The Tickling Communities app carried a promise: Take this opportunity, to build your local communities; Use this app as a safe space to invite those who are otherwise deterred from the current, quite pornographic nature of our community sites… BE a community – that acts to grow, evolve, and even be seen, recognized, and legitimized! You don’t have to “come out”, full out, if you are not ready to – but create some noise, anonymously! Start steering the pot! let’s change things!!!
...and in return to your efforts, we’d have opportunities to REALLY meet like-minded people; What was a sporadic experience for some, could become common… to have casual meetups with them in coffee shops, pubs or picnics – and have the opportunities for all sorts for platonic and a-platonic relationships form naturally, just like they do best, in everyday life...
The concept was formed as a result of brainstorming and debating options with community members and leaders in the forums and in private. It was an attempt to offer a new avenue of growth for us as a community.
However, such an endeavour is different that the current services offered to the community: This is not something you make your stand about by buying something you like. This is a social concept, for the community – that had to be supported and nurtured(!) by the community. It is not something that advertises itself – and as it has no viability as a commercial project – the community’s active involvement was a condition for its success.
It is not enough to sign up for the app and hope for the best. In order to build a community, active efforts to generate content and create a buzz must be made. As I described in several places – such efforts may had been bought with money – had it been a potentially commercial project that investors could get a yield for.
Given it was not a commercial project – it was our job to do so...
But you know what they say: Everybody wants change, but nobody wants to change… Please try to view the following as a simple reflection of my point of view:
I was really happy to make the effort and make the research for this project; I was more than happy to make the actual development of an initial version of the app – so we’d have this tool; I was willing to “come out” on YouTube - so there is content to share and discuss other than porn… and I was honestly willing to further develop it to make it more powerful and empowering to our community – as your feedback would have started to come in...
But to make it work – the community had to meet me half way – or this project would – as it did – fail.
Apparently, we are not “quite there” yet, that we’d be willing, as a community, to debate internally: Are we happy with the way things are? How do we want them to change? What should we do in order for them to change? And most importantly: to ACT to create this change…
...and in return to your efforts, we’d have opportunities to REALLY meet like-minded people; What was a sporadic experience for some, could become common… to have casual meetups with them in coffee shops, pubs or picnics – and have the opportunities for all sorts for platonic and a-platonic relationships form naturally, just like they do best, in everyday life...
The concept was formed as a result of brainstorming and debating options with community members and leaders in the forums and in private. It was an attempt to offer a new avenue of growth for us as a community.
However, such an endeavour is different that the current services offered to the community: This is not something you make your stand about by buying something you like. This is a social concept, for the community – that had to be supported and nurtured(!) by the community. It is not something that advertises itself – and as it has no viability as a commercial project – the community’s active involvement was a condition for its success.
It is not enough to sign up for the app and hope for the best. In order to build a community, active efforts to generate content and create a buzz must be made. As I described in several places – such efforts may had been bought with money – had it been a potentially commercial project that investors could get a yield for.
Given it was not a commercial project – it was our job to do so...
But you know what they say: Everybody wants change, but nobody wants to change… Please try to view the following as a simple reflection of my point of view:
I was really happy to make the effort and make the research for this project; I was more than happy to make the actual development of an initial version of the app – so we’d have this tool; I was willing to “come out” on YouTube - so there is content to share and discuss other than porn… and I was honestly willing to further develop it to make it more powerful and empowering to our community – as your feedback would have started to come in...
But to make it work – the community had to meet me half way – or this project would – as it did – fail.
Apparently, we are not “quite there” yet, that we’d be willing, as a community, to debate internally: Are we happy with the way things are? How do we want them to change? What should we do in order for them to change? And most importantly: to ACT to create this change…
