riseuppikmin[he/him]

If you gamify something people with addiction and addiction-adjacent problems will inevitably interact with it in the gamified way. This was the first state of the karma system harming the site.

Then in the second stage once karma started getting more “serious” (preventing users from posting/commenting and being used as an “authenticity” check- what led to farmed and sold accounts) which led to a further breakdown of the karma system.

The underlying issue is despite being an absolutely useless measure in reality- the site itself ascribed value to them and caused people with (what we’d probably refer to as bad) economic incentives to act on that behavior then rationally acted.

I’m glad blue sky exists for two reasons:

1. It will likely contribute to more Elon meltdowns
2. It acts as a containment zone for celebrity and brand worship that’s marginally less bad than twitter

Best way to play the game. I really wish other games leaned into this gameplay loop as well. If anyone is aware of others who even sort of tried to do this I’d love to hear about them