An Unconventional List of Medium Pet Peeves
Do you hate these too?
Some people say that we shouldn’t complain about Medium, that we ought to be more gracious and appreciative.
But if people were not allowed to voice their critiques, how could we improve as a platform and community? These critiques are just constructive feedback, in my opinion, even if they are worded strongly. Plus, pet peeve posts can be fun and eye-opening to read.
On this topic, I especially loved Mike Lewis’s “My 5 Pet Hates of Medium Writing — Yes, I’m Talking to You” and Dr. Tracy Davis’s “5 Medium Writing Pet Peeves — Click With Caution!”
I will do something different today. I’ll list some pet peeves of mine that few people talk about, including some that could be unique to me. You may disagree with my opinions and that’s okay. In fact, you might even be mad at me if you do some of these yourself.
But let me clarify that I don’t hate you personally. I just dislike the phenomenon, which means that it’s about groups of people, not about any one person in particular.
So here come my pet peeves:
1. When readers attack a writer for something they didn’t say
I vividly saw this in David B. Clear’s post, Why Quantity — Not Quality — Is What Will Make You Money as a Writer. Swarms of readers thought David was telling us to write trash for money.
Yet, he already made a disclaimer near the beginning, with a funny analogy, that quality does matter. He was just saying that you don’t need to be a perfectionist. Your article just needs to be good enough that your target reader will enjoy it.
In fact, he wrote a second disclaimer at the end of his article, that quantity and money need not (or should not) be the end all be all. Some of us, including David himself, do care about quality and excellence.
After getting this deluge of negative comments, David added a third disclaimer at the bottom of his article, emphasizing that he doesn’t encourage us to churn out low-quality content. He only said that it needs to be good enough; it doesn’t need to be an absolute masterpiece.
One writer published a response post to David’s. They said that it was good of David to add a disclaimer at the bottom of the article, but he would do better to add one at the top too. Wow, but David did put a disclaimer near the top of the article, as I mentioned earlier.
Perhaps you think I’m too harsh, since so many people do skim-read, and words can be interpreted in a million different ways, right? Maybe, but I still felt very frustrated on David’s behalf. He later wrote a humorous and insightful essay on how to deal with angry comments.
Robert Ralph, in his story, “You Are Very Nasty”, recounted a similar incident. Some readers did not bother to finish reading his article, and made hostile comments based on the limited amount they read. It’s upsetting to see this happening. Thoughtful critiques based on what the writers actually said would be fine, but lashing out at an author without reading the article completely or carefully, is aggravating.
I do understand that sometimes, if you don’t know the writer well, you won’t have a good context to judge them by. And again, words are notoriously easy to misinterpret on the internet. Still, readers could at least raise their disagreements in a respectful way, rather than assuming that the writer must have malicious motives.
To illustrate what I mean, I will talk about a personal case. I wrote the articles “I’m a Pro-Choice Transgender Person, But My Views May Surprise You” and “Do You Love Someone Who Was From an Unwanted Pregnancy? A Pro-Choicer’s Views on This and Other Matters”.
As you can imagine, these stories are full of controversy. I bring up a number of unconventional perspectives, but I included tons of disclaimers to clarify my intentions throughout both articles.
A couple of readers misunderstood some things I wrote, but they still spoke in a respectful way and gave me the benefit of the doubt. We were able to talk productively about their concerns, and I wrote further clarifications at the end of my articles.
I was going to tag these readers, but decided not to, as I don’t want to embarrass them, even though my intention here is to praise them for bringing up issues in such a thoughtful and considerate manner, rather than being aggressive and accusatory like some other readers do.
2. When a writer calls their article semi-viral and readers argue that this doesn’t count as viral
Gee, semi-viral doesn’t equal viral. I wish people would read more carefully.
Justjulieandherblog had this experience on her article. I was dismayed to see readers tell her that her story didn’t get enough views to count as viral. But she said semi-viral, not viral! It’s possible that some (but not necessarily all) of these people were just jealous and wanted to tear Julie down, though. Who knows?
3. This picture:
Yes, I know, this is a super popular picture from Unsplash. But I personally saw this picture way too much and am really sick of it.
To clarify, there were many articles I loved that used this picture. So I have nothing against the articles themselves or the authors who used it. Nor do I have anything against the model, as I don’t even know her. I’m just not a fan of this stock photo, because of how overused it is.
