On Finding Your Community on Nostr

When I arrived here about six months ago, I had no idea what I was doing (and I’m still very much figuring it out). As I’ve written about previously, the only other time I was ever on social media of any kind was as a teenager, circa 2003-2005, on a website (there were no mobile apps at the time) called Nexopia. Cheers if you were there too; it was a very niche, of-its-time-and-place thing (western Canada in the early 2000’s).

I came here not because I had any desire to return to social media. In fact, I was rather against the whole thing, hence my complete avoidance for the past twenty years. It seemed to be doing more harm than good to most of the people I knew who used it, and the wider cultural discussion around it seemed to confirm this. Jonathan Haidt’s The Anxious Generation made a lot of sense to me, although it is now unfortunately being used to legitimize social media bans for youth, which is of course just a front for digital ID rollouts. I believe young kids probably should be banned from social media, but individually, by their parents, not by the state. I think a lot of grown adults would be better off without it too, at least in the way it is commonly implemented.

Thus, I wasn’t really in a hurry to come here. Social media seemed, on balance, to be a net-negative thing, and I didn’t yet know that it could be done better (I also didn’t know that Nostr was anything other than social media). But eventually I came and established an identity for no other reason than some bitcoiner on youtube suggested it was somehow vaguely important.

I went with the only client I was aware of at the time (Primal), and for a few weeks was unclear on the distiction between the client and the protocol. I didn’t know who to follow or how to discover people, so I did what I suspect a lot of early bitcoiners-turned-nostriches do: I just searched up and followed a bunch of well known Bitcoin content creators.

That’s a fine place to start, but it gets stale rather quickly. I’m familiar with these people’s views, and a lot of their posts are just promoting content that I’ll probably run into elsewhere (not to mention the repetitive cross-promotional reposts). At tens of thousands of followers, you’re also unlikely to strike up a conversation with any of them and that’s fine; they are minor internet celebrities and I am a common tradesman, so we don’t really have much to connect on.

The beauty of Nostr, for me, is found in the profiles with small to medium size follower counts. Random people, often living obscure lives, united by a common desire for freedom and sovereignty. People, frequently anonymous, expressing themselves honestly, telling whoever cares to listen (even if it’s no one) what they find cool or interesting or beautiful.

I used those initial “celebrity” follows as inroads into the murky community of Nostr by poking through their replies and checking out interesting profiles. I wandered, I replied, I zapped, I looked into people who had replied to other posts by the people I’d just followed. In this way I started to uncover a miniscule portion of the community here, like incrementally revealing the map of a video game environment. This process continues to this day and, for all intents and purposes, appears to have no end.

In the process, I have come to understand the protocol and the people who use it a bit better. I have familiarized myself with four different clients so far, and will continue to explore (each one is a bit janky, yet endearing, in its own way). I have come to understand that what makes this thing valuable to me, at this particular time in my life, is that it is a place where I can be exposed to different, often admirable ways that other people live their lives, and it is a place where I can practice my writing in a public forum, developing ideas and sometimes receiving feedback. I also dabble in memes and other low-effort stuff because that’s just fun.

As I continue my journey of exploration here, I am now on the lookout for the following:

1. More tradespeople. Whether you’re an electrician like me or something else entirely, we share a common perception of the world, one that is inherently anchored to hard physical reality. Plumb and level are not open to interpretation. In the nebulous, digital world of freedom tech, I also suspect that we’re not yet well represented.

2. More women. The freedom tech space, particularly the Bitcoin camp which I’m more familiar with, tends to lean pretty heavily masculine. I’ve probably listened to enough circlejerks about how communism is evil, America is number one, and men need to get punched in the face more. I agree with some of that, but it’s grown a bit tiresome. Perhaps many women agree with that too, but they tend not to go on about it at such length. There are other things worth talking about and, as much as the mainstream might try to deny it, women broadly experience the world differently than men and therefore have a distinct perspective, which I find refreshing.

3. More nature. Whether it’s farming on your homestead, hiking, travel, scientific advances in mycology, whatever. Stuck in a city for the time being, I need more of this in my life until such time as I can experience it more in-person.

4. More nerding out. It doesn’t really matter what it is; when I see someone really enthusiastic and engaged with something they love, that brings me a little joy. I don’t knit, I don’t know much about Mesoamerican history, I’ve never ridden a horse, but if you’re totally into one of these things and you have something interesting to say about it, I’m all ears. The range of human experience is effectively infinite and my slice of it is, and always will be, infinitesimal, but I still want to expand it forever.

No doubt this list will change over time, as I change. I hope to never stop learning, never stop changing, never stop improving. I do not wish to grow moss upon me. But if you found some really cool moss, post a picture of that shit; I want to see it.