A friendly word to those joining the #Nostr from dinosaur social networks: 🦕

Drop your preconceived notions about what this is. You may have heard things somewhere, or showed up with a built-in bias as to the kinds of things we talk about here. That's understandable, since most people live in a bubble. Chances are, you do too. We also live in a bubble, but one that we created together, mostly over the past year while you weren't here. That's okay, we still welcome you to join us.

Maybe thought to yourself, "Yeah, I'll check out that weird bitcoiner place sometime." but then you went right back to doing whatever it is you were doing, and it slipped your mind. Maybe you actually discovered a client 8 months ago, fired it up, and nobody talked to you or zapped you because you only followed three people and didn't ask any questions about how relays work, what it means to sign uncensorable notes with your own private key that nobody else can revoke, or you never added a Lightning address because it seemed too hard. Then you left, thinking that's all there was, never digging into the ecosystem that was being built all around you, exploring brand new apps running on a messaging protocol that nobody owns but everybody can use, and where you can actually have real-time conversations with the builders to improve your experience.

If this is your first time here, my advice is that you should follow as many people as possible, and actually reply to them when they say hello, drop a 🤙 or a 🫂, and gladly welcome you. Your timeline is not generated by a centralized algorithm that feeds you content to make you feel happy, sad, angry, or confused. Your timeline is plebs, being plebs. Real people enjoying freedom and community, inspired by the potential they see in this new world where would-be influencers have to put in actual effort to get followers, every single day.

We know we're still small. We know the apps don't always work. We know there's a lot more work to be done to build this thing up, and we're doing the work, because we know what the Nostr is worth, not just for us, but for anyone who has ever been alienated from, ignored by, or forcibly evicted from another online community. And we know that can't happen here.

Welcome. We hope you enjoy what we see. 🫂🤙