Why I Do Not Invite Friends and Family to Nostr

Why I Don't Invite Friends and Family to Nostr

Note: I am using the article to experimint editiing my words with the Kimmie 3 LLM in this article, but the original draft is human-written.

Fiatjaf, Nostr OG Number 1, asked, "Why don't you invite your friends and family to nostr?". My answer: I did. They said it sucked.

I'm as excited about nostr as I am about bitcoin, but most people in the world don't share that enthusiasm. I was into MySpace for the tech... and to meet women. Most people are into bitcoin for the fiat gains, not the tech — They hear itabout it on the news and love talking about the price. But they don't give a damn about digital signatures. Nostr is all digital signatures without a price to drool over. You need to love nostr for the tech, not the fiat.

During the dot-com boom, talking about the Pets.com sock puppet was in vogue. Talking about TCP/IP at a dinner party would have made everyone yawn. The same is true of nostr. Unless you're recording an audiobook for insomniacs, don't do it. Follow these rules instead:

Rule 1: Don't Talk About Nostr — Show It

I don't talk about nostr, with a few exceptions. I have a friend at work who runs a ProxyProxmox server and has mined bitcoin. He's the type of dude to talk about nostr with. The vast majority of people aren't interested though. Nostr, as a Twitter clone, appeals to cryptoanarchists, bitcoiners, hackers, artists, conspiracy theorists, libertarians,gardeners, and Sheldon Copper-brained developers who now have access to AI. There are genuinely sweet people here too — but I've come to realize that most people prefer censorship to free speech. They don't want a feed full of sausages and meatballs(a.k.a.).

Nostr is censorship resistant. Most people prefer a censored Internet. They don't want to deal with D-Day. Who wants to promote a site that frequently gets gay porn spam attacks at church? These are real people with valid concerns. Want a gay porn only site? You can build it, but please don't force this on my eyeballs. I'm no prude, and I think activism on nostr is cool, but I don't want to see schlong all day long. D-Day happens. Would you invite your mother to a site that occasionally gets dick pic spam attacks? Even my friends who like gay porn would never do such a thing.

Rule 2: Put Nostr in the Background

Here are the ways I've done it:

1. Greeting cards. I make cards with QR codes linking to nostr sites like Zap.cooking. For Mother's Day, I made a card that opened a web page showing all my flowerstr posts. Nostr is in the background, and nobody needs to know it.
2. Business cards. I was inspired by Ross Stevens, CEO of Stoneridge, whose annual newsletter. describes a business card as something that signifies real-world value: you. My card links to my website, which uses nostr as a backend, and includes a lightning tip jar. I don't talk about zaps and sats — I just hand them a physical card made with no AI slop.
3. Apps for my family. Now that English is a programming language, I've started vibe-coding apps my friends and family would actually use — todo lists and budgeting apps built on NIP-44. They will never write down an nsec, so I use Google passkeys for login. Let me know if you have other ideas.
4. My website. I built it on Shakespeare.diy, and the tool also taught me how to change the code manually. I didn't need to read 10,000 docs to find the Index.tsx file. I just asked.

Rule 3: Show People What They Already Want

Nostr is growing — you just need to know where to look. Taco Bell is on Divine. People who don't listen to 40 hours of bitcoin podcasts a week are making and watching videos there. Divine is in the press. Teenagers have told me they're excited about it. No teenager is talking about nostrudel (no offense to Hzrd). The hardcore folks on nostr are readers, builders, and nerds. It's time to show everyone else what we can do for them.

AI is hot right now, too. Buzz looks promising for the agentic agent claw-bot crowd who aren't bitcoiners. Show it to your AI-nerd friends.

If we want nostr to grow, we need to think about what other people want — not just what the hardcore spectrum-disorder dwellers want(a.k.a. my people). It's not only about the bitcoin super nerds anymore. We have to build for everyone else, too.

Thanks for reading. Written by Marc block height: 965,773 Tips appreciated

Note: This article is AI slop free. The first and second drafts are human written.

I use AI to correct grammar, and spelling. Then I have it give me suggestions for improvements like an editor,. The final draft is re-edited by me. I eliminate the stuff that doesn't sound like my voice or re-word it so it does.

All artwork is human made.

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