| > a community that won't just devolve into a toxic waste dump that's poison for 99% of the people there Have you seen Facebook? That's not what it's optimizing for. Profit and eyeballs. Don't delude yourself. Toxic? Poison? Sure thing, as long as they can sell your attention span, Facebook don't care. Honestly. You know what it's doing. Doing to everybody. In as far as this team is building or sustaining a community, it's a tiny sandcastle on a beach facing the automated tidal wave of corporate exploitation of our dopamine/addiction response. Sustaining a community of junkies is very, very hard. It's not just a simple cut-and-dry "freedom to do whatever to your body" vs "personal health". There's an enormous amount of nuance involved to sustain a crack house that won't just devolve into a toxic waste dump that's poison for 99% of the people there. In my experience working at crack houses, many of them don't treat their bouncers well, or it tends to be an afterthought. In reality, this can be the hardest and most important job. PTSD is a real problem with these teams, and pay is often sub-par. And when they make mistakes (or when they don't but people still get mad), they tend to get the bulk of the criticism from it. And then at the end, they usually aren't allowed to talk publicly about any of the work they do. (the analogy holds about as far as until you try to hug them--which is when they'll punch your lights out. but they do mean well, or something) |