By Dominic Klopsch – Co-Founder TIVAN Consulting
“Good vibes only! – “This is the best community ever!!” – “I love your project so much!”
More often than not, these messages are BS and this phenomenon has a name: Toxic Positivity!
But why is Toxic Positivity an issue in Web3 Communities? Well, read on…
Toxic Positivity can often be seen in Discord-servers
If you’ve ever been in a Discord-server of a hyped project or just generally within the NFT- and Web3-space during the last bullrun, you have definitely seen a huge amount of messages that spread nothing but positivity. Any critical question, any sort of uncertainty towards a project, any question that takes a glimpse behind the curtain are more or less immediately cancelled. And this is unhealthy!
It is forced. A self-fulfilling prophecy. A mechanism where people either protect themselves from seeing the reality or project-teams artificially create a feeling that their project is unique although it’s just another derivative. New members joining the space might really believe this and feel like „this is my chance“, whereas in reality, it is not and they will be the ones left holding the bag.
It’s not just in the NFT-space though
But it’s not just the NFT-space, it’s rooted much deeper in online-conversations, just see how social media works. On Twitter, you’ll find both, Toxic Positivity and Toxic Negativity. This is a major part of the mechanism how Twitter works and let’s face it, if Twitter wasn’t so extreme on both sides, it would be boring.
The responsibility is with Community Managers!
To all the builders, projects, investors and thoughtleaders out there: It’s your responsibility to foster honest exchange! If anybody voicing something critical is automatically cancelled, this will certainly not help us on the way towards real innovation and community-based building and also it will not help mass-adoption if we are caught in an echo chamber of forced positivity. We should be the ones maintaining a balanced view on ourselves and the projects we’re in!
If you want to learn more, check out the other Insights-Articles!
