate change are therefore in fashion—often misguidedly. There are empirical facts about how certain elements on the periodic table interact with one another and, even though much of the "global warming" narrative is propaganda, there's good evidence to suggest the climate is changing—exactly how and why are still unclear as is whether we could do anything about it. The evidence seems against that, and in the meantime we should support the existing oil industry and mine bitcoin with the cheapest forms of energy no matter where they come from.

Bitcoin twitter: Hurr durr "renewable energy" is a scam perpetrated by people who want to kill your kids, anyone who supports solar energy is a planet killer because it's actually dirtier, have you even seen these pictures of how much land solar panels cover? Also the media is controlled by the elites and they want to perpetuate fear to control you, that's the real climate change.

The bitcoin twitter versions are polarized, nuance-less, "conspiratorial" (I say that loosely— I often think that the "conspiracy theories" can be at least representative of underlying truths, they're just annoying imprecise), and, like I said, a caricature of a genuine underlying argument.

To be clear, this is a different, but perhaps related, discussion from the one about "toxic maximalism". By my definition of toxic maximalism—someone with zero tolerance for altcoins—I'd consider myself a toxic maximalist. That's not what I'm addressing here, though. I'm talking about thoughtless propagation of bitcoinerist narratives that directionally align with a good argument but are presented in ways that are extremely imprecise and ultimately convince no one. It's basically the way discourse has worked for since the advent of the internet and social media—all under a fiat standard. And it's arguably the cause of a lot problems, including breaking down the walls for people to get out of their filter bubbles and open their mind to bitcoin.

Does bitcoin fix this? Arguably, the mechanisms by which low-quality engagement farming happens are fundamentally fiat. The entire twitter platform has been meticulously engineered over the course of a decade to maximize the time users spend in the app, and therefore rewards and propagates any and everything that can trigger the pleasure, anger, or fear centers in the brain. Anything that might get you to use twitter for more hours to medicate anxiety or make you feel like you belong in a subculture of ideologues who agree with your worldview, is going to be rewarded algorithmically with the dopamine of follows and likes. This is old news.

Is a platform like Stacker News the antithesis? Rather than awarding thoughtless memes, engagement farming, and nuance-less discussion with likes and dopamine, can content like this post—over 1,000 words, which took me over half an hour to write—be incentivized by a system natively built on bitcoin? Will we all be incentivized to actually put in the "proof of work" to make something thought-provoking and of value knowing that we might be given some small piece of this radically finite resource (bitcoin) in return for the value we brought to the world (no matter how small)?

I don't want it to sound like I have a sense of superiority here. As a bitcoiner, I often find myself directionally aligned with even the lowest-quality bitcoiner accounts on twitter that are (whether they know it or not) engagement farming with shitposting and controversy. I think the fundamental guidepost that ties almost everyone in bitcoin together is individual liberty, and I'll defend to the death their right to shitpost.

I just wonder what everyone here, in the earliest days of a sats-based "social media" platform like this, thinks about bitcoin twitter and whether a sats-based social economy can raise the quality of dialog and information across the web. And I'm also just experimenting with investing some time this morning writing these thoughts on paper wondering if other bitcoiners will find it valuable and send me some sats—thereby proving the incentive model.

I'd love to open the floor to conversation on this topic. As someone who spent much of his career so far covering fiat tech and building fiat content for a fiat media company, and seeing how destructive the fiat ad economy's incentives are for journalism, content, and discourse on the web generally, it's a fascinating one to me. Let me know your thoughts.