Writers in Web 3.0 — A Series (1)
Their Stories, Their motivations, and Why They Are a Step Ahead
Writers, it’s time to get going. We’re off on our journey to the latest version of the internet: Web 3.0
Maybe you’ve heard of it. Maybe you did some research. Maybe you were even courageous enough to try it out for yourself.
Since September, I belong to those in the last group: courageous enough to try it out. I’m not even sure anymore what led me there…
Was it because I read an article about Bitclout?
Probably.
Because, all my friends, acquaintances, and family are NOT there. So no one could’ve told me about it.
It’s been 73 days since I created my profile on the DeSo Protocol Blockchain.
I got entrenched in the community — and connected with extremely friendly, helpful, smart, and fun people.
As you might imagine, a lot is going on at DeSo that has to do with NFT art. There are many talented artists there, curating and selling their artwork.
But that’s not all. There is a bunch of writers as well. I reached out to a handful, spoke to some of them online, and asked them a few questions:
How did they join DeSo? What motivates them to write there? What do they foresee in the future for their writing on the DeSo blockchain?
Over a series of articles, I’d like to share their stories with you. So, you can get a feeling for the writers on DeSo — and decide if you’d want to join and still be early to the future.
Meet Eugene — One Haiku a Day
(or a tanka, acrostic, cinquain, and the occasional “whatever” or screwed up version of any of them ;))
Eugene works full-time for a computer systems company in his town. He is also a humanitarian clown and a “short stuff writer”. He says he’s not a social media kind of guy but he likes new things and artistic stuff.
“You can spend a maximum of 5mins on my Facebook or Instagram page and you’re done because I’m not really active there. But I like to play with DeSo. It’s interesting.”
He joined very early, in April this year, because he heard of DeSo on Clubhouse. Coincidentally, he had a nagging feeling to start writing one short-form poem each day.
“It’s my little meditation of the day. I write a short poem. It’s my accountability thing to write it on DeSo. It’s a space that is empty. It feels good to scratch on the surface to look at inner stuff. ”
For him, DeSo offers “the empty space” that Facebook fails to offer. In addition, there’s an element of anonymity on DeSo that allows him to write his daily haiku without pressure. The community answers with Diamonds (direct tips to your posts), feedback, or investments into his creator coin.
Creator Coin? A little digression.
The DeSo help for newbies created by DeSo user @thorsten describes the creator coin like this:
For Eugene, DeSo is the first public place where he is publishing. It’s his experimenting space for writing his poems. He captures them in a red notebook and then shares them online.
Generally, he likes the positive interactions on DeSo, because he is drawn towards positive people.
And there are many positive people on DeSo compared to classic Social Media!
I see that as a huge plus, too. Facebook and Twitter became battlegrounds of division for opinionated groups. It often depresses me to look at their algorithm dictated feeds. A feeling that DeSo lacks completely for me. That’s not to say that there aren’t any critical voices there, especially towards the core team that works on the DeSo blockchain…
But the criticism is constructive and grounded on a shared vision of a decentralized internet, that allows its users to be masters of their data and profit directly from it.
Back to Eugene.
When you look at his stats:
- 236 days on the DeSo blockchain
- 371 diamonds received — at current value of roughly $4
- His coin price currently at $24.34
you might be disappointed about the monetization value of DeSo. But don’t be fooled. As Eugene said about himself: he is not a social media guy. He is not very active. Once a day he writes his haiku, then maybe gives a diamond for something he likes and hops off again.
“I wish I could generate more interaction. VitaLife is my fan. We had a bit of interaction with her. I appreciate that.”
He’s not in for the game of making money through his short poems necessarily. Even though you can hear between the lines that he sees potential to become more popular.
“I looked at my stats and it says I got a total of 366 diamonds. I think it’s about 2 to 3 for each poem. Interesting to think if it was really popular and 300 or 1000 people liked it.
Maybe in a few years I’m happy I did it on DeSo.”
For now, his main ambition though is to write his daily poem and continue to do so.
“I haven’t missed a day for more than 200 days. I have the feeling to be able to do this a year without a problem. It’s something I want to do.”
Other than that he plays with ideas in his head to write longer poems, a short novel, or more likely a play. And he sometimes wonders, if there is an interest for commissioned poems but couldn’t find the right crowd on DeSo for it yet.
“For a while, I thought I could write poems for people. Riffing on an idea that a person might have. I’ve done it once inspired by a conversation I had. Maybe someone would like the idea. But so far I wasn’t able to generate a request to do it actually.”
In Eugene’s opinion, there is still too little meaningful interaction on the platform with other writers. He’s looking forward to deeper interactions and finding people around writing “cryptic haikus”.
“Currently, it’s not a lot of interaction. 8 people liked the poem yesterday. Maybe one person wrote: I like the thought. Every once in a while there is actual discussions. People will write something they thought about. If I’m captured by the thought enough I might respond. It doesn’t go that deep. I guess that would feed me more. Not the need to be seen — I mainly want to get my haikus out. But I would love to interact with people around that: Cryptic Haikus. Maybe I am building something for that.
I understand his point. Some days feel a little slow on DeSo. At the moment, there are 3000 active users worldwide each day. But there’s also an opportunity in that. If you join now, it’s still early. There’s a huge opportunity to find your place in this community — and it will be easier today than tomorrow. Don’t wait for Coinbase to start listing DESO and create a real hype for people to join.
Me personally, I am there for 2.5 months now and what got me attached is the great variety of creators, developers, and crypto-enthusiastic OGs (first users of DeSo, “orignal gangsta”). And I’m wishing for more writers to join Eugene, me, and the others who you might read about in one of the following articles.
For this article, I asked Eugene for his favourite poem. So here we go:
I remember you
the playfulness in your eyes
acknowledging truth
not found in the commonplace
hidden by punctilio
they come to us keen
devising for a lifetime
and we are ready
the winding road before us
filled with living potentials
Stay tuned for the upcoming writers on DeSo and subscribe to my newsletter to make sure you won’t miss it.
Two weeks ago, I also began to write articles about DeSo, NFTs, and how to mint them. Thank you again to fellow Medium writer Birgit Renate who gave me the first impulse to actually do it. I hope to see you and your art on DeSo one day.
