by @torii-stories, @awedjob.eth, & @jacque

Screaming Into The Void!

"NO ONE would get notifications!" said Warpcast user @jacque. "This was something I tested at least a dozen times." Things got rather dark as she explains, "I was drowning in an endless pit of despair. Feeling awful and stupid AF. I invited friends in thinking, 'IS THIS THE FUTURE?' A tiered society and atrocious hierarchies that Web3 and decentralization was supposed to be making obsolete?

Does this sound familiar? Were you as lost as Jacque? Maybe you still are. If you don’t know what to do or if you are confused, you are not alone. You know that you are a real person. You may want to use your Warpcast (WC) account to engage with the WC accounts of other real people. Perhaps you want to be seen. A simple desire with a deceptively complex solution.

Welcome new users to WC. It is but one client among a growing list of end-user clients built on top of the Farcaster (FC) protocol. The rules for engagement can be found on the Warpcast Blog. However, WC is frequently updated. User @dwr.eth, Dan Romero, one of the founders of the FC protocol, regularly casts about improvements to the client. Actions and frames like /bot-or-not, used to extend the feature set of the client, are also added and updated frequently. A recent search on GitHub returned 4.9k files and 167 repositories with the term “warpcast” in them.

One of the most recent updates to the WC client that Mr. Romero has cast about is “narrow casting” (shown below). A user can choose to make their casts visible to everyone or just the people that follow a specific channel. It’s so new that there’s no mention of it on the WC Blog.

Let’s assume you’ve read the entire WC Blog, and you’ve kept abreast of every cast by Mr.  Romero that relates to improvements to the WC client. If you have, then you know about the importance of having a Power Badge (PB), the effects of Priority Mode (PM), being a Top Caster in a channel, and the possibility that your account could get “Nerfed”. You will also know that if you don’t like the way things are on WC, you can use another client (see graphic below) or build your own client. If you can program using TypeScript, JavaScript, Shell, C++, and Solidity, then no problem.

Not Everyone Speaks in JavaScript

"A lot of people struggle with [the algorithm and Power Badges], it's like a caste system: Power Badges and top users,” user @angelikakollin explains. She describes the ranking system as "humiliating for new users." The pursuit of Power Badges and top rankings has caused many, including Angelika, to question their continued participation on the platform. “Warpcast demands an experimental, unrealistic growth for the potential to be seen and have your ranking go up. As if there is a ceiling that constantly needs to be broken.” said Jacque.

"In this space, you NEED to connect," Angelika emphasizes. She highlights the importance of finding side communities, as she did with art and photography. Recognizing the barriers put up by the technical jargon used by many talented devs in the space, she took it upon herself to break down these barriers. “This is too complex. Let me explain it easier!” Angelika said. She has spent time helping many users who are non-native English speakers and web3 enthusiasts who have joined WC between February and June.

A new user on WC that casts brief messages like “GM”, in obscure channels, with no PB followers will most likely NOT be seen by other users. In this situation, how can a new user on WC get seen? Mr. Romero has some helpful tips in this cast (shown above). How can they begin working towards obtaining a PB themselves? Mr. Romero has this advice:

Chasing the accounts that have a PB can be a long game. “Everyone is playing ‘degrees of separation’ from the ‘pretrust seed’.” said user @0xt0ny recently on a FarHouse space called “Power Monday” that was held Monday, June 24, 2024 and hosted by @pichi. The “pretrust” table of seed users that Tony is referring to is described in detail in the OpenRank documentation here. In short, the pretrust seed is made up of PB Holders. The size of the list of PB Holders is shrinking week to week. This past week, when the new list of PB Holders came out, sixteen fewer accounts had a PB.

To Become A Power Badge Holder

It can be quite a life changing moment for those who have tried so hard, for so long, to finally receive their PB. User @sunnysangwan was one of the 304 accounts that became PB Holders this past Monday. “For the first time, I’ve begun to have meaningful conversations. Without my PB, I did not have much interaction.” said Sunny.

Sunny decided to follow the advice of user @pichi from “Power Monday”. Pichi’s advice includes things like cast daily, participate in streaks, post interesting content, research who has high interaction. “Sunny did what the app asked him to do and the app rewarded him for it.” Pichi said.

“It does require a mental switch.” said Sunny about modifying his behavior to suit the WC preferences. “This ecosystem rewards building. I built a gallery where a bunch of artists got together and released a collection. You need to be creative to figure out what you can build.” 

Casting Like A Bot

For some people on WC, creativity isn’t enough. They need high-level English language skills too. Otherwise they may be considered “spam” or a “bot” by other users. Those terms are tossed around a lot without a solid definition. Instead, let’s use “Low Quality Content” to describe the “GM” and “Much Wow!” casts. Still, quality is a subjective term. How would you feel about a cast that clearly read like it was spit out by an AI Large Language Model chat application like ChatGPT?

Angelika provided an important bit of context on user @ted’s Club Ted FarHouse space on Wednesday, June 19, 2024. “ESL people, specifically those who use Cyrillic language format differently, so they use AI chatbots to assist them,” said Angelika. “That may be the reason why their posts sound like a bot. Russian or Ukrainian gets severely compressed through translation into English by ChatGPT. Their voice sounds blocky and strange.”

Roughly ~70% of the casts over a recent 32 hour period contained English language text. Does that mean ~30% of the casts contain non-Latin alphabet characters? A data query by user @aperture was pulled from 2024-06-26 22:24:01+00:00 until 2024-06-28 13:35:25+00:00, and parsed by a python script they wrote yields a total of 769,334 casts. “Casts with Degen are filtered out, also casts that had less than 10 characters and casts for which the language couldn't be determined.” wrote Aperture in a DC with @awedjob.eth in preparation for this article.

A more complete dataset could be pulled from casts for the entire month of June. It would contain over 18M casts. Aperture said, “ …to compute this for the whole 18M it would take longer than 18 hours to calculate the language for all of June.” It was not possible to perform this task and meet the deadline for this article.

While this doesn’t represent all non-native English speakers on WC, it gives a rough approximation. One such non-native English speaker is user @hanisart. She came to WC, attracted to the protocol’s decentralized nature and the freedoms that come with it. When asked what it was like starting out as a new user on FC, user Hani said,

بزرگترین چالش من این بود که چه نوع محتوایی تولید کنم. من قبلاً در” اینستاگرام محتوای هنری تولید می کردم، اما به زبان مادری ام (فارسی)، حالا باید می فهمیدم چه نوع محتوایی محبوب تر است و آن را به انگلیسی قابل فهم ترجمه می کردم (کاش یک هوش مصنوعی وجود داشت که ما  نیازی نبود زبان مادری خود را تغییر دهيم)”

"My biggest challenge was what kind of content to produce. I used to make artistic contents on Instagram, but in my mother tongue (Persian). Now I had to find out what kind of content are more popular and translate it into understandable English, (I wish be an Ai that we don’t need to change our mother tongue)”

Hani is a physical painter and Sunny is a photographer. Both artists understand the importance of producing meaningful, intentional artwork in order to engage with people. They have worked hard to follow the suggestions made by Mr. Romero and Pichi.

On the “Club Ted” FarHouse space held last Wednesday, user @ted invited @geoffgolberg as a guest speaker to talk about building a social network. Ted encouraged people to, “...surface niche and high quality information and entertainment instead of ‘follow for follow’ and ‘Money Guns’.”

Cozy Corner

In the fast-paced, ever-evolving, landscape of WC, you may feel overwhelmed. However, amidst the chaos, there are pockets of comfort. Call them “cozy corners''. Here we can connect with friends and discover new channels through FC clients like Unlonely, Drakula and Farhouse. These tools help us verify that a caster is human 

Adding audible language to the discussion provides subtlety and gives context to who the speaker is and what they are saying. You can differentiate between a speaker that has a faint or a thick accent. Coming up and speaking in a space on FarHouse enhances learning and strengthens connections within our communities. Since its launch, Farhouse has hosted a variety of talks, from casual 420 hangouts to in-depth discussions about power badges with casters like Pichi, Tony.

Advocates–Buddy System

Angelika's advice for newcomers is to seek out the helpers and community builders who make Farcaster a supportive and engaging space. These individuals are the true heart of Farcaster, fostering a community that thrives on connection and mutual support. It's not just about the "free money" from $degen tipping; it's about building a community and finding artist friends, as traditional 2D artist Hani discovered. Initially drawn by the potential to earn money, they quickly realized that Farcaster offers much more in terms of community and camaraderie. 

“At the beginning , I thought I am here because of earning money. But quickly I realized that FC is much easier to build a community and find artist friends.” -@hanisart

Conclusion

Remember the story of the Power Monday founder, who lost his Power Badge because he was too focused on helping others and neglected his own account. It's essential to find a balance between contributing to the community and maintaining your personal growth.

Embrace the chaos of Farcaster's current phase, but anchor yourself in the cozy corners where you can connect, learn, and grow. By posting quality content, seeking out community builders, and staying curious, you'll find your place in the vibrant tapestry of Farcaster and contribute to a thriving, supportive community.