I've taken some time off after last week's news to observe and read what everyone is thinking and doing. I will write another post on which positive actions I've see taken these last few days, but for now I thought I'd explain one relevant psychological phenomenon that is applicable to the current situation - a short lesson in psychology that might serve as a good reminder for the future of the Steem Blockchain.

The bystander effect

The first month of me studying psychology a lot of very real and concrete social phenomena were explained in the lectures I was attending twice a week. Many of these were situations we recognize, or if not, we would recognize easily once we learned about them.

The Bystander Effect is one of the topics I remember vividly. The lecturer painted the image of two huge flat buildings with windows looking over a field of grass. Something happened on this field, a robbery, someone screaming help. It was evening and from the lighted windows you could see many people standing in front of the window, their silhouettes maybe even a calming idea, because 'the situation was observed', so clearly people should be busy calling the police to help out with the robbery.

BUT, nothing happened.

What did happen then? Well - simply put, because everyone thought someone was probably already calling the police, in the end, no-one did. This is a crude but often-reported and time and time again proven behaviour: people assume someone is doing something, but since in the end everyone is assuming the same, it leads to a complete lack of any action.

Yes, this means people have died and/or gotten severely hurt due to the Bystander Effect.

Causes that lead to Bystander Effect (in the Steem Community)

Now, there's many ways in which the Bystander Effect can take place, and there's certainly a difference between life-threatening situations and non-life-threatening ones. You can read all about the different causes that lead to the Bystander Effect, but I'll mention a few that I think might be most relevant for the Steem Community, both relevant for the situation we're in now as well as serving as a little warning for the future.

Ambiguity

People tend to take longer to take action if the circumstances are ambiguous: is something happening or not?.

For Steemit, Inc and anyone else working hard on developing/achieving anything: Being open and clear about having problems is the take-away here if we want people to step up to help. Simply suggesting or assuming people will notice is not enough.

Familiarity

People tend to act faster if they know their environment well. If the environment is less familiar people tend to become passive. For Steem this might mean having awesome documentation on all facets of the Blockchain is something that might help people to step into developing solutions for problems or take on projects quicker. It's no-ones favourite job but maybe realizing how good documentation helps people get into 'action mode' makes it a little more fun for you.

Diffusion of Responsibility

When people believe other people are around, or, when they believe other people are more qualified, they tend to step in less often. I remember from the lectures something as simple as calling 'You with the red shirt! Help me!' was already enough to make a person feel less anonymous and more responsibly, and more likely to act.

This might mean we have to call out (being friendly doesn't hurt here :D) our fellow community members more often, make them aware of what we think they can do, and have them feel they are responsible and they are capable - since they might've thought until then someone else was more qualified for the job.

Diffusion of responsibility is in my eyes one of the most relevant aspects of the Bystander Effect for the Steem Community: how often have we thought 'That's not my job?', or 'They are more qualified so they are probably doing it?'

My biggest take-away from what I've seen in the past few days was: the lack of communication from Steemit, Inc didn't help anyone feeling like they should step up. But Diffusion of Responsibility might have made people more passive then was needed. If you feel like something should be done: do it. If you feel like someone else might be capable of doing a thing: let them know.

[Unrelated picture of a puddle, shot today on iPhone.]

Anonymity

All of the above is only strengthened through us being anonymous in some ways. Some of us don't show their real names, and even if we do, we can easily pretend to be away, busy, otherwise occupied. Anonymity makes people passive, which is why I so strongly believe in meeting up with people, inviting someone over for a drink, organizing some sort of workshop around a certain problem, because if we as a community feel less anonymous we strengthen our feeling of responsibility to one another.

This is both a call to Steemit, Inc., to get to know their people and also for showing more of themselves to us. But it's also a call to ourselves to reach out to fellow Steemians through Discord or Video Calls and even better: live meet-ups.

Therefore:

• Go @ned, doing regular livestreams is one step in the right direction! Don't forget to show 'the rest' of Steemit, Inc as well, and don't forget to invite some of us on a 1-on-1 video call or even as a sparring partner in your shows.
• Go @roelandp, I honestly believe through attending SteemFest or for those who weren't there, seeing some real-life selfies on the Blockchain instead of arty avatars, you're helping us get out of anonymity which is greatly enhancing our feeling of responsibility towards one another.
• Go @llfarms for proposing a meet-up in Serbia supported by @crowdmind so we can have some 'real talks' instead of discussing things in chatrooms.

Don't assume and we'll get there

So far it's clear a few people are not assuming anything anymore and are starting to wake up to the fact that passiveness leads to losing what we have here. Amongst others @blocktrades dropped an amazing proposal that I welcome enthusiastically, not even because I have the technical knowledge to evaluate it properly, but because I want to see more of this behaviour - concrete actions - from the community in the future.

What am I doing you ask?

Good question.

I have not defined my specific role, yet, but I am thinking long and hard about what it should be. Me organizing meet-ups in the Netherlands is certainly one thing I think I should continue, although I'm now thinking I might add some work sessions to the schedule in which some of us will go through a specific problem or topic on which we want to provide a solution.

I'm only writing this because it can't hurt to have more perspectives on one specific topic. This happens to be what got into my head the past few days after seeing some posts, vlogs and random comments that gave me insight on how many people have experienced the past few months on the Blockchain until last week's bom dropped. It's not the whole story and we will never know or understand the whole store.

It doesn't matter.

Just don't assume anyone is doing anything and start doing stuff yourselves. In the worst case you then discover someone else is doing it too: simply combine your efforts and get it done quicker and better.

Good luck, and let me know your thoughts, or let me know what you think I could do the coming weeks and months. I might return the favour. Cheers.

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