Online communities are powerful. MEATSPACE

Chat.meatspac.es/

Have you ever heard of meatspace? No not the term for real life versus cyberspace, it was a burgeoning online community two years ago.

Talked about at most developer cons and an open source darling created by Edna Pirahna and contributed to by many. It's community was something to behold because of the fact that you had to use your face, and that expressions/emotions were caught with every gif you sent in chat.

This is the dream of steemit an online community that brings people together. However my concern is that while meatspace was not driven by funds, steemit is. How will we communicate past the front of text and go beyond? The front page is dialed in to discussing crypto currency and its value. It seems to be mostly what trends on steemit. Does that make this a weird pyramid scheme, or something more?

Meatspace brought together strangers so far as to have MEAT-UPS. The content producers were keen on keeping their friends from the conferences, so it was a great place for developers who spend their days on the computer to hangout at the same time no matter their location.

Meatspace pulled in lonely people. People who were searching for more than what Facebook or Tumblr had to offer. This site helped people get jobs (two of them are creating a company together right now), lovers (still together), friends, and even move across the country and still have a community. We called some of these people superusers. They were the ones who helped shape the chat by welcoming newcomers and built conversation with others.

I was one of those lonely people I'd say. In another country from my family, and fresh from a painful break up.

Meatspace appealed to my animator and performative nature. Let alone my obsession with chatrooms since I was 8 years old on AOL Kids chat. (You can talk with someone from anywhere!? They have a whole nother life and world of experiences!? Woah!)

The site also helped spark that leap of faith out of stagnant relationships and stilted travel dreams. I myself have been to Seattle, San Francisco, Paris, and Brussels to visit friends from this strange online world. My friend Lola is coming on the 19th of this month to visit North America for her first time.

Online communities have real world potential.

How will we choose to shape Steemit?

Now, meatspace wasn't perfect. There wasn't a real way to block out or maintain a safe space from predatory individuals. Some people got through the cracks. This sort of moderation is important by the creators and the community itself. You have to protect what you've built together. We didn't do that, and that's how meatspace failed itself. The creator ran off on its community because they couldn't handle the fame and didn't want to be a leader. It was just a fun project that got out of hand. Communities need to be tended to.