213 sats \ 8 replies \ @clarity 6h \ on: The Mental Transaction Costs of Zaps bitcoin
Microzaps on SN go to people, not a company. It’s all part of the fun of the recycling ♻️ of energy. Spread the sats and the sats shall be spread back to you. It’s much different than being billed by a company. The energy consumed is also immediately rewarded by a lightning bolt animation, a particularly key part of what makes SN a rewarding user experience.
This post reminds me of poker, where an aggressive player will always abruptly make a bet to force you to make a decision on whether or not you want to pay to see the next card. The aggressive strategy is known to, over time, cause competitors fatigue and frustration as the aggressor is indirectly putting pressure on a person’s livelihood, their survival, every time he forces you to decide whether to put more money in the pot. That’s stress-inducing. However, on SN, nobody is requiring anyone to do anything, but the way of nature makes us, social creatures of Earth, want to share and spread wealth among the community.
Interesting analogy. The voluntary nature of zaps has something to do with why they don't feel like annoying micro transactions.
You also make me wonder how much it matters that they are going to a person. I tend not to zap the bots on here, although as zapping becomes reflexive (I read something interesting and zap it without checking who posted it), I have ended up zapping the @hn quite a few times.
Zapping is kind of a politeness thing now, too. So, maybe I need to account for that.
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Why wouldn’t you zap a bot? Behind the scenes, a person (likely) made the bot. Just because they’ve found a way to provide value in an automated fashion shouldn’t devalue their contribution, should it?
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Fair point. Perhaps there is an expectation of social interaction and a bot feels more like a one way street.
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That’s fair. I don’t expect interaction when I zap something, because zaps are anonymous (generally)
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A bot doesn’t, but the creator does. I know bot creators like @ek check in on their bot children to see how they’re behaving
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Yeah, thinking about how a particularly generous zap will make someone else feel is definitely an important factor.
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