Sincerity of Praise
If you are trying to increase the frequency that other people buzz you, praise may serve as the positive reinforcement that keep your partners in their reciprocal relationship with you. However, praise must be sincere. If the praise recipient believes that the praise is given when not genuinely warranted, your praise will lose its value as positive reinforcement and may, even, serve to decrease the frequency of the desired reciprocation.
How do you know if your praise will come across as sincere? Develop your praise based on the following sequence. First, make sure you have a clear understanding of what outcome you want from the other person. Second, use you knowledge of the situation, and of the person you seek to influence, to break achievement of the outcome in small nature subtasks which, if performed, will accomplish the outcome. Third, determine to what extent the person has performed the subtask. Fourth, praise the person for achieving the subtask furtherest along towards accomplishing the outcome.
For example, say you want 10 buzzes, but the person sends 5. If you say "I told you to send me more. This is not enough"... that is not positive reinforcement, and will not increase the persons tendency to send you 10 buzzes. If you say "I am so glad you sent me 5 buzzes. I knew you could do. You can send me 10 each day if you want to. I will send you 10. This will increase the chance the person will send you 10.
One exception is if you tell the person that they did not meet expectation by method which is inventive and humorous to such an extent that the person actually laughs, the laughter will serve as the reinforcement, and will increase your chance of future reciprocation. An example of my attempt to use this technique... is when a person sent me 5 buzzes, I responded "You sent 5 buzzes. Don't send only half a dozen donuts... please send a dozen next time". This response is confusing and weird, and clearly contains a negative implication, but will increase the chance of reciprocation if the person who receives it thinks its funny. If the person does not think it is funny, the response will decrease the chance of reciprocation.
Many people on Bitlanders do not want to vary from the formula of responding to buzz simply by reciprocating and using a stock comment. If you wrestle with the snake of having to design your responses separately as matches the personalities of your Bitlanders partners, the game will not suffocate you. In fact, figuring out how the other people think is the most fascinating part of this game.
