I’ve spent the last few days thinking about how engagement on Farcaster might be affecting mental health. I figured that I would write down my thoughts and see how the traverse throughout the course of this process of looking through and being in this degen world.

First, a disclaimer;

I am not a mental health professional. I have family members who are, but Let’s start with some notes. Farcaster is mostly involved with Degen, Base tokens, tipping, and allowances.

That is if you look at it from face value. You can see everything from tipping contests, to using tools like the money gun, and more in order to get tips to influencer fans, followers, and targets for engagement.

You can see different ways to grow your engagement. You can see growth hack groups to try and succeed in getting followers, and higher tiers of publicity.

People have created projects, platforms, and products galore. That said, we don’t see much in the way of culture. We more so see instances of people reaching out to popular holders. Influencers including wake, jacek, dwr, v, and more, enjoy the perks, the fame, and the prestige of having thousands of people try to be in their world.

Note, I did not say that we do not see any culture, but we don’t see too much culture. I see the same fame chasing that I’ve always seen in Twitter, Instagram, and more. But Farcaster is decentralized.

But is it decentralized, if a group of people can take away badges at any given point?

I don’t know, but I have some thoughts.

I’m sitting here thinking about ways I can infuse things that I am interested in outside of Farcaster with some thoughts infused in farcaster already. Notes, mostly.

Farcaster is niche:

Farcaster is first and foremost a niche product. I’ve seen a goal of 10 billion DAU. At the moment it’s around here (screenshot was pulled from farcaster.network 5/29/2024)

That’s a lot of people. But is it a vast demographic of people? Based on my daily feed, I don’t think so. However I don’t know because I do not know how many people are actually wandering around the app (using more than one login)

This doesn’t mean much with respect to what I’m talking about, but it does bring me to the topic of mental health.

A big thing I’ve noticed lately is the hyper focus on engagement. If you are a degen of sorts, you may have seen this too.

Let’s not forget the new tipping metric, raindrops.

All of these things are pretty degen, by which I mean, amazing.

I’ve noticed that a lot of people on Farcaster, whether they are influencers, builders, talk show hosts, or VCs, have a large sense of self esteem (well, their outward appearance gives a sense of high self esteem).

But what about the rest of us? I’ve had some ups and downs when it comes to my mental health in general. Now, however, Farcaster has become another catalyst for my well-being.

Many members on Farcaster discuss the importance of organic engagement. Along with organic engagement, root level engagement. Seems like that would mean a person who posts, leads to other folks replying to the original post, and more people replying to the replies.

My question, would this end up affecting a persons well being? The burnout from trying to generate engagement, the confusing metrics to adhere to. The imposter syndrome. More importantly, the ever changing nature of the platform. Peoples mindsets seem to be changing. For good or bad. Who’s to say.

This all has become an interesting conundrum for the social media developers as they navigate the landscape to become the onchain social media king of the hill. This seems to challenge folks to challenge folks even more so than the web2 platforms that ruled before.

Social Media marketing was a mess before. But now, we have a direct connection to users earning for their creations. Currently, a handful of companies have made their own attempts at mastering social media.

Uncuts, Alfafrens, FriendTech, PostTech, Xpet, and so many more, have made their way onto the decentralized social finance scene. I’ve finally made some headway with alfafrens.

Users trade, create, purchase, curate, and more to derive income generation opportunities. While these apps have promised success for many, and provided success for a few, I wonder what it was worth for the rest of us.

I can rip open the bandaid here about the epic disaster that was PostTech, but I won’t. I’m still sad.

Are all of these apps, platforms, and other tech, making a way to mess with a persons self esteem and mental health?

I’m pleased to see that farcaster has channels that are devoted to a persons wellbeing. So far, I’ve seen channels like (wellbeing) (neuroscience) (meditation) and more. Perhaps this is a start on how this new version of social media can achieve without taking a hit to a persons mental health.

Perhaps you can say that the togetherness that has been apart of the greater understanding of Degen can be a boon for folks when it comes to mental health as well.

Who knows what’s left out there. Who knows what happens next.