We need to move beyond the shill.

Web3 is evolving, but our social media is falling behind. One of the main reasons for this is that most of us (myself included) are primarily concerned with promoting our own holdings. We spend more time promoting our bags, then engaging with anything else in the space.

We need to move beyond the shill in order for Web3 to mature to where it needs to be.

It’s understandable. We have invested in these projects because, for whatever reason, we believe they are worth our time and money. We share every update and post our pfps with hype messages. We’re excited to see items on promised roadmaps be delivered, so want to share the news. There’s an element to which this is a good thing — it means that projects that are actually delivering can be found by others — but it also means that we become trapped in our own echo chambers and aren’t forging the connections to really allow Web3 to live up to its true potential.

How can we do this in practice? It doesn’t mean stop talking about the projects you love and are involved with, but it does mean taking a wider view of how you are engaging in the space and talking about different areas of it. Here are a few ideas to help you broaden your Web3 horizons…

1. Find some news or updates each day that aren’t related to your holdings and digest them. Not to see whether you want to buy, but to understand what they are offering to the space that might be different.
2. Talk about the issues of the moment without reference to your own holdings that are ‘doing it right’. We can learn and discuss best practice without always trying to steer people to specific projects.
3. For the projects you do hold, truly engage with their communities and avoid slipping in those subtle mentions of your other holdings. You know the ones.
4. Take time to educate yourself and join sessions, read papers, understand where big companies are moving into the space and why… basically just become more knowledgeable about the broader trends in web3 and not just your own little corner/s of it.
5. When you see other people mention their own holdings, ask them questions about why they like the project. Learn from the passion of others — yes, even when they are shilling — and do so with no intention of buying into what they are promoting. But rather to learn about their motivations and what they are looking for in a project.
6. Share information that doesn’t just link back to your holdings. Highlight and applaud things you DON’T hold. We can’t have ownership of everything good out there, but we can try to talk about as many positive examples as we find.

Those are just a few small ideas that we can all implement to help make Web3 a more welcoming space, that looks to evolve in positive directions outside of pure profit motives.

I know that I’m guilty of doing it for the shill a lot of the time (I’ve named this publication after one of my holdings!). It’s okay to be a believer in the projects we hold and tell people about them, but it has become so pervasive that we are now corroding the collaborative ethos of web3 that many of us are drawn to. It’s time to change that and start being more proactively passionate about the space as a whole.

It’s time to move beyond the shill. See you there.