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Re: Everybody Has a Take on Bubble. Here’s Mine

📅 2023-05-22

🏷 Gemini

🏷 Bubble

Michael Nordmeyer:

Or is this a false dichotomy and both ways can coexist and everybody is happy, because they can find what they need, without bothering the others. Elevated engagement for the right reasons is a net-positive in my opinion.

That is where I hope things are heading.

I believe people fall into two categories:

those who are happy with gemlog-style slow and disconnected communication, because they feel like writing well has worth and meaning, and they don't need an audience to acknowledge that, and
those who find the whole concept frustrating and disorienting.

I see an analogy here with introversion/extroversion and how one can derive motivation from internal/external sources. (Although, this being about human behavior, there are no sharp delineations.)

In any case, why should Gemini cater to only one of these groups and not the other? The protocol is simple for sure, but it's perfectly capable of serving the needs of both groups. Anyone regardless of their preferred communication style can enjoy the other benefits of Gemini, such as privacy, lack of bloated web technologies, no unsolicited ads, and being in control of the overall experience with their client selection, to name a few.

This is total speculation, but I feel like the long-form gemlog-preferring group is much smaller than the microbloggers. There are many reasons, but an important one is that serious long-form blogging is more like an art form in that takes dedication and focus, and these things are in short supply. Microblogging is something that many more people are able to partake in, enabling them to express their thoughts and feelings in a way that seems impactful. Here we should be very careful before making value judgements about which form of communication is "better": one may favor thoughtfulness, and the other immediacy and feedback loops, but both have their strengths and weaknesses.

As a technology Gemini is pretty self-limiting because text-oriented people are a minority in the general population. Perhaps Gemini's maximum appeal is below some magical threshold that still enables communities to thrive in a healthy way and not descend into competitions of attention and meaningless internet points, even if we introduce the connective tissue of a social network.

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