What: From 1/1 till the end of January, or until I run out of money (whichever happens first), I'm setting my default zap to 1k sats for content that I see in the course of my normal SN activity that adds value to the site.
Why: To see what kind of difference one person (me) can make sending economic signals on SN, and what the economic consequences will be given SN's current rewards paradigm.
Context: @ezkyis posted about an experiment he's running, zapping until he's given all his sats away, and seeing how long he can stay alive. @WeAreAllSatoshi has been doing something similar for a while now. Some time ago, @Undisciplined posted about an experiment of auto-adjusting his zap amounts based on what he has in his wallet. @carlosfandango and I were discussing the feasibility of implementing a version of this operation.
Yeah, but why do you think this will do anything? 1k sats is probably at least 20x what the median zap rate is, judging by the zaps I get. While this amount of money won't be significant to most people, the social signal that someone is appreciated by me should stand out quite clearly. And also, when I was doing the book club series of posts, a couple of extremely generous people zapped me every time. That was really encouraging, so maybe this smaller but broader shotgun approach will encourage someone else.
What does "adds value" mean exactly? They're my sats, so it means whatever I think adds value to SN. In particular, some of the things I particularly value include:
- nuanced thought
- interesting or novel perspectives
- elegant or careful or beautiful writing
- building on top of / adding value to other SN content via linking, composition, meta-commentary
- caring for the SN community, or at least not being an arrogant and sancrimonious douchebag
I posted a hot take and didn't get a 1k zap. Wtf? Either I didn't think your hot take added any particular value, or else I didn't see it. I'm not going to alter my SN consumption practicers (a 2024 goal is to be stingier with where I allocate my attention), so won't be searching to the ends of the earth to uncover every worthy SN post or comment. Some things will fall through the cracks.
Other details: I'll do my best to report on how this is going, but I'm not very good at keeping track of shit, so the reporting won't be as good as one might wish for.
Other thoughts: I'm having a bit of angst over my usual interaction paradigm, where I zap nearly every reply someone makes to me as a "thank you" to my conversation partner, unless I have some reason not to do that, or if the conversation gets really long. I'm worried that zapping 1k sats might bias me against this practice, and have a rebound effect in the opposite direction of what I want. Should I do a different amount for these kinds of zaps? Undecided about this.
RFC: I'm deferring till 2024-01-01 in order to think this through a little more, which means that discussion / suggestions / thoughts are very welcome.
Call to action: If you're reading this and are feeling an idea for an N=1 experiment stirring in your heart, do it! Or comment below, and we can think it through together.
Thanks: Vielen dank to the dudes named above for the inspiration.