In the beginning, there was no internet.
Children drove their parents crazy and were forced to go outside until dinner.
Parents had to talk to their neighbors.
Social networking involved the horror of going to social functions and other people's houses.
And if you wanted anything to go viral, you had to write a chain letter.
This progenitor of pyramid schemes involved knowing a specific format: start with a legend, give a good testimonial, a bad testimonial, an order to copy and write multiple copies and send it to your friends, followed by a dark threat of what would happen to you if you didn't.
They were very popular.
Everyone loved them—not only crooks seizing an opportunity but also churches trying to raise money who inserted passages imploring people to send a dollar to their church to stave off eternal damnation... until the U.S. postal service said, "Enough is Enough!" and outlawed sending cash in the darned things.
When emails became a thing, they began appearing there too... as well as early iterations of social media networking. My Life Partner spent years convincing his boomer aunts to stop passing them along on Facebook with only limited success.
Look, Grandma... no Native American Chief made no curse that compelled you to share this Facebook page or you'll get struck by lighting. Okay? Okay.
Share what you wanna share. Ignore what you want to ignore. Block what you want to block.
Unless you are a collector of old chain letters (yes, there are collectors of that too), that form of sharing is completely outmoded.
These days, there is a new trend:
The Contest!
"Share this post and tag five friends to enter!"
Why does that "five friends" thing sound familiar? And does anyone actually win these who isn't a friend of the original sender?
Yes, I know there are plenty of honest people running legitimate contests out there. In the landscape of the crypto and nft family, there are multiple contests on a daily basis. Because of that, it means we need to exercise a healthy dose of caution when one of those crosses our screen when it is someone we don't follow that's giving away a coin we never heard of.
I have a thought.
What if we went back to the basics and just shared what we want to share?
Not only that, but what if we shared more often?
What I mean is that social media platforms love to dangle carrots in front of content creators with the promise of reward.
"If you get this many followers and this many likes and pay us this amount of money, we will give you a new list of additional criteria to meet so that you, too, may one day make money on the internet!"
Huh. That sounds like something I've read in a chain letter too, come to think of it.
Like it or not, it's something we all have to deal with.
Not only are you dealing with it, though, but all of your favorite channels and all of your friends are dealing with the same problem. And yes, I know it's a 'labor of love' so to speak, but that doesn't mean it isn't frustrating paying a premium every month and not being in a position to support other channels because the system has us all pigeon-holed.
Even so, there is something that we can do: Pass it On.
If you like it, repost it. If your friend puts up a cool VeVe photo, repost it. Calendar, repost it. Even if it has absolutely NOTHING to do with digital collecting and you happen to be on your digital collecting handle: if you love it and want to support them, pass it on.
Nobody's pockets are endless, we can't support everybody, but in this small way, we can help everybody we love to grow.
Don't share because you think you're going to get a rewarded... share to extend the reach of those who you don't feel are getting heard and deserve to be heard. Share to drown out all the bad actors with the big megaphones attempting to give people we love and projects we love a bad name.
It doesn't take much effort.
It's just a button away.
But just like those chain letters of old, that little effort can have a snowball effect.
So share what you love.
Pass it on.