Hey there! My name is Ashni and I’m the new Senior Community Manager at SuperRare Labs.
Anyone who has spent meaningful time in NFT communities learns that more than art, technology, or even money, this space is about relationships. It’s about the connections we make and the support we give each other. It’s about community.
This year, SuperRare began paving the way toward turning curation and stewardship of the network over to the SuperRare DAO – a bold first step toward building the world’s biggest decentralized community of empowered artists and collectors. The path ahead is uncharted and exciting, but above all else, one thing is clear: Nurturing this community’s growth will be critical to its success. It’s something I think about a lot, and it’s why I’m so excited to join the crew here at SuperRare Labs.
Let me introduce myself: I started my hyper-online life as a Twitch streamer in 2013. I was terrible at it, but over time I was able to attract the attention of a financially supportive community and went full-time with content creation in 2015. Unfortunately, one individual contributed around 90% of my income. Even with an 80-hour work week, I wasn't able to get over 20 average viewers on Twitch. I couldn't understand why people who started streaming after me were growing so much faster. I brought these concerns up to my main supporter and he said, "A lot of people are gonna make it on Twitch, but it's never gonna be you."
My dream was ripped away from me. I was heartbroken. He pulled his support and I spent weeks on the couch feeling sick and sad at the failure I felt I had become. Eventually I got fed up and went to the gym. In that gym session, I listened to a podcast that opened my eyes to things like branding, marketing, audience development, and more. Where was this information when I needed it? Why was no one on Twitch talking about this?! So I decided to do it.
My entire content creation experience until that point had been self-centered: If only I was prettier, funnier, or more interesting than every other streamer out there I would be successful, right? I thought all I had to do was be better than everyone else. But when I began educating streamers, I started to understand the power of people in a way I never had before. I realized that creating a fulfilling online community wasn’t about me, it was about them.
When I started celebrating the people in my streams instead of myself, my space became more attractive. Viewers felt like I genuinely cared about them. They sent me gifts, made videos about how my work impacted them, and we connected at a level I had never experienced before. Most importantly, I really was changing their lives. I made a difference for the first time.
That’s the energy I want to bring to SuperRare. I'll be working on deepening the experience, building more awareness and engagement in our space, and other secret, spicy community initiatives to make SuperRare the best we can be.
How can we give back to our artists, collectors, and curators in helpful ways? How do we create more conversations publicly and privately? How the heck do we support the entire NFT community as a whole?
I've got a lot of incredible ideas I can't wait to work on with our team. I'd also love to write more about community here on the SuperRare blog, so please keep an eye out for that. In an effort to begin SuperRare's work building the SuperCommunity (cringe?), I'd love to invite you all to join us on Mondaym December 6th at 10am CST on Twitter. You can follow me there @ashnichrist. We'll be hosting a Space to talk about community, our future, and you.
We hope you'll join us and I can't wait to see what we all build. Together.
Ashni