4. When a writer makes universal claims about what readers like, as if we were a giant monolith and our tastes are all the same.
To be clear, I mean universal claims about highly subjective experiences, not for actual universal things like “all readers hate clickbait.” I’ve never met a reader who enjoyed being tricked by a title that failed to deliver on its promise.
You could also talk about what most or many readers like. “Most readers aren’t drawn to titles with jargon in them,” “Readers tend to like titles that suggest strong emotion,” and “Huge paragraphs can be tiring to read on phone and laptop screens” are good examples of fair statements that don’t claim that everyone has the same feelings.
However, there are some common universal claims that I find quite annoying, such as “All readers hate adverbs.” “All readers have zero attention span so let’s write at a 6th-grade reading level.” “All readers respond more strongly to showing than to telling.”
For the last point, I typically feel more strongly if I am directly told an emotion word. My feelings towards shown actions are usually milder. E.g. “They felt excited” vs “They were jumping up and down.” This was an actual example from a writers’ workshop I attended. The facilitator asked us which sentence made us feel more strongly.
I was about to respond, “They felt excited,” but she answered her own question first, “They were jumping up and down”! I should have spoken up, but I was too shy and I just let them continue with the belief that all readers have a stronger emotional response to action descriptions than to emotion words.
No, I’m not saying that we should never “show.” Both showing and telling have their place in stories. It just sucks to have my reading experiences erased, as some writers think we all have the same psychological response to things.
I’ve even asked a number of friends about this. While some had the common experience of feeling more intensely towards the action description, some others were like me and felt more strongly towards direct emotion words. My best friend said she preferred it if we used both the action and the emotion word in the same sentence.
Some years later, I saw a guest poster on a writing blog bring up the same topic. I was braver and more confident at this point, and I told her about my and some friends’ more powerful reaction towards “telling” (emotion words) than to “showing” (action descriptions). She was flabbergasted and said that we must be in the minority.
Sheesh. I see. Just because we’re in the minority, our feelings don’t matter as much. Doesn’t that sound like a familiar attitude in society?
5. Writers who insist that “no one cares about your life,” when it’s clear that personal life stories are popular on Medium
Yes, I know that many of these writers actually mean that you shouldn’t rant about your life without giving readers a clear takeaway. But it sounds cruel to me that instead of just saying this is a flaw in communication, they make aggressive statements like “no one gives a shit about you and your life.”
This is false. Plenty of us do give a shit. Many of us care even about the lives of strangers. We have empathy and want to connect with others.
If you personally aren’t interested in reading about other people’s lives, that’s fine. But please don’t assume that all of us readers are the same. This goes back to pet peeve #4.
6. The devaluing of readers who happen to be writers
I fully and proudly call myself a reader. In fact, I see myself as a reader first and a writer second. It’s annoying to hear over and over again that somehow, readers who are writers are less valuable than readers who are non-writers.
If we care about those who like to read about fly-fishing, then why can’t we care about folks who like to read about the writing craft?
All reader interests are valid. All audiences are valid. I chatted with JF Danskin in his article, “Should Medium Control What We See?” about this issue, and he was sympathetic.
I get that some writers are not talking about their personal opinion. They’re only talking about what Medium seems to value. EV Williams appeared to care more about readers than about writers. But since many, if not most, readers on Medium are writers themselves, he was shooting himself in the foot when he removed the in-app editing function.
But I have hope that Tony Stubblebine will be more sympathetic towards writers. He has even stated that the editing functions on the app will be back, but it will be a slow process.
7. When amazing articles I read get very few claps and comments
This is more of a lament than a protest, but I feel sad when I read a wonderfully written, even inspiring article, and see that there are barely any claps or comments on it.
I understand that a great writer isn’t always good at marketing and promotion. But it still pains me to see this. I try to promote these articles to friends and groups when I can, but I just feel like they deserve much more recognition and praise than that.
As a matter of fact, there are some writers here I greatly admire. Yet for some reason, their articles get so little engagement. It’s a real shame.
So what do you think? Do you agree or disagree with the above? Do you think I’m too harsh? Let me know in the comments!
Note: For those who think some of these are conventional pet peeves, there are actually tons of people who disagree with me on many, if not all, of these points. Some may even think I’m too demanding or too soft and sentimental.
If you want to read about things I love about Medium, check out my article: “Medium, How Do I Love or Loathe Thee? Let Me Count the Ways” (It’s mostly love)