human psychology

I practice Secure Detachment. 

For me, detachment is not about being desireless or divorced from the world and others, it's about being aware of and in relationship with reality and the world.

I have egoic desires--I desire to have a thing, to go to a place, to be with a person. All day I have these desires, and I mostly just completely indulge them. Egoic is not a swear word, it's just an awareness of self-interest and preference. I have every right to pursue my preference. My life is for me. My body is for me. My experiences are for me.

And, in right relationship with reality and the world, I pursue my preference with abandon. That is, I abandon the idea that my preference is correct or righteous, or that violations of my preferences are evidence of something going wrong in the world. I pursue my preference simply--it's just what I want to do. I'm always doing something!

My preferences are sacred to and for me, and I have every right to use my time, energy, and attention in ways I prefer at all times.

AND it is correct and true and simply reality that the world does not conform to my preferences, that I will not be given my way, that in thousands of ways each day my preferences will be violated and this is a feature of reality, not a bug. I can have the right to have what I desire and not the ability to have it! This is simply a truth in the world.

I am detached from the outcomes of my egoic desires, because that is part of who I want to be. Who I want to be--that is the authentic desire which ideally gives rise to the forms of my egoic desires, if all's in integrity.

Who I want to be in the world is my deeper desire, and it applies as I receive my egoic desires and as I perceive myself deprived of those egoic desires. Who do I want to be while I get what I want? Who do I want to be while I don't get what I want?

Who do I want to be in this world which has so much to offer, so much that is inside my preferences and SO MUCH MORE that is outside my preferences? Who do I want to be in this world which was not designed for me, but is habitable and maybe even enjoyable, to the extent that I curate it?

This is a big update for me: 50 Niche Social Networks by the numbers. I used to think we were up against a graveyard of failed projects. There’s truth in that, but it obscures the vibrancy of the existing social media landscape:

• There are 30 social networks most of us have never even heard of pulling in 500k+ monthly active users. This isn’t just a fluke - it’s solid proof that focused, community-driven platforms can thrive.
• In addition to the standard dozen billion+ MAU Major Players (Facebook, Youtube, WhatsApp, Instagram, TikTok, WeChat; and .5 billion+ Snapchat, X, Pinterest, Spotify, Reddit, Quora)
• plus the foreign heavyweights (Douyin, Kuaishou, QQ, Weibo)
• there are also 19 pretty other huge platforms killing it

This is testament to

• The viability of focused, community-driven platforms.
• The social media landscape is more diverse than it might seem
• The success of niche platforms suggests there’s still room for innovation and growth in social media, especially for platforms that address specific needs or values that aren’t getting met by current platforms
• One option we have is positioning UpTrust in a different category, we’re not directly competing with established giants but rather creating a new space—where our niche is nuanced conversation about cultural landmines that goes well, in addition to kickstarting the trust economy (instead of the attention economy). It’s not about how long we can keep you scrolling; it’s about creating real connections and actually making people’s lives better.

Platforms with 1-5 Million Monthly Active Users

1. AllTrails: (hiking) ~4 million/mo
2. Letterboxd: (film enthusiasts) ~3 million/mo
3. Bandcamp: (music) ~3-4 million/mo
4. iNaturalist: (nature observation) ~3 million/mo
5. Mastodon: (decentralized social networking) ~2.5 million/mo
6. Ravelry: (knitting) ~2 million/mo
7. Tripoto: (travel) ~2 million/mo
8. Fitocracy: (fitness) ~1-2 million/mo (estimate, exact numbers not disclosed)
9. ResearchGate: (academic research) ~20 million total users, MAU not disclosed
10. Untappd: (beer enthusiasts) ~1.5 million/mo
11. Couchsurfing: (travel networking) ~12 million total users, MAU likely much lower
12. Gaia: (yoga and meditation) ~500,000/mo (estimate)

Platforms with 5-20 Million MAU

1. Fishbrain (fishing): ~6-7 million MAU (estimated)
2. Dribbble (design portfolios): ~5 million MAU
3. Depop (fashion resale): ~4-5 million MAU
4. Day One (journaling): 1-5 million MAU (estimate)
5. Patreon: (creators) ~8 million patrons
6. Komoot (route planning): MAU not disclosed, 40 million total users

Big Niche Social Platforms (20 - 180 million MAU)

