I think the primary difference, at least in the hobby farmers I know who are young, idealistic, and just getting started, is that they aren’t expecting to scale the operation beyond some arbitrary point - beyond which, it stops being fulfilling and starts being a giant pain in the ass. Conversely, the dairy farmer I know who has the largest operation in the county is a stand up dude, who avoids cutting corners but is getting squeezed big time by small artisanal operations with street cred and big, industrial operations with margins. The middle, where there used to be a huge swath of family farms, is a bloodbath of debt and suffering.

I imagine most of these new hippies are trying to stay small.

I haven’t done any Signal app recruiting in my circle of contacts (in fact, I don’t think I’ve talked to anyone about it) and I have 14 contacts that have it installed at the very least. I don’t think it would be a huge push to make Signal more prevalent.

The uphill battle is making a dent in iMessage adoption, which seems to be deeper and deeper entrenched every day.