💾 Archived View for tilde.pink › ~maria › log › 2021-10-08_creators_paradox.gmi captured on 2021-12-03 at 14:04:38. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
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As y'all know (or don't know, I don't care), I play Infinity the Game and I engage in the hobby, as tabletoppers call it. That means I somewhat collect miniatures, assemble, paint and sometimes I also do the same to terrain and scenery required to play with.
James Tomasino (the person running cosmic[1]) has been a strong advocate for creating content, especially gemini-only content. Not just to make gemini more popular, but as a means to keep the current capsuleers and travellers around. But also to attract new ones.
A small excourse into this "content", if you don't care, skip this paragraph.
To make someone stay within a space, you need to offer "value". For a library that's the amount of accessible books and the knowledge or entertainment within them. For the www today that's mostly the form of interactivity and engagement with others (may it be positive or negative, easy or hard, encouraging or depressing, that's not the point). Every space that attempts to gather a group requires something useful for that group. And gemini, being a mostly text-based space, with intentionally limited power to create value on a social basis, has a much easier time leveraging content (as in text, like the library) than other places, because it's less distracting, it can never become about the presentation.
With that in mind I started out, originally, to approach gemini from a technical perspective (something I can do because of my background) and build things for gemini, attempt to implement helpful guidelines and constructs. I wouldn't say that failed miserably, it just didn't produce the outcome I had hoped for. That spike in original content. After a cooldown phase, I guess I realized that content doesn't get created by improving the means to deliver that content, or by ajusting the circumstances how capsuleers interact with another or something ideological. Instead I have come to the point where I think that strong content (content that is consumed happily by a significant portion or geminispace visitors) can only be about the content itself. The technical means to deliver the content itself are not enough to be the content.
That last paragraph turned out awfully theoretical. Onwards to where I ended up in. I love how you can write for nightfall.city and wrap an argument, a position or a statement into a setting. I am still learning how to do that with the pulse, but I tend to think I am improving. Eventually "the boring log" will vanish and most of what I want to say will be through the pulse. As a second outcome I have decided that I want to create content about Infinity the Game. Partly because it's non-technical, partly because I have risen far beyond the beginner level in the game (while still being far from an expert level) and partly because it may spike the interest in a game that's not only deep and competitive and balanced, but also is immense fun to play.
When you're into a hobby, also creating content about that is a paradox. You set aside time for the hobby, yet you don't spend time with the hobby, instead you spend time around the hobby. Time which you could spend with the hobby. And that puts me into a very bad position. In the past, especially during COVID and the lockdowns, I explicitly decided to favor spending time with the hobby as a means to cope with the fallout. And other reasons, too. Reasons that haven't vanished.
For a week now I wanted to collect the existing material on the www and on youtube to start out with, so I don't duplicate too much content. Yet when I sit down and think, now I could start, I instead sit down and paint something. Ultimately I don't even feel bad about it, but it's still very paradoxical that I'd constantly favor to paint instead of hyping others to engage with me in the hobby. Maybe there is a deeper lesson to be learned here, why not everyone becomes a sports coach for youngsters. To do that you'd need to make a commitment. And stick with it. I seem to be reluctant to do that. Maybe I'll write about this when I figured out why.