How The Bear Market Bought Off Steemians' Intrinsic Motivation (feat. Alfie Kohn)

I don't know about you but Steem has become really quiet over recent months. Granted it is nowhere near as estalished as the big social media giants yet, and we are still in beta - lots of confusion for newcomers, a steep learning curve and (maybe most importantly) a bear market.

That's right, whereas this place seemed to be buzzing with activity not a year ago I find the level of interaction between people has dropped significantly, many of the people on here that I dug so much have stopped being active altogether and it seems there are a small group of individuals who just keep on posting and interacting despite any market conditions while the vast majority of people on Steem have ceased to interact with the blockcahin.

Now there are tools to analyze this of course, but I merely want to share my impression. I also don't exclude myself from this, I have been posting less frequently lately, focussing more on longterm projects, my music and the challenges coming up in my life. and maybe it's the same for all those I dearly miss.

Still, the correlation of dropping prices and the level of interaction on Steem made me curious. It made me wonder about why we are here to begin with and whatever happened to "come for the rewards, stay for the community"... Where we had incredible prices and potential rewards a year ago, Steem is now in the lower double digit cent value in terms of dollars and I can't shake the feeling that there is a strong correlation to dropping user activity.

It's funny really, because facebook still seems to be far from dead even though there were never any rewards promised for signing up, nor is there such a supportive community like there is on Steem (except for some special fb group pages I guess).

Steem on the other hand started off with offering people rewards for their work, which is not a bad thing in itself...

However I do get reminded of a talk by Alfie Kohn that I have always found fascinating, especially where he talks about the mechanism of "buying off intrinsic motivation". You know, the rewards that the writing itself can give people - learning, self-reflection, connecting to likeminded people - everything that any regular old social media network does.

I made an excerpt of Alfie's lecture where he tells this funny little anecdote about how monetary rewards can overshadow and void intrinsic motivation and ultimately change people's original intent and behavior by offering lower and lower monetary compensation for what they originally would have done for free as they pursued the activity for its own sake before money came into the equation. Come check it out ;)

It seems to me this is rather spot-on considering the perceived correlations between dropping prices and activity on steem.

If you want to listen to Alfie's full lecture you can do so here:

I have also written an article about this talk in the past which you can read here

What do you think? Does this explain why there is so little going on here lately and why there might be massive interest in Steem again once the next bullrun starts?

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Thanks for stopping by <3