Okay, so, first of all I'd like to say thanks to @akhyasad for inspiring me to get off my arse and do something worthwhile on Steemit. His show is really good on the whaleshares discord, his short talk with me prompted me into a bit of late night thinking. Think of this a a pre-announcement of what I'm working on. Nothing is set in stone yet and it will take me a couple of weeks to create this.
In the next few weeks I'm going to be launching Steemit's first 'for men' discord server. There are quite a few Feminism servers for the ladies, so this one is going to be solely aimed at men. I'll be providing a sort of escape for men to come, relax and talk about what's on their mind.
Will ladies be allowed?
Of course they will be. I'm now a headstrong and confident man because of all the amazingly inspiring women I've had in my life; I believe there is no us and them, there is only us. The only thing that I ask when you come to the server (if you are a woman) is that you be aware that our core aims is for men to open up and speak out. We need this.
It WON'T be a place to hate on women, or men though. I won't tolerate any victimisation or sweeping statements like, "Men are..." or "Women are..." this will be a place to grow together as humans and inspire others.
What's so special about my men's lounge?
Well, firstly it'll be cross-platform. I have a magazine that attracts around 20-30k visits per month; I'll be hopefully feeding people into the discord from there too.
Our Men and Masculinity podcast will now be run on the Discord server with the opportunity for other men to speak with us and win some sbd. The finished product will be sent across Dsound, iTunes, and Soundcloud. We usually have around 200 listeners per week, and we're hoping to grow this. Hosting us we have Deb who is a licensed Marriage and Relationships Counsellor, Alex is a Professional Wrestler, and I have over 10 years experience within the mental health sector. Between us, we have a good reflective insight to Masculinity, but we understand this is a concept that is growing. This is only the start.
As we grow I am hoping to utilise the expertise of our audience in other ways. When I ran an IT Cafe I was limited to picking those that had the potential to work with other customers, and I would often feel saddened when I came across people that oozed enthusiasm and possibility yet there was nothing we could do with them because of my tight remit. Discord and the wide topic of 'men' opens up this possibility exponentially; for instance someone that I notice that has a flair for helping people with their IT problems I would encourage to go and create themselves a sub-group of IT helpers with their own community. The possibilities? Endless.
We will hold weekly reflective contests on Steemit. Each week I want to encourage men (and women) to reflect on and write about a statement that our main account sends out. It could be something similar to, "describe a time when you thought you were a failure. Describe how that made you feel and how other people reacted to this" - winners will be rewarded with sbd and encouraged to submit to other places.
Further to that I would like to encourage cross-platform posting. People (men and women) that have already established a blog on Steemit, and write to an agreeable standard; I want to encourage submitting to my Magazine as a regular writer (there is no guarantee my editors will say yes! They have high standards!). Yes, we pay you real money for this. Also, bigger and more successful magazines sit on the Relationship Blogger and scout new authors to write for them too. Think of this as your entry to mainstream. You writing for us won't just be for my benefit. Spots are limited though, so you may have to wait your turn. My aim here is to increase content quality on Steemit and encourage authors to do this with monetary and social rewards. Don't worry - we will be hosting workshops for people that want to write better to a larger audience.
My vision, at its core, is to empower men to be the best possible versions of themselves.
This is a TALL vision, are you sure you're not biting off more than you can chew?
Possibly, yes, but I'm going to have a lot of fucking fun trying! I don't do things in half measures. All the social stuff I can donate my time to build. I know this is a good idea and I've been doing community groups for half a decade, so I'm going to donate a large portion of my free time to carefully and tenderly build this.
Sounds costly? How will you fund it?
I'm looking to fund this project through several avenues. In the next few days I'll be creating a Patreon account which will offer investors several benefits on Discord, and my Magazine that I have yet to think up. All money from that account will be funnelled into the Steem power of our main Steemit account. Any revenue I get from my Magazine, minus the wages of the staff and writers will be funded into the Steem power of our account. Any nice profits from my trading will be going in there too.
Yes, I will be keeping some behind to grow and live comfortably so don't worry.
Why Steem power?
Well it may not seem like it at the moment but I duly think cryptocurrency is going to explode to a level that we haven't seen yet in the next few years. Steem will be one of those coins at the top. Yes we have our problems right now, but I like to find solutions to them and act upon them. Call my project a solution to the growing rewards problem.
