You make it sound as though women’s willingness to be on a social network depends on how much validation or attention they receive. If that were true, women would flock to male-dominated Nostr.

If women don’t stick around, I suspect it’s because many prefer a certain degree of transparency and accountability. Here, I can’t even tell whether I’m talking to a man, a kid, or a bot. There’s something rather unsettling about walking into a room full of masked strangers who all seem to know one another while you’re the only one wondering what’s going on.

Just yesterday, after nearly a month on Nostr, I decided I’d start sharing more of my life (pictures, little videos, personal thoughts). Then today, @The Beave , someone whose judgment I respect, posts a selfie looking like a knight in full armor and announces that’s the only kind of selfie anyone will ever get from him.

And now I’m wondering whether he knows something I don’t.

Maybe women are leaving because they can’t figure out why everyone seems to be hiding. And rather than spend a month figuring out the rules of the masquerade, they just go back to Instagram.