Farcaster

@walkntalk  Rantcast 
How do you make someone feel like shit while giving them $40? 

Easy. Give them $25, then $10, then $5—and tell them the reason for their dwindling rewards is performance-based. Welcome to a rewards systems gone wrong.

I love Farcaster. I love the people here, especially @stephancill, @j4ck.eth  @mcbain and my new favorite climate caster @kaufman 

But this slow-drip discouragement loop? It’s not it. Feels like getting financially negged by some findom-y boss I never asked for. 

Rethink the incentive architecture @farcaster @dwr.eth @v. Do not double down by bifurcatating pro v amateur users—newsflash: what you want is more amateurs! armatures do it for the love. that’s like literally what the word means. This isn’t the auto-telic retention flywheel you’re seeking—it’s some financially induced vortex of emotional erosion. 

It’s USDdemoralizing

A sufficiently decentralized social network. farcaster.xyz

Technowatermelon. Elder Millenial. Building Farcaster. 

nf.td/varun

CEO at Google • co-founder & rectangle mover at /icebreaker • icebreaker.xyz/j4ck • /j4ck • DJ sixsix

Reporter and writer. I cover energy, climate change and geopolitics. Contact me via my website www.alexanderckaufman.com and subscribe to kaufman.substack.com.

The TikTok for walk and talks.

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Chief Naming Officer. Poet-lawyer. Creating, casting, and coining the conceptual names that (I pray) will empower us all to win it all.

and then here come the REWARDS app
taunting me every day 

your grade is coming up....
what are you doing?
what are you doing for the rewards?

if you don't improve 
we're going to drop you to 3 USDC next week?
look at the leaderboard
look at the leaderboard

you're dropping 
keep casting 
keep casting 
you're still dropping

you're casting but 
you're not engaging
keep casting 

it's easy 

just remember what you did to get 
25 USDC that one time....
two weeks ago

wait, what did i do?

"Your score is based on the 
engagement your casts 
receive, adjusted by the number
of followers"

ok, so i'm being judged 
for how engaging i've been 
and then graded
and then rewarded

and each week i get
less and less
engaging 

and less and less
engagement.

and less and less
USDC

this is a nightmare

Thanks man. I was actually totally shocked at how bad it felt. The irony is that it would not have felt this bad had I not been given anything. Completely irrational, yet totally predictable — "predictably irrational," as Dan Ariely would put it. 

And it turns out there's tons of research on this: 

 “Losses loom larger than gains.”
— Kahneman, D., & Tversky, A. (1979). Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision under Risk.

“When money is used as an external reward for some activity, the subjects lose intrinsic interest for the activity.”
— Deci, E. L. (1971)

“Violations of expectations provoke emotional arousal that is often negative.”
— Burgoon, J. K. (1993). Interpersonal expectations, expectancy violations, and emotional communication.

“When individuals cannot understand how their actions relate to outcomes, performance-contingent rewards decrease motivation.”
— Eisenberger, R., & Cameron, J. (1996).

i think it's good feedback if it makes you feel this way regardless of whether it's perceived to be irrational

i've seen multiple others crash out on the timeline about the rewards despite them being quite measly if you consider the time you actually spend on here so there is a big psychological angle that weighs a lot more than the actual money you're getting which shouldn't be ignored

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thank so much @reeeny. 

love the ideas in here. 

that the $3 could 
be viewed as an 
external permission 
slip. esp for folks who 
need a reason to hit “cast.”

$3 felt fun for me too
$25 felt weirdly 
professionally 
validating tbh. 
like it became it real. 
something i could do
for a living 🤦🏻‍♂️

and then came the drop
and loss aversion 
kicked in hard. 

why did it 
matter so much?

I’d love to have more 
debates like this!

not just dunking, 
moging or cheerleading—

trying out ideas. 
testing them. 
anecdotalytics 
then analytics. 

that’s how we get 
better community governance. 
not just votes, 
but debates that inform the vote.

so thank you @reeeny for this. 
let’s keep the castversation going!! 

maybe we should start a platform debate channel? because i think they’re getting the pro model supremely wrong.

but, ultimately, @dwr.eth and @v  decide
and we abide or
vote with our thumbs….

imo that’s not seeing a good foundation
for decentralized governance 

@walkntalk

Found this via walk n' talk app and while I agree that it can feel bad to go down to a lower tier it can also be an incentive for people to actually cast a bit more, because you have an external motivator, which can be great for introverts or people not sure whether they should cast or not.

They can say: Well, I am doing it for the rewards, when in reality they like it. I receive $3 once a while and it feels great even though it's nothing compared to my usual income. I'd probably not pick up 3$ if it is covered in shit, but yet am very happy about $3 notification here.