BeardyThings

Beardy Things

@BeardyThings

A Beard is what a Beard does

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BeardyThings
@BeardyThings
jellybeepin
@jellybeepin
jkap
@jkap
Anonymous User asked:

What are your thoughts on the idea that "Number Go Up" Validation (for lack of a better term) would improve Cohost's new user attraction and/or existing user retention?

we had that for a weekend when we shipped Numbers™️ on april 1. they were completely fake, literally just a random number generator doing dice rolls against a post ID and incrementing progressively over time.

and the most common piece of feedback we got was "despite knowing that these numbers are completely fake and baed on literally nothing, seeing them made me feel Actively Worse."

i took this as a victory lap that my general theory of "numbers bad" held weight. we took away numbers, users either embraced it or got used to it. we reintroduced numbers via made-up bullshit, users hated it and started taking psychic damage again. no more numbers.

jellybeepin
@jellybeepin

Gotta be honest I think No Numbers is probably good for my sad little brain.

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in reply to @jkap's post:

JackieShark
@JackieShark

Totally expected, I actually really enjoyed Numbers™️ but my outlook on social media is built weird. I only really look at big Number™️ posts as a rousing success and small Number™️ posts as a neutral outcome, so even wholly made-up numbers made it fun to look through my posts and see which had the biggest Numbers™️. This is definitely not how social media tries to train people to approach the issue though, and my refusal to accept outside feedback that I'm not good enough is not the norm I expect from any given stranger on the internet. I will definitely miss being able to just like posts and replies as a quiet "keep at it" thumbs up but it probably won't kill me to learn to actually talk to people.

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gabu
@gabu

i still have a ways to go i think, but in general
now im being excited for "someone interacted with me, i wonder what kind of person they are" and checking out their profile, which is a lot healthier than focusing purely on how high the number is (and especially comparing numbers with previous posts)

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