Why does the Podcast criticise passionate BCHers?
If you try to please everyone, you end up pleasing no one.
Every so often, the BCH Podcast generates some mild drama as a result of criticising other people or elements within the BCH community. This is the internal version of the emotional reaction it sometimes triggers with incisive critiques of people external to BCH.
The offended BCH-related party will usually resort to the following lines of argument in some combination:
- Anti-BCH: The Podcast isn't adequately representing BCH in the way they prefer. This may involve minimising/denying its influence, accusing it of dividing the community, setting a poor precedent or driving away "valuable" contributors. Of course, this is a laughable criticism since their emotional reaction is founded in their recognition that the Podcast is prominent, effective & held in high regard for positively growing BCH with lots of easily verifiable proof of work. If the Podcast was as useless or wrongheaded as they claim, it'd have no relevant influence among other important players in BCH & they wouldn't need to be upset in the first place.
- Censorship: Bitcoin (& BCH especially) has had a rough history with censorship. Its community is very sensitive to deplatforming, so people upset by the Podcast will often assert that its criticism of their opinions or somehow failing to promote their preferred agenda constitutes some kind of censorship. This is obvious nonsense, since the Podcast has no control of their ability to publish their preferred opinions anywhere besides spheres of influence the Podcast has built itself (such as episodes of the Podcast or the Podcast Telegram group). Nor is the Podcast obligated to advocate anything they think it should (compelled speech doesn't exist).
- Conspiracy: The Podcast is certainly well-connected & influential within BCH, and that truth is exaggerated to claim a co-ordinated masterplan with other unspecified people to treat them poorly in some manner. Unpopularity or pushback on their takes/behaviour from other BCH related individuals are dismissed as somehow vengefully enforced by the Podcast instead of just independent corroboration that they need to rethink their point of view.
This is often followed with the childish emotional "takeaway" tactic. In order to "prove their point" about how negative the Podcast is they will make a big show of claiming they will withdraw their (often meagre) contributions to BCH while forecasting that they will soon be followed in a dissatisfied exodus of others. This is easily recognised for what it is (a transparent attempt to feel important or bully the Podcast into vindicating them) & appropriately handled by relative indifference.
Predictably - The Podcast continues doing great work, the BCH community continues growing & their ragequit only looks increasingly ridiculous as time passes. Truth doesn't rust.
Podcast influence
Bitcoin Cash is decentralised. The Bitcoin Cash Podcast has no special status or advantage. It has no ability to compel anyone else into action, perfectly consistent with the philosophy of Bitcoin. To the extent it has influence, it was built by enormous amounts of Proof of Work & the free & voluntary choice of others to listen to it, donate funding or assist it.
Anybody who believes the Podcast is doing a poor job in absolutely any aspect (of BCH promotion or community involvement or anything else) is encouraged & totally free to start their own website, Twitter feed or whatever else they feel needs to be done better. To assist in this, the Podcast even makes as much of its own work open source as possible (including this website!), again consistent with Bitcoin principles.
The Podcast isn't perfect & it welcomes anyone & everyone to lead by example in ways to faster or more effectively spread BCH to global reserve currency. Of course, the implication is that most Podcast critics feel entitled to opine how it should be run with no concept of how it actually IS run. If they had themselves put in the prior & ongoing work the Podcast has to build the platform it has (which likely exceeds their expectation by orders of magnitude), they might feel differently about their objections or presumptions on its methods (let alone anyone else telling them what they should do differently afterwards).
If the Podcast truly is misusing its influence in any given instance, that will be rightly reflected in a broader loss of credibility. However, a given (and often emotional) critic should be cautioned not to mistake their own disillusionment or contention with a universal sentiment - relative to the Podcast they have far less experience and insight into the views of its own audience.
It's also worth noting that the Podcast audience is not caught off guard or somehow shocked to find it triggering emotional reactions among attention seekers or cognitively dissonant aggreived parties. It always has & always will, it's actually baked into the Podcast brand, so an appeal to the audience that "this time is different" is likely to be ineffective.
Criticism
With great power comes great responsibility.
The Bitcoin Cash Podcast criticises everyone. It criticises critics of BCH, to the point that they run out of counterarguments and get defensive. It criticises other BCH supporters where necessary. It even silently criticises itself (otherwise it would never iterate & improve its BCH advocacy), although some external observers will pretend that isn't true.
The first & third are generally not controversial. The upset comes from the second group, mostly because they feel slighted if their own advocacy methods or effectiveness is questioned "by their own team".
The Bitcoin Cash Podcast recognises the importance of debunking critics and reviewing history, but it also maintains a focus on positive proof of work. To the extent it criticises the BCH community, it's usually in service of correcting an imbalance in the level of negativity or time-wasting in proportion to mission-focussed progress. This is a subjective judgement which others may not agree with. Everyone has their own opinion & that's fine.
Podcast Raison d'être
It is important to be clear why the Podcast exists. As listed on the About page, the Podcast exists:
- To accelerate adoption by explaining how and why Bitcoin Cash will become the world's money
- To make news updates on the project accessible to all adopters (not everyone has time to follow it religiously)
- To serve as a historical record of a once-in-a-millenia event (global adoption of a new money)
- To make this historic social revolution an interesting and entertaining one to partake in
It does not exist to:
- Make everyone involved in BCH feel warm & fuzzy.
- Desperately kowtow to anyone who feels BCH as a whole is not serving their interests as a result of individual dissatisfaction with the Podcast.
- Provide an example of model citizen behaviour or personal virtue.
- Align with any given political philosophy or creed.
In order to acheive the mission of global reserve currency, it is necessary (at times) to be scathing. It's even necessary to accept the loss of negatively contributing (or unwilling to continue) individuals in the broader interest. If the Podcast begins driving away more people from BCH than it attracts, it will be the first to reconsider its approaches but there is no evidence that has ever been the case (the Podcast constantly grows in size).
This is not to say the Podcast is arbitrarily cruel or without principles, just that it is pragmatic enough to recognise that making an omlette means breaking some eggs. The nature of a revolutionary technology displacing existing powerful institutions is that some people's feelings are gonna get hurt - that's just the way it goes. This includes some people who actually like or contribute to BCH - others can't be above criticism just by virtue of being broadly on the same side or the BCH community would either stagnant or become too easy to undermine and hijack.