I fell prey for doing this on medium and learned a lesson the hard way
You are in the process of learning every single day throughout your life. But the lesson I learned just yesterday on medium being a new writer hit the hardest.
I was deeply saddened by it and even got demotivated to write, but then I also encountered some good people in the same process and some good stories on Medium that gave me the strength to buckle up again.
Note: I will mention their names and link to the story that helped me restore my confidence at the end of this post.
I will first share my distressing experience in detail so that my fellow new writers don’t have to go through a similar situation.
Everyone has a different goal when they first join any public writing platform like medium. But, the most common wish every new writer has is to have many followers and genuine readers.
In quest of these wishes, different writers use different ways. Some of them go for Follow-for-Follow, while others engage in Claps-for-Claps etc. There is no harm in any of them. I did all of it too.
However, there are many red flags which we new writers are either not aware of or tend to ignore until a lesson learnt the hard way.
One such hard lesson I learned just yesterday.
For background information, I was accepted into medium partner program on Feb 10th.
I was thrilled to see what medium had in store for me going forward. Being enrolled in this program clearly meant that I've already crossed the milestone of 100 followers but those were coming mostly from follow-for-follow technique.
Being a new writer, you just want to get there and not think much about anything else. But, as I started analyzing my purpose of being on Medium, I found out that I wanted to be read more than to be followed.
I started brainstorming how to build a genuine reader base. I finally came up with a read-for-read challenge through which my pure intention was to be able to find good writers of my interest and to be found out by those readers who are interested to read my story.
You can have look at my read-for-read challenge post here:
To this post, some agreed and some not. No worries. I did what I felt I could do without harming anyone’s sentiments.
It was all going good until I found out another way of reaching out to avid readers and requesting them to read my work.
That was by commenting on some famous articles which were of my interest, which I read and liked. I was sure that the people commenting below such articles could be my potential readers. So I was randomly dropping a few comments as reply to comments on these articles. I was doing so because I thought this would not disturb the author of the original post as you don’t get notified about all the threads that are running on any of the comments on your article. Correct me if I’m wrong!
I found people on medium to be very generous and helpful as I was able to find some really great readers using this technique like Marcus aka Gregory Maidman Author, D. Denise Dianaty
Coming back to the main issue which I was addressing in this article, my whole medium journey was shaken yesterday when I found out that,
I have angered one established writer so much that she did all that she could, to teach me a lesson.
And since she is an established writer with a larger audience, all of them agreed to her commenting their opinions about the whole situation.
Every story has two sides and learning both sides of the story before forming an opinion is very important.
This quote could not be more fitting for me in this situation than anywhere else. I was judged a culprit for disturbing someone’s mental peace which I couldn’t even do in my dreams.
It all started when I wrote a few comments addressing different readers on Dr. Preeti Singh’s story about the importance of claps.
Preeti was furious after reading all these comments and replied bitterly on each one of those comments as if all these comments were coming from my side even after her warning me several times.
Although I did read her post bit by bit and posted a nice and cheerful comment at the very same time after reading her post which she missed to read.
Attached is the screenshot of my comment with the time when I posted it.
You can see the time of my comments in case you are thinking that I wrote a comment on her post after all this had already happened.
And, below are the screenshots of my comments with her replies on it:
And my apology on it as soon as I saw that comment:
Though it was enough to write on any one of those similar comments that I did, for me to understand that I’ve hurt her. But, I understood her reaction because everyone reacts differently in different situations. And I apologized sincerely for the mistake I made.
I was upset seeing so many of her furious comments but I convinced myself that it was my mistake until I found out that Dr. Preeti Singh has furiously written an entire article about this whole situation mentioning,
My name, one of those screenshots, and even blaming me for things which are entirely wrong.
Refer to these screenshots from that article where she is falsely blaming(screenshots above are the proofs) me:
I was totally unaware of this article until someone from medium was kind enough to bring it to my knowledge.
I was devastated seeing this article written about me publicly on a reputed publication and reading all the comments which were coming from many of those established writers agreeing to that article and fumblingly writing about me that I should apologize without them knowing that I already apologized many times even before she wrote this post.
Did I deserve this?
I was in a state of mental stress reading this article and all the comments on it. In my 30 years of life,
I always heard that if you really want to correct someone do that in private and if you really want to praise someone do that in public.
Dr. Preeti, what you did might be the right thing for you to do. I agree that I caused you pain, and you were hurt. But for that you already scolded me on each of my comments that I made on your post.
Was that not enough to make you feel better?
Now you might have an excuse that you can’t keep on teaching each new writer a lesson by tracking and replying to such comments on your post.
So you came up with the idea of writing a blog about it.
JUSTIFIED.
By doing this you could collectively explain to all new writers about what not to do and how much pain and distress it causes to the original author whose post is being hijacked.
But my questions to you are,
- Was it necessary to mention my name in bold letters everywhere in your post to prove what you were saying was right?
- Did you even think once what impact it would bring to me after reading your post and hateful comments on it?
- Did you bother to check my response of apology for your furious comments?
- You boast of being empathetic about new writers, this is how you empathize with them?
I’m sorry to say Dr. Preeti, but what you did to me was nothing but mental pain for me.
You received thousands of claps for blaming me falsely for many things which I mentioned above with screenshots and for causing me severe trauma by this act of yours.
I thank Marcus for speaking up for me and also throwing light of what my intentions could be behind all this.
People like you Marcus is in true sense trying to help new writers and not the ones who just say nice words about helping and clapping for new writers without meaning it, only to gain more views and claps on their story.
He even referred me to an article written by Maria Rattray after reading which I felt better about myself again.
Read that story here:
Conclusion:
This article has already gotten very long, so I would conclude it with an advice to all my fellow new writers to take a lesson from my experience and think well before doing anything to promote yourselves because you can easily fall prey and become someone’s interesting viral article with just one wrong move.
This world is full of people who make everything an opportunity to cash in more and more publicity without even thinking about how badly it could impact someone’s life.
Beware of these people and never give them any chance like I did.
I don’t know what would be the consequence of this article, but I felt it was necessary to write about it because I can’t simply let the world misunderstand me without even trying to explain my point.
I’m a firm believer of:
Being mistreated and never speaking up for it is as wrong as mistreating someone.
That’s the reason I’m tagging those who wrote hateful comments about me