500-WORD RANT #6
Get Off the Lawn and Step the Hell Away From My Digital Soap Box!
You own 99.99% of the internet. Ain’t that enough?
For over three years, I have battled the dark forces of Medium, armed with only my wits and humor.
In other words, completely defenseless.
During that time, I have been a lone wolf howling in the wilderness, trying to warn the innocent about the dangers of external validation and get rich quick schemes.
Most of you are attendees at a timeshare presentation by snake oil salesmen, with me standing at the entrance, yelling: “Don’t go inside! That 3-day cruise doesn’t include airfare, travel taxes, port fees, excursions, free booze or even a window!”
I‘ve revealed the dirty secrets of THE ALGORITHM too many times to cite — well, five times, actually: part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4 and part 5 —and done it in anonymity, because that is what howling lone wolves do.
Recently, some of the more successful writers have begun to suffer from the same lack of attention (and money) as the rest of us, and they’re writing posts that sound strangely familiar.
Why are these people announcing their “revelations” a week after I wrote a post on that exact subject?
Seriously, if you’re a professional writer, wouldn’t you do a modicum of research?
How can these narcissists be so unethical as to think they can plagiarize the ideas that I stole from others?
When I wrote my never-to-be-forgotten but immediately-ignored rant about writers of open letters to other writers, at least I had the decency to apologize for using the “lame and exhausted conceit” of writing open letters to open letter writers.
And I cited Mr. “Another Writer” as the person who first used that description in his open letter to writers of open letters.
People who told me to “stop complaining, put more work into writing and hope for better results” are now complaining non-stop about the injustice of not getting enough attention.
And by the way, I have put more effort into becoming a better writer, thank you very much; the results speak for themselves. (spoiler alert: nothing has changed.)
However, I will not continue to allow these people to steal the research that takes me days and weeks to complete and not give credit where credit is due (or at least a taste of the action).
For that reason, I must make the following announcement:
I am liquidating my vast holdings in the MSOSM (mocking snake oil sellers of Medium) industry.
We’ll see if those fancy pants big shots can come up with their own rants about Medium if I don’t supply their material.
Life hacking, here I come!