1. BeReal: (authentic social media) ~25 million daily active users
2. Fandom: (fan communities) ~315 million total users, MAU not disclosed
3. Soundcloud: (music sharing) ~175 million/mo
4. Discord: (community chat) ~150 million/mo
5. Twitch: (gaming) ~140 million/mo
6. Tumblr: (microblogging) ~135 million/mo
7. Strava: (fitness tracking) ~100 million total users, MAU not disclosed
8. Wattpad (storytelling): ~90 million MAU
9. Goodreads: (books) ~90 million total users, MAU not disclosed
10. Etsy: (handmade and vintage items) ~90 million active buyers
11. Nextdoor: (neighborhoods) ~69 million verified users
12. Flickr: (photo sharing) ~60 million/mo
13. Stack Overflow: (programming Q&A) ~50 million/mo
14. DeviantArt: (art sharing) ~45-50 million/mo
15. Houzz: (home design) ~40 million/mo
16. Duolingo (language learning): ~40 million MAU
17. Meetup: (local community groups) ~35 million total users
18. Behance: (creative portfolios) ~25 million/mo
19. Last.fm: (music scrobbling) ~20 million/mo

Religious Community-Focused Platforms

1. YouVersion: (Christian) ~40-50 million/mo
2. Patheos: (Interfaith) ~10-15 million/mo
3. IslamicFinder: (Muslim) ~10-12 million/mo
4. Pray.com: (Christian) ~5-7 million/mo (estimate)
5. Aleteia: (Catholic) ~20 million monthly visits
6. Catholic.net: (Catholic) ~3-5 million/mo (estimate)
7. Al-Muslimeen: (Muslim) ~2-3 million/mo (estimate)
8. Torah.org: (Jewish) ~1-2 million/mo (estimate)
9. Mi Yodeya: (Jewish) ~500,000-1 million/mo (estimate)
10. Mindar: (Buddhist) ~500,000-1 million/mo (estimate)
11. DharmaMatch: (Buddhist/Spiritual) ~100,000-300,000/mo (estimate)
12. Sikh Sangat: (Sikh) ~100,000-300,000/mo (estimate)
13. Hindu2Hindu: (Hindu) ~100,000-300,000/mo (estimate)

Recent Growth Examples:

• BeReal: Grew from 10,000 users in 2020 to 25 million daily active users in 2022.
• Discord: Grew from 56 million MAU in 2019 to 150 million MAU in 2023.
• Twitch: Increased from 55 million MAU in 2019 to 140 million MAU in 2023.
• Pinterest: Grew from 335 million MAU in Q4 2019 to 450 million MAU in Q4 2022.

Metatation - rant - is it . Is Metatation a thing? I’ve been using it as a mantra during meditation. Somehow the metatation mantra helps me calm down all the meta’ing always seem to be do’ing. Metatation has made my mediation practice more fun. Metatation is almost a state of mind that often takes me into too much awareness. Is that possible>? Is too much awareness a thing? Probably not. Probably some complex term to summarize the sensation. But too much awareness does feel like a real thing and overwhelming specially with the sense of sensory awareness. Has anyone heard the term HSP? Highly Sensitive People: which am probably that, can feel like too much awareness of the environment: the noises, the lights, the temperatures, the smells, can be too much for some while other people in the same environment are not bothered by it. Then add on top that awareness, awareness of ecosystems out of harmony and awareness of inequalities and unjustnesses (like to make up words) and in the words of Kristen Wigg: Welcome to me.

Metatation on the app itself:
I am noticing as wirting this that the auto correct feature in this window as a type are not working like i’m use to via text and email. Which is showing me i’m not a great typer, nor do i spell all that well left to my own devices.

In the background of this post, is the metatating that i’m writing a post and imagining if it will be read, how it will be recieved and that it’s a new app and in beta testing. And that i before e, except after c (sorry to non-american educated peeps, if that’s not a thing you got placed in your brain at a young age). received: successfully typed it without autocorrect. Seriously i feel like my keyboard is broken. Oh and also noticing sometimes after the end of the sentence and the period, starting a new sentence, it doesn’t auto make the first letter of the sentence a capital letter.

I’m pretty sure i didn’t make up metatation, but i think i did, at least it felt like it happened that way as a new experience in my world. But metatation.com is taken to help design websites.

Metatation of you reading this:
Was it a waste of your time to take this in? Does that question make it so. Without asking if it was a waste, was it not, but after asking if it, now is it? These types of wonderings.. never ends, is it fun or is it anxiety being acted out?

The end.

And it really is my keyboard! the letter i barely works on my laptop and guess that never noticed as most of the time the autocorrect fixes it.