ManiMe on Nostr: I came to Nostr last year with a dream of building a social home for Libertarian ...

I came to Nostr last year with a dream of building a social home for Libertarian politics. I’ve been involved in local Libertarian politics for many years. I administered the “slack” online workspace for the Jorgensen 2020 presidential campaign. Libertarians really suck at organizing big things. Myself included. But I wanted to make “online communication” better at least.

I always envisioned building an online tool that respected the “sovereignty” of every valued volunteer, and that this respect would percolate “up the chain” (TF was I thinking) to allow for a more “decentralized” volunteer coordination experience across chapters and national politics. For years I kept one “eye” on the pulse of social media technology, writing up my ideas in white papers and being laughed at by state and national LP officials. I set up our local chapter with a “Nextcloud” instance and tried to convince others to follow suit. But to no avail. I’m just a gen X slacker, not really interested in convincing others to do stuff that they don’t wanna do.

The Libertarian party (of all parties) doesn’t care about decentralization or self sovereignty.

The more I “got into” Nostr, the more I have come to see that party politics is a lost cause. Democracy… I still have hopes for. But political parties as “representative” of social or economic “ideals” is a joke. They do not. Parties care about politics and gaining access to the levers of government.

Bitcoin … also has huge centralizing forces. I am not a maxi, but I believe in the technology. More importantly, I believe in the community. The Bitcoin community is pushing a global ethos of “freedom technology” to promote “self sovereignty” across all layers of society. Pick your color. Any “freedom tech” pill is gonna help the orange pill go down, but they are ALL important in their own right. THIS is why I love Bitcoin. It’s the people with laser eyes and humble stacks.

Nostr has taught me a lot. This scrappy and disorganized band of “would be” anarchists and politically homeless “sovereign online citizens” from around the world enlightens me every day. I’m not sure where I’m going with all of this except to say… this election cycle I’m dropping politics. Prolly vote NOTA.

I’m into Nostr for Nostr’s sake. Not for any other reason. I’m here to build Nostr tools FOR Nostr. I’m here for as long as it takes to grow Nostr, BECAUSE sovereignty online is actually that important. Nostr is important in its own right.

I am a nobody. I don’t imagine that being somebody will help myself or anybody else. All I hope for is to push this ball forward. Freedom tech is what matters.