Thread

On #Nostr, liking something is a light, almost decorative gesture. I overuse it myself, but honestly, it doesn't really change anything. It doesn't build memory, it doesn't spread an idea, it doesn't leave a trace over time. Reposts, on the other hand, are hands that take content and put it back on the road. That's where Nostr breathes: the network doesn't reward you because you're liked, but because you circulate. If no one reposts, even the truest thing remains silent. And then there are zaps. They don't lie. They are value expressed without metaphors, attention that becomes cost, time that becomes choice. A zap says: this is valuable to me. It is not consent, it is responsibility. Here in lies the difference, stark and somewhat uncomfortable: on other social networks, a like is a cheap caress; on Nostr, only actions that risk something count. That is why likes are of little use. They are background noise, useful perhaps to the ego, but not to the protocol. If we want to make an impact, we must share or support. The rest is silence disguised as applause. Saying this is not cynical. It is simply seeing Nostr for what it is: not a place to be approved, but a place to circulate value.

Replies (35)

Yes and no. Likes are like "read receipts". At least you know that your post was seen. The attention economy is a bitch that can make one feel like one is merely shouting into the void. I totally agree that reposts are way more important on NOSTR than on the centralized alternative, X. It would be nice if NOSTR clients could have "scheduled" posts and reposts for that reason. Posts get the most attention when they're near the top of the feed so a scheduled post/repost feature could help but in all likelihood it would just get abused by the douchebag, self-serving bot runners. Zaps are nice but NOSTR is also a shit show where devs do whatever the fuck they want. Coordination seems to be treated as a watered down form of centralization and User Experience is sacrificed on the altar of Eric Cartman, i.e. "I'll do what I want!" Devs need to make NOSTR easier to use for those of us who have not spent the last 10 years immersed in code daily. Instead they prefer to vibe code new shit constantly and flip the bird to those lacking in technical proficiency. It's sad, but not surprising, as coders, generally speaking, prefer the company of computers to people and, as such, do not care to alpha test their developments with normies and noobs which is necessary to bridge the chasm.
Agreed. Perhaps, to borrow physics nomenclature, the type of like/reaction/emoji used offers the "direction" of the response and the zap offers the "magnitude" of the response? I've thought for a little while now that there must be an option to integrate a set of emojis into my @Jumble experience but I don't know how so I've just been doing without. I have the ability to like/react to posts using various emojis but I don't know how to incorporate them into the text of my posts that I compose.
Thanks. I tried scrolling through them to look for the normal emoji set, i.e. the set that everyone everywhere uses, not the custom weird sets. Couldn't find it and, as far as I could tell, I scrolled all the way to the bottom. I think I tried this before and ran into the same issue...probably why I just went without. If I was technically proficient enough, I'd add a normal set of emojis but I'm not, so I guess I'll keep going without emojis in my posts until someone else decides that the normal set of emojis is worth having.
Thanks. It's technically a touchscreen laptop but I don't ever use it that way. It sits across the room and I use a wireless keyboard and mouse to operate it. I tried looking in the browser settings for Brave but didn't see anything like that. Brave search AI results weren't exactly helpful either. I tried searching "touch" within a Brave settings tab but got no results.
Interactions on nostr should always increase visibility. Boost is explicit: i want my followers to see this. Quote is as explicit. Comment can mean many things but I would like to see what my follows reply to. The standard right now is to either not show any replies or focus on my follows' replies. I think there should be a third way: show me content several of my follows replied to. Reactions: it would be nice to also surface what my follows "liked". Zaps: this is the big one! If my follows give more than x to some content, I might care more than if they metely boosted it. Or maybe we should have zapped boosts?
Man this hits hard. Ive been mindlessly hitting like for so long but you just made me realize how shallow that is. On Nostr, we’re not just chasing ego we’re moving value. A Repost is the fuel, and a Zap is the real respect. Thanks for waking me up with this. This is the kind of truth that actually makes the network breathe. I'm definitely sharing this one