Rosalia on Nostr: A few things I still don’t understand: Zapping has a real cost: monetarily, yes. In ...

A few things I still don’t understand:

Zapping has a real cost: monetarily, yes. In a social network a lot of non monetary things have a real cost too. Liking, reposting, commenting to name a few.

Increase behavior that receive zaps:
(A) Seems like an incentive to behave in a way that will receive maximum approval from the community. This can create a conformist culture and for the individual it can result in a betrayal of self for fear of being rejected or not receiving enough zaps. This is very psychologically unhealthy for the individual and unhealthy for the culture.
(B) This immediately creates social classes and hierarchies for posts, people and ideas based on one single criteria that by itself doesn’t actually mean anything and it’s not a quality way to place value on content, ideas, or people.
(C) It will create an addiction to zapping and getting zapped
(D) A lot of people find zapping uninteresting/don’t want to zap or be zapped/ don’t want to go through the many technical steps required to participate in zap culture (or don’t know how)/ don’t have any disposable income. These people are all immediately marginalized.

Unrewarded unwanted behaviors:
(A)This essentially makes not receiving sats a punishment. People with more sats or more time to zap will easily punish those with fewer sats and less time. And it will be very easy for people to gang up on others.
(B) Unwanted behaviors are relative and there’s a spectrum. Disagreeing with someone can easily be seen as an unwanted behavior.
(C) Social networks without zaps already have a way of filtering “unwanted” behaviors. Don’t follow a person, mute them, confront them, exclude them. This type of rejection is punishment enough. It actually activates a fear response that goes back to when we were living in tribes and being rejected by the tribe meant low chances of survival. It’s punishment enough for a person to navigate the already existing forms of rejection.

Spam: There must surely be a better way to deal with spam.

I’m new here and I don’t really know the underlying values with which clients are being built and I don’t know what, philosophically, is trying to be achieved. My hope is to find a social network that encourages real discourse and real connection. Feeling connected to another/others is a more natural and healthier “reward” than a zap.

I don’t want to zap or be zapped. I want to talk to people and find community. It seems the zap culture, which feels hegemonic right now, will immediately make me an outcast.

It all seems very dystopian.