Writing

A Cold War Between Writers & Influencers on Medium

Dilettantes and libertines are trying to define the future of the creator economy.

In the spirit of the zeitgeist, I suppose I’ll just jump right into the churning maelstrom, and join the circular meta discussion that’s taking place across Medium. It’s the conversation that has in large part replaced the many other much meatier topics that were once explored more fully on the site, i.e. anything that is not about Medium.

It seems that a more “relational” Medium is also a far more insular and self-absorbed Medium. The recent slate of changes are being felt deeply and sharply across the platform, as writers vainly try to stay ahead of the curve.

As the platform evolves, it feels as though political writers are being censored, true crime writers murdered, and satirists laughed out of the room. What topic works on Medium, then?

What still performs well?

Medium on Medium. That’s what works.

It seems to be what the audience craves, and what the algorithm rewards.

We’re all chasing after the same precious few readers, after all. Where once a gifted writer might try his or her hand writing about foreign affairs or politics or finance or technology, now the only thing any of us ever see on our homepage are articles about Medium itself.

This seems evidence enough that this is what works.

It is what it is, I suppose. Supply and demand makes the world go round, especially in the creator economy. The algorithm knows best, as it were.

Still, there are a few talented writers that don’t write exclusively about Medium that are doing well, like… umair haque and Jessica Wildfire, although she does occasionally write about Medium. That said, they seem to be a minority.

As lesser writers with lesser followings are reduced to cannibalizing one another and the written word itself to garner more views, there’s a sense that a once-cosmopolitan minded Medium has turned decisively and perhaps irreversibly inward.

I’m guilty of this very thing myself, it seems. One does what one must.

Angry dilettantes and empty entrepreneurs

The battle taking place on Medium is both ideological and stylistic. What should one write about, and how should one write it? The recent slate of changes on the site merely accelerated this simmering internecine conflict, and the necessity of answering these two basic questions has steadily grown.

It’s the battle between performative clickbait and classical writing.

At its essence, though, it’s kvetching dilettante writers decrying the army of vulgar blog-about-blogging digital salesmen who have descended on Medium like locusts.

For now, the latter are in the lead. They’re getting clicks and printing money.

There are writers who take themselves a trifle too seriously on one side, perhaps. They’re screaming into the algorithmic wind about the quality of the writing on Medium sinking precipitously, while lamenting that their own views are tanking.

They’re not wrong, though.

They see Medium becoming a self-obsessed bubble universe, incapable of producing anything beyond endless and mindless introspection.

A facebook suffering from literary delusions.

They’re furious about the flood of mediocre hacks making a killing pumping out mindless tips on Medium about Medium. The dilettante writers feel as if they’re a minority here, that good writing is now a thing of the past.

They may have a point.

On the other side, are the more business-savvy influencers and digital entrepreneurs, who exploit the algorithm’s many soft spots.

These writers might respond by telling the dilettantes that they’re far too self-precious to be writing on a blogging site, and can be expected to say something to the effect of:

“Stop criticizing Medium on Medium. If you don’t like it, leave it.”

They sound a bit like Republicans in America who tend to tell liberals and immigrants critical of the United States to either “love it or leave it.” It’s a crass but effective rebuttal.

That said, it’s also a bit reductive. After all, doesn’t the quality of the writing still matter? Aren’t we all writers? Perhaps not.

The algorithm seems to agree.

Irony in the creator economy

At the end of the day, the platform gets what the platform wants. An ironic byproduct of this Medium Cold War are the many furious writers calling for an embargo banning all other articles about Medium. It’s a bizarre thing to be saying don’t write about Medium, as you’re writing about writing about Medium.

Welcome to the creator economy.

This has become a world of double and triple-entendres. That’s the problem with writing about Medium. The navel gazing becomes the point.

It can all feel a bit trite, a bit hollow. A bit self-absorbed.

The truth is that algorithmic incentives are moving the conversation along, and pushing writers to engage on one side or the other of this endless debate.

It reminds me a bit of something in a book I’m reading right now, which is describing the vicious internal literary battles that took place inside the Soviet Union after the October Revolution.

There were a group of angry proletarian writers who made scathing attacks against established writers who were not ideologically pure enough, and who were seen as insufficiently toeing the communist party line. The battle went back and forth for years, and it never really ended.

Ultimately, the result was the creation of the infamously repressive USSR Union of Writers, and the widespread censorship of anything remotely critical of the Bolshevik’s policy or leadership. The formulaic dregs of Socialist Realist propaganda officially replaced the literature of Alexey Tolstoy, Mikhail Bulkgakov, and Maxim Gorki.

For years, Russian literature was dead and buried. Rather than write literature, authors wrote propaganda paeans to please Stalin and Khrushchev, at least if they wanted to be successful in Russia.

The choice was between invisibility or dishonesty.

There’s something similar happening on Medium, perhaps.

There’s a central authority censoring and promoting writers, an opaque algorithmic commissar, responsible for curating everything that happens here.

The Bolsheviks could only dream of such an effective and impersonal mechanism for silencing troublesome writers and political critics. The sheer opacity of the system invites our scrutiny.

In this brave new world of online reading and writing, who can say where the algorithm begins and Medium’s editorial staff ends? It’s a hall of mirrors.

As far as the ongoing battle happening on the platform, it’s the same debate that’s always existed in literary and artistic arenas. Quality versus bankability, except that it’s been supercharged by the economic possibilities of the internet, and a failing traditional economy.

Old arguments have assumed brand new dimensions, as some work feverishly to exploit these new financial instruments in this era of dying capitalism, and others criticize them for their shamelessness.

In other words, the algorithm can and will be gamed. At the end of the day though, the algorithm is only what Medium decides it to be.

As the pandemic shut us into our homes, and as more writers flock to online writing, these questions will continue to play out. Their answers will increasingly decide the new winners and losers in this online literary era. We can’t shy away from this debate, as our world moves online, and as writing assumes its new digital form.

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