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Dear Unknown Spammer,
With the hype around 'March Madness,' you're probably tempted to come here and fill our ears with inane babble, or make irrelevant lol-ish comments in hopes we'll pity zap you, or just ChatGPT your way to victory. But look, I care about you, so I want to help you get out of this phase in your life. I know you wouldn't be looking for “easy money” if things were going great, so don't waste your time trying to game SN.

SN looks like a normal website—right?

In form and function, sure. It's to newsgroups and forums of the past, and its developer himself likens it to Reddit. Reminds me of the RPG forums I used to post on as a kid. All well and good… but this isn’t Reddit, son.
Stacker News is a microcosm of the new cybereconomy, which, it should go without saying but maybe to you it does not, is bitcoin only. And you’re failing here because you’re importing your bad Instagram comment section habits (from the fiat internet) into an economic model that isn't backwards compatible with you.
How so?
  1. You’re being charged in the most perfect store of energy ever devised just to post here. Even your ChatGPT fueled run-a-thon sentences are costing you.
  2. That low effort post? It clearly took very little work or thought to produce, making it truly worth-less. Everyone here decides their own pricing mechanism, so how much to zap (or not) is solely up to them. You might not get 0—someone might give you a 5-sat pity zap sometimes—but you're incurring a massive opportunity cost in a deflationary, absolutely scarce “asset” that you will feel for years. “Congratulations, your 20 sats are up 100%!”
Don't do that. SN Is a value-for-value environment, but those are just words. It's trickier than that. To find out what that really means, let's peruse some of the site’s top posts…
And what we see here is an extremely diverse group. Just selecting a small sample:
  • @DarthCoin, one of the most popular guys here, known for his infamous “toxicity” discussing the value of kindness. 👀
  • @davidw basically beat United Nations country profiles at their own game by creating a comprehensive fact sheet about Uruguay. This isn’t even (directly) related to bitcoin! 😳
  • One of the highest zapranked posts of all time was a BTCer ( @btc_remnant 👋) talking about his disillusionment over adoption and the dangers of larping / excess optimism.

Serious Question: Can you game a data set like this?

Is there an algorithm that can let you program up some posts to rake in the sats in 60 seconds? You see, little spammer, how basically human it all is? Anti-robot? Spammer resilient?
Bitcoiners zapped the shit out of Uruguay because the cowboys are respectable, the meat 🥩 looks amazing , and davidw put time and effort (work) into making a great post.
Simple as. ✌️

That's cute that you're looking for easy money here, but...

It doesn't exist anymore. You're chasing a mirage, and you always have been. Bitcoin enforces work.
There’s also this top post to consider…
Ever see ‘A Beautiful Mind?’ It’s worth remembering that its protagonist, John Nash, was a real mathematician and economist theorist who authored a whole paper on ideal money.
Something from the movie for you to chew on:
John Nash: Adam Smith said the best result comes from everyone in the group doing what's best for himself. Right? That's what he said, right? Hansen: Right. John Nash: Incomplete. Incomplete, okay? Because the best result will come from everyone in the group doing what's best for himself and the group.
Now, being a spammer is no kind of life, friend. You're better than this. Find what you're good at, and apply it, and we'll zap you.
p.s. Some shitposting is permissible—we grew up on the internet, after all—but don't overdo it. 👌
I would like to add just few words from the mighty "lightning chad" @aljaz that will fit very well with SN challenge and your post:
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100 sats \ 1 reply \ @aljaz 4 Mar
At some point i'll just have to rename to lightning chad 😅
Impeccable taste in memes, as always 🫡
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I notice that people do not like to read my guides. Maybe because they are too busy watching tiktoks. So I decided to speak in memes. 😂😂😂
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121 sats \ 2 replies \ @Nikos 1 Mar
Not all. I have learned a ton of new things from your guides and your experience.
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Thanks, bro!
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220 sats \ 0 replies \ @Se7enZ 1 Mar
Here, here! What a fascinating experiment the next month will be. I, for one, am looking forward to both observing and participating in the community self-regulation.
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Interesting that you mention Nash, since Nash equilibria are exactly what I'm referring to when recommending people zap more. Of course, I approve of the spirit of this post and my implicit caveat is that people should be zapping good content more.
Zapping garbage is a lose-lose-win (the poster win's obviously, but everyone else loses).
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42 sats \ 2 replies \ @joda 1 Mar
*this post written by ChatGPT
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21 sats \ 1 reply \ @Cowboy 1 Mar
😂No way, I Respect his efforts, what he is written is 💯 True, some spamming SN for SATs
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21 sats \ 0 replies \ @joda 1 Mar
Yeah I'm just kidding.
I don't even mind "spammers" here, yet, because most aren't trying to promote shitcoins. They're just "me too" bots
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  • p.s. Some shitposting is permissible—we grew up on the internet, after all—but don't overdo it
Thank goodness, was getting worried there. SN without a bit of 5hitposting is like a cowboy without a horse!
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Well said. All clear and good. "And you'll pay for it"
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105 sats \ 1 reply \ @OT 1 Mar
Well put!
I do notice a lot of sh$tposts in the "recent" section. I like how stackers get in there and curate so that the top posts are mostly interesting. I also do it, but only after exhausting the top posts.
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Yea. A lot of that is just "new people" (maybe not all 'real' people). The mechanism here for dividing the 'outer court' from the 'inner court' is clever—we don't need a fence to have a fence.
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"Now, being a spammer is no kind of life, friend. You're better than this. Find what you're good at, and apply it, and we'll zap you"
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Thanks for mentioning my post. Very much appreciated.
I'm thinking on making another one, maybe.
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Spammers will be downzapped
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Without mercy 💪
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@DarthCoin just taught me what that was yesterday
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21 sats \ 0 replies \ @Cowboy 1 Mar
True ser 🤠
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I wish you had written this post two years ago when I was still new to SN. I would have stacked more sats today haha.
Great idea; well executed n written!
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I'm just glad that more people are recognising that spam is bad.
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me too
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Shitpost yield > shitcoin yield
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How could I/we detect a spamming post? I know that experience plays a huge role here, but those who don’t have such experience how can distinguish a good post from a scammer one?
Are top posts ranked by Stacker News always the best posts?
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21 sats \ 0 replies \ @Fabs 1 Mar
I've got a feeling that there'll be surprisingly many posts labeled as "Spam", but that's simply because we expect that's what's going to happen.
I think that there won't be much if any change at all in neither the amount, nor the quality of posts.
I mean, simply take this post as example: it's neither prove of work, nor something original; it's a designated rant over something that may or may not happen, designed to profit off of the event's prejudices. 😉
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You just know…..
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Eveyone on this site is a bot except you.
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🤭
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LOL the post is exactly depicting the "tldr-ists" that can't read more than 2 paragraphs.
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That's the joke
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