Clap Or Not To Clap, That Is The Question

And how many times to clap.

Yeah Yeah! We all know claps have no bearing on the amount of money a writer earns from an article on Medium. But every time someone claps at my article, my heart swells, and I get motivated to write the next one.

That is the problem with being the new kid on the block.

You don’t know what had been going on before you came to the new neighborhood.

Clap is a feature unique to Medium. Had it been a like or dislike button like YouTube, I would have known instantly how many people have liked my article. But I can get fifty claps from one reader. That was something beyond my comprehension.

For a long time, I would clap once for the article I liked. Then I found others were clapping 30 to 50 times for my mediocre article. What’s going on? Are they all pitying me or praising me?

Today, I decided to do some research. So I went digging in Medium and read all the articles writing about claps in the past three years.

Here is what I found.

Medium introduced claps in 2017.

Claps used to be exclusively for Medium Series, then they introduced it for articles as well replacing the recommend heart icon with the clap icon. So claps became the new recommendation system.

The more claps a story got, the more encouragement it provided to the writer to write more of the same, and the more additional readers it would attract.

Not only that, Medium started paying the writers in proportion to the number of claps they received.

The move was initially welcomed but later on, became complicated. Established writers started getting more claps which meant more and more people read their articles. Many Facebook clap pages started where people clapped for articles without even reading them.

Besides, prospective readers couldn't distinguish easily between one fan giving 50 claps to an article and 50 people who appreciated the article.

In either case, your membership money was distributed proportionally through all your claps. Neil explained it best here, but the gist of it was that clapping 50 times doesn’t give someone 50 times more money than just clapping once.

Nobody knows who came up with the idea of a maximum of 50 claps. It is ridiculously high. Once you decide to clap, how on earth do you decide whether a story is worth 1, 5, 10, 20, or 50 claps?

Then in 2019, Medium dropped the idea of paying based on claps.

Just like that.

And they started paying by the “read time,” i.e., the amount of time a reader took to read an article.

But the clap button was left intact. And people still kept clapping.

Articles after articles were written, some telling claps don’t matter, others telling why they will continue to give 50 claps to each story they like.

There were sagas of missing claps and ways to retract accidental claps.

Then came a wave of articles saying claps are no reflection on your writing and if you only show up for the applause, you might not show up at all.

The arguments were:

• Claps operate as a tool for social validation. The more claps you see in an article, the more likely you assume it was a good article. Unfortunately, this isn’t necessarily the case.
• Don’t Be Fooled: Claps, Likes & Follower Counts Are Vanity Metrics.
• It doesn’t matter if your stories have zero claps, but you are expanding your personal and professional network, building your brand, and getting better at your craft.
• Claps can be addictive and can make you lazy. Besides, most people clap in silence.

But I'm afraid I have to disagree with all of these writers.

The bottom line is we all like applause.

And I am thankful to those who took the time to press the mouse and watch the clap count go to the maximum for my articles.

I, too, clap for other writers, especially new writers. I might stay under the radar with established writers, particularly if they already have thousands of claps, but I give them plenty of reading time which means they get a fair share from my five dollars contribution.

Let’s face it; all creative people need is a bit of encouragement.

Writers don’t get paid well anyway, and now you don’t want to give them a bit of appreciation in the form of “no-money-attached,” good-for-nothing,” “you-can’t-even-hear-them,” digital claps.

But then I read two articles that surpassed every other article I read about claps.

You see Alex Baia the one who either never claps or claps just once. Instead, he would read an entire story, from top to bottom. It certainly held his attention and gave him lots to think about.

Would he clap?

No.

He attributes his dispassionate behavior to childhood training. When he was young, he would go with his family to concerts and plays. There, if he giggled or made the slightest of noise, his mommy and daddy would give him a look as if to say, “Not in this family. In this family, we don’t clap.”

One particular incident cemented his behavior:

Once when I was but a child of fourteen, daddy and mommy took me to see my favorite ballet, The Nutcracker. We’re such big Tchaikovsky nuts that our entire family flew to Russia just to see it performed by the Moscow Ballet.

It was incredible. They even used traditional Russian folk characters, such as Snegurochka (Snow Maiden) and Ded Moroz (Father Christmas) to add emotional heft to the already phenomenal Act Two!

By the time the cast came out for the final curtain, tears filled my eyes. I leapt to my feet, cheering and clapping with my entire soul. Mother’s eyes bulged out of her sockets and after quickly pushing her eyes back in her sockets, she grabbed my arm and pulled me down to my seat.

“Shhh, be quiet! Be still! Someone might see us!” she hissed.

Then we squatted on the floor and hid under the seats for the rest of The Nutcracker.

After the performance, we crawled out of the theater on our hands and knees, went back to our hotel, and lay on our beds with the lights off, saying nothing.

An hour passed, then I spoke.

“Mama, why are we not allowed to clap?” I asked.

“Clapping is for attention whores,” she explained, which made sense.

Both are brilliant articles Alex Baia. I urge all readers who have come this far to read them.

I can see your father’s point, “never show too much appreciation, kid. Keep ’em hungry for your approval. Keep ’em guessing. That’s what drives the ladies wild.”

But I’m afraid I have to disagree with it.

That is the height of stinginess.

You see, both my parents were teachers, and they believed that a little encouragement goes far.

So attention whore or not, I like claps. I am addicted to them. I start getting withdrawal symptoms if I don’t get any claps for my stories. And I might stop writing if they take claps away without introducing another mechanism for my readers to tell me they enjoyed what I wrote.

You see, claps were the reason I started writing for Medium. When I wrote my first story, in the early emotional phase of the pandemic in March last year, I forgot all about it. Then, two months later, I accidentally discovered that people have clapped it.

There I was. Hooked straight away.

Don’t take away my claps, please.

And although I am never going to beg for them, I really enjoy them. Thank you to all those who are clapping at my past, present, and future stories.

And Alex Baia, I hope you enjoy the 100 claps I gave you for your stories. If you didn’t, let me know, and I will take them back because now I know how to retract them.

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PS: The best article on claps by far is by Roz Warren, A Definitive Guide to Medium Claps & What They Mean.

1 Clap: I acknowledge your existence.

2 Claps: I give you credit for writing this even though I didn’t actually like it.

3 Claps: Better luck next time.

…

46 Claps: Better than chocolate.

…

Make sure you read it.

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