I took this photo in a café the other day while waiting for my daughter to finish her dance class. I used my phone on a 10x zoom, so the quality isn't great, but I just thought it would give some interesting color range if made a little bolder. The word "PUOTI" just means shop and is a little display of items you might expect to buy from a café, like reusable cups, teas and grindable coffee.
This was the original before I edited on Lightroom Mobile.
Not quite as punchy, is it?
Far less Roxanne
Imagery is important and I wonder how much it affects people's decisions on whether they read or share a post or not. For instance, how many posts get shared that have no image at all? I am not sure if I have shared any like that - but it seems that most people realize that in order to get some content attention, the first thing to engage are the eyes.
This is the case in most things isn't it? At least those of us who have intact vision. A lot of people say "I don't care about looks" but I have seen those types checkout people on the street and then the question is, if they aren't checking on what they see, what are they basing their attraction decision on?
I feel that person has a nice personality.
Nonsense.
Of course, there are other mediums that we use to meet people, so looks aren't always the first point of attraction, but even then, when we do see those people for the first time, do we not evaluate their looks?
But, it isn't just people we judge by their cover, it is all kinds of things where we make decisions based on the aesthetics, not the function. We "shop around" for a coffee table, but at a practical level, any coffee table would do. Pragmatically, nothing needs to aesthetically match in order to fulfil its function - unless its function is to be attractive.
Attraction is the core of the attention economy and there are many ways to get eyes on with novelty, but it is harder to keep those eyes engaged long-term. No matter what it is, eventually audiences turn away, unless they are able to get something out it, benefit enough to keep coming back, keep clicking, buying, watching. Essentially, long-term attraction moves the object from want to need, making it a staple part of the diet, not a treat. But, just because it is a staple, doesn't mean it is good for you, just like a staple diet can be comprised of 90% sugar, but that doesn't make it healthy.
We can be attracted to and engaged by content, but this doesn't mean that what we consume is valuable to us to consume, it doesn't mean it helps us. This is one of the problems with homogenous content that becomes popular, because it degrades the pool of content, but incentivizes more of the familiar same - it is a reduction of content that is driven by the consumer, but that consumer is being fed a narrow slice of the cake and conditioned to desire more of the same type. It is a self-fulfilling condensing of content as demand drives creation and what is demanded is more of the same, meaning narrow selection.
But, we don't feel that it is narrow because it is all sourced globally and packaged in ways that make us think it is something other than what it is - more of the same. Every new series that gets released is a remake, all the songs are run through AI testing - nothing really stands out as brilliant, but we still have to spend our time on something, so we consume more of what is fed us.
A cow doesn't get to choose what it eats, the farmer does, and we are being farmed. The farmer feeds us what makes us the most productive for their needs, whether it is to produce more milk or more meat - our experience doesn't matter unless that helps them achieve their goals. A better UX doesn't change the practical conditions of a website, but it definitely makes it more attractive to use. User experience matters, consumer experience matters and if it isn't attractive enough to the audience, it isn't going to cut it.
But, this doesn't mean that it is all about looks or ease of use, as for example, I have been told for years that my content is too long and no one will engage with it. Is that the case? For some, yes, but for others, the "attraction" is the chance to read something (hopefully) decent and engage a bit around the topic, having a little fun in the process. There is a relationship built through the content that connects us, no matter what the entry picture might be. But, this doesn't mean that I don't bother building my content to be at least somewhat attractive and engaging.
I do think about the images, I do add section titles when I think they are called for, I do change up the rhythm with quotes, italics and bold if necessary and, I try to make it neat with some justification. This doesn't mean it is for everyone though.
However, since we are in the attention economy and we are incentivized by rewards on what we create, why wouldn't we put some effort in and build our presence, persona and "brand" even if we aren't selling ourselves directly. It seems natural to me, like making sure that when I go to the office, I am dressed appropriately, my hair is done and I don't smell like I haven't showered in three days. Is it pride, or professionalism?
Just like the café with a little shop, we are all selling something on the side and if we want people to buy, we have to get their eyes on us. But, if we want them to come back and buy again, we have to make sure that we offer is worth it to them.
Looks matter plenty. But they don't matter for long.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]
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We all analyse the potential reward on the post while writing. At least I do. I try to make my post attractive and palatable to everyone. I also know that none of the effort I put into my posts matter too much. I do not yet have a brand of my posts and I do not think there are loyal readers of the posts that I provide.
Having said that I am trying to make my posts readable and relatable to me. After two years on the platform, it is important to have my online personality at a level since there will be new people joining in. Hopefully, they would like to read the relevant posts that were posted a couple of years ago.
I used ecency to read your posts a couple of days ago. A nice feature they have in their platform is to provide you with suggested reads on the same topic or by the same author. One of the recommended article was your post from a year ago. Since you reply to your readers, how has the comment section changed for you? Is it always the same group of people? Do you see new users on your comment thread or do you expect to have OGs? It would be nice to do the analysis on how many stopped commenting who were the regular readers and how many are new :)
Sorry, this was a long one.
