Humans are a tribal, social species. We value the opinions of those we care about more than experts. This is why pointing to a dissertation on the economics of Steemit probably won't convince your friends and family to create an account here and start connecting with the community.
What Will Influence Them?
You.
You're their friend. You're the one they trust as not being crazy or falling for some silly, waste-of-time ponzi scheme. When you tell them about Steemit, they'll listen. How do I know this? I've been posting on Facebook about how amazing Steemit is. A number of my friends have signed up. Two of them have already taken the platform seriously and posted some incredible content:
@benslayton absolutely killed it with this post on how Steemit could change open source:
@jasonstaggers also blew me away with his most painful investing story:
Will all my friends do this well? No, of course not. But as I tell them about it in person, I can almost guarantee there is one question they will ask me and your friends and family will ask you:
But Where Does the Money Come From?
You should have a personal, internalized answer for them. You need to be sure of yourself as to why you are convinced before they will ever be convinced themselves. To me, here's the most important part of the whole discussion: Do they understand the nature of perceived value which backs tokens of exchangeable value (i.e. money) in the first place? Do you?
Enter the #bitcoinpizza Challenge!
Post a link in the comments to your own Steemit post in the #money category tagged with #bitcoinpizza explaining your answer to where the $$$ we see next to Steemit posts and comments actually comes from. It should be convincing, interesting, personalized, and to the point. It could also be a critique of the system, an argument there is no real money. It's up to you. Bonus points for a video so your friends and family can see your body language and tone of voice.
Based on a completely subjective criteria (my opinion, as influenced by the discussion here), I'll pick some of my favorites and send them some SBD (amount to be determined by the interest level in this idea). We'll let the discussion run for 72 hours from the time of this post.
In Summary:
- Write a new post in #money explaining to your friends and family where you think the $ values on Steemit come from.
- Be sure to include the #bitcoinpizza tag.
- Optionally, include this as the first line in your post:
**(in reply to the #bitcoinpizza conversation)** - The title can be whatever you want, but I'm going with: <your name here>'s Reply: Where Does The Money Come From?
- Comment below with a link to your post.
- 72 hours from now, I'll announce some winners and give them some SBD for their efforts (amount TBD).
To start things off, here's my entry:
Luke's Reply: Where Does The Money Come From?
If you like this idea, I'd appreciate your vote, and a follow on my blog. Thanks!