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Comment by soneca | Hacker News Reader

I've been reading this for the last few days, finished today.

Very powerful ideas, impressive writing, inspired and sparked new thoughts in my mind every reading moment.

One thing that is mentioned en passant that I would like to know the author's opinion about: if seeking status is so important for these tools growth, what drives the majority of lurkers that are the majority of said growth?

I imagine it is entertainment, the third axis that the author chose not to dive in. But he has such interesting insights that I would love to read a follow-up essay on what drives the "status-giving monkeys".

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> what drives the majority of lurkers that are the majority of said growth?

Not the author, but my take on it: since status is a scarce resource, the majority of people are not able or willing to put in the work to acquire status. Instead, they live vicariously through the status of others.

> what drives the majority of lurkers that are the majority of said growth?

I'd argue its at least partly education. People not yet confident or committed enough to pursue status seeking activities watching and learning from others to explore their interests...

> what drives the majority of lurkers that are the majority of said growth? It would be interesting to see what the demographics of lurkers are. Are these mostly older people who are not so enthralled with seeking status via likes/followers but still want to be able to minimally participate? I'd also be curious to know if the propensity to be a lurker is dependent on the platform - i.e. the work to gain status is too high for some platforms, but not for others - or if some people are generally more likely to be lurkers on all platforms.

> inspired and sparked new thoughts in my mind every reading moment

That's my experience too. It probably helps that I'm building a social networking website[1] right now.

This article would probably benefit from being re-read at intervals for new insights.

[1] MeowCat: https://github.com/cabalamat/meowcat2

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