THis is the trick - write for yourself and people will connect with you. This doesn't mean that everyone will find an audience of course, but then - you were writing for yourself anyway :)
It goes through phases, but I have some regulars and a lot of randoms who find me through various ways. I do try to comment on all comments I get, but I do miss some. I also get comments on those old posts from time to time too, which I like responding to, as it means I have to re-read what I have written.
The comments I get are generally well related to the post and most aren't trash. People put effort in and I try to respect that as best I can with my own time and a vote. For the most part, I have always been lucky with the engagement quality I get - but I am not sure if it is luck or not.
I don't expect - in general I have an idea of who of the regulars will comment on what, but there are plenty of new faces or people who drop by occasionally too. It is nice to have familiars and, it is nice to welcome in newbies.
I wonder if anyone will ever do an in-depth analysis of the blockchain.
I am trying to write for myself for a while and also thinking about how to grow an audience.
I read most of the comments on your posts and figured the users who engage are not always the same group of people. Through that, I was trying to understand the diversity of the people coming in and what their engagement would look like in the long run.
Yours is a true case study if someone ever attempt to do that analysis :)
It's just a fact of life that humans love pretty things and like you on Hive, are more likely to reward Hive posts featuring pretty photos.
It's somewhat ironic however that the real value in Hive content comes from its ability to bring ongoing, organic traffic to our associated domains.
I would continue to encourage curators with large stakes that they obviously have a vested interest in building the value of, to stop curating purely on pretty photos with no way of driving ongoing traffic.
And instead incentivise authors to work on generating ongoing traffic that will continue to bring a stream of new eyeballs into Hive.
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I don't disagree. I think part of the reason "pretty" is voted here is that it gets support on other media - but the fundamental difference is likes don't cost. When people actually spend, they should be looking at what they value themselves, as that is what will engage for a longer period of time. Pretty pictures are fine, but it is the story that captures the heart, the personality that shines through and makes people feel something.
The topic doesn't matter, but it has to engage the emotional element. A lot of people think crypto content is supported because it helps people invest - but it isn't the main reason - it makes people feel that they can escape the financial life they have so they can experience a world of plenty instead of struggle. It is like the superhero movie - everyone wants to feel extraordinary.
Gaming content is similar - people watch it on Twitch because they feel connected not because the players are good or they get tips on how to play. They want to be part of a group, a community and feel that they matter, even if it is via proxy.
》I feel that person has a nice personality.
》Nonsense.
I don't know how I did those arrows. Anyway...
I dunno. There are clearly some elements of one's appearance that are correctly associated with some element of the inner person. When somebody looks sleazy, it's not like they were born into sleaze and their physical self morphed into it, exactly.
But I think the way we present ourselves - think a confident person's eyes compared to a shy one - humans are very adept and pinpointing these very subtle features, consciously or not. That's why we have whites in our eyes and eyebrows. Chimps don't have those.
We can extrapolate by the direction of our eyes, the almost imperceptible furrow of a brow, and determine a thousand different possible meanings from that, when combined with the rest of our body language.
If somebody looks like they have a nice personality, they probably very subtly express certain muscle movements that are pleasant and in-line with what you consider decent.
Of course, there's always those who dress like a drug-addled gangsta boi, and is actually a very conservative, straight-edge academic, but they're usually just trying to make a point of that deception. Like eccentric billionaires who only live in a small house.
Dunno, I just think we underestimate that power of stereotype within us, while simultaneously abusing is quite thoughtlessly
I have never seen those arrows before and would really like to know how you made them.
I wonder if they look sleazy from birth though, if people will treat them as such and then they start to present the behavior expected of them?
I get the sense that younger generations are losing this ability to some degree for face to face interaction, as they are spending time on screens, where a lot of the subtle physical signals are amplified or hidden completely. The other thing is that through consumption of engineered content, a lot of the sounds are also warped in some way. This could lead to a mis-calibration of the tools needed for "live" interaction - does this affect physical relationships? Does it influence the partners we choose if we can't "read the signs" well?
Continuing from above, does screen focus mean we aren't as adept and reading and evaluating the clusters of signals?
I am someone who has been treated a lot based on my looks, for the negative. I wonder if I was someone else, if the way I was treated would have led me down a different path.
Stereotypes are stereotypes for a reason, but - is the stereotype we carry because it is true for that group, or because we have been conditioned to believe it is true?
There's also the study of mask wearing for kids are making them less able to socialise or be sociable due to the critical years where they would develop these skills are no longer there because they're spending every day in school where everybody's faces are 70% covered. Add to that what you say about online... the internet is just way too young for us to really know what generational impact it's truly having on us.
And since that is generational, it's gonna be too slow a change, no matter how significant, for any individual to notice. Kinda scary.
Ok, 》 was done by trying to do > but I accidentally switched to Chinese. So it's the same button but in that language！【《0_0》】
It is this slow change across entire generations that is going to be interesting and potentially devastating. For several hundred thousands years we have evolved in a certain way to hold and leverage certain skills and in 30 years, we have shifted away from a lot of these.
Thanks for not being more of the same and dammit I should've known that translates to shop!
Finnish is such a pretty language!
If used to hearing Orc.
HA HA I have never heard ORc but having played an Orc in a role playing game I can only imagine how coarse it would sound...
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Right, most of your contents is too long to read; however, that doesn't mean that they are not attractive. You touch several subjects in your content, so a reader would find something to discuss, comment under it.
I think all is about first time appearance, a content or a human we judge and decide. We don't consider long-time.
Most are too long, but people read still :)
First appearance is where most of the judgement is made on whether to stay or walk away.
True, but every single day, we can try to become less and less of a cow, and think for ourselves. And especially think besides the cover of the book, or the looks of things, or what we are thaught to be consuming by the media or government.
I try that, and sometimes it brings me to a dark place, but I always get smarter from it!
One of the interesting things is these days, people read headlines as fact, as if they know what the content contained. They will even share based on the image and a title, without even reading the article. In many ways, we deserve this world, as we have created it.
Mmm, I haven’t created it, and you didn’t either, the media takes advantage of the psychological weaknesses of the human being. It’s on us to recognise that, but the biggest part of the people isn’t smart enough to do that.
The not smart enough is on us though. They can manipulate because we allow them to manipulate. It is like a man that treats his partner badly, ignores them and talks down to them - then blames them when they leave. It is self-inflicted.
This should be carved in stone and placed as a signpost in every major city in the world.
But then I do not think that the sight-ruled society we have today is novel.
Neuroscientists have proved that the sense of looking and making decisions based on what is seen dates back to the cave men who needed to judge an animal as a predator or prey based on how it looked.
This is an awesome post that I am sure to place in my bookmarks.
Thank you for this @tarazkp.
It is natural - looks matter. However, if looking for long-term, they become far less important or perhaps, the other factors raise the looks.
I was actually going through a similar thought process this morning when I was trying to decide what image I wanted to use for my post. I wanted something nice that would draw people in, but there wasn't really anything related to my post. Except for the fact that my post was about pictures, so really any picture would do.
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It is funny how often I have an idea for an image - but not the photo. Since I only use my own, I often end up recycling images from past posts I like or, connect to a certain topic. The images might be the same, but the content is in the writing for me.
I am kind of the same way. I try to use my own photos whenever I can. Sometimes I need to jump over to Pixabay and grab something there but I always make sure to source it. Content is always different as well.
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I have an almost weird obsession with using other's images and find it strange to see other people's images in my blogroll :D This has nothing to do with other people doing it at all though! I like it when people choose a decent image for their work :)
There have been times where I have needed a specific image so I just go out and shoot it myself. Other times the image in relation to my post makes sense in my head, but it might not match so much in other people's...
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Once Spring arrives, I think I will head out and collect some personal "stock" images for myself :)
Everyone is entitled to his or her own opinion because we as humans always have taste to a particular stuff, what I may like or prefer may be disliked by others
Yes, but at the same time, I wonder if there is an actual value that could be applied. For example, having an engineering degree is more likely to get a job than having a degree in French poetry. Both degrees are consumptive processes.
Wow, your rep turned 83..
From the start of my blog near a year ago I saw 82,and it took one year to turn 83.
Congratulations, @tarazkp ... New achievement. 👍
It moves slow! :D
Yeah,very slow when rep reaches 80+ mark.
But anyway,that took quite excellent dedication to reach in this point.
Amazing!! 👍
Well I can only speak for myself but you're one of my favourite authors and I don't mind the length of your posts at all. I find it truly impressive the way you can turn common things into good articles such as this one.
!PIZZA
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Thanks!
I wish I had an exciting life, but I don't, so common is what I have to work with :) But, I also think it is why it is more relatable, because this is my life and it is much like everyone else's.
I fucking despise people who
sayclaim they don’t judge people by their looks, what utter bollocks. Unless they have some wires crossed, or like you said, are visually impaired, it’s basically impossible to not do so.Judging in general is not a bad thing in my opinion, because your judgements or assesments can and should keep changing when you get more information.
People are generally full of shit when it comes to these things. Virtue signalling...
We have to judge our world, experience and feedback makes us better or worse at it.
10 X zoom are you using a cellphone camera, friend, you are extraordinary photography, you are waiting for your daughter, also had time to take pictures and you can tell a good story, I'm very interested in things like this, especially now that cellphones also have 100x zoom,
I don't like phone photography much, but I don't take a camera everywhere.
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Yep Yep I agree a bright colored picture definately makes a post more atractive.
I know because I read it somewhere...LOL
No really I read it and I experienced it, I honestly started reading your posts because I was intrigued by your pictures... You do a good job with topical representations or just attractive images.
I also like @edicted's images and memes, plus I also get the occaisional song or short clip of something cute or meaningful...
I think content producers are artists and entertainers too.
The graphics and pictures make the post more entertaining.
I think given the choice between a solid block of 1000 words and four 250 word blocks separated by bright images, I choose the images.
I think a nice bright picture or a even a well focused black and white with good definition can draw the reader in to the post.
I even sprinkle images throughout posts sometimes to engage the reader more...
...and sometimes I think pictures say more then words and in a more meaningful way.
I must admit I am learning here and experimenting with markdown, pictures, post length, trying different things to see what attracts readers...after all most of us want to be read...
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