

The method of indication depends on who you are targeting specifically. If you are looking for higher intelligence individuals, you’re likely to be more effective with indirect subtlety. Think like the blue check mark with twitter.
I could explain a ton about this based on my experiences in running a chain of bike shops. I’ve actively tested the behaviors of customers in social media, going as far as giving away a $1k product on Facebook to prove that no one cares about overt advertising anywhere on social media. It took 3 weeks and over a dozen posts to get someone to show up and ask for the product. There was no ambiguity about the posts or any catches described or implied. I’m not claiming to be an expert here, just qualifying what I know.
The total ad/recruitment options that I am aware of are:
- selling people through their stories
- selling a loss leader of overwhelming benefit
- selling subtle tribalism
- slinging spam
- stories will buy you empaths
- loss leaders will buy you misers
- subtle tribalism will buy you early adopters
- overt spam will buy you low intelligence
This was deeply hurtful to me and my mental health. My underlying motivation was trying to create a solution to my feelings of inadequate engagement with interesting complexity and depth on Lemmy in general. That has been an ongoing problem for me that feels long term untenable.
I’m stuck on an instance that shows all of the trolling negativity, and I seem to be misunderstood a lot here. I don’t know what else to say really. Hopefully saying makes me feel a little better. Maybe it is just the time of year. It will be 11 years on 2/26/14. I don’t even know why this interaction mattered to me so much, but it did somehow in the context of a lack of engagement and other negativity here and elsewhere in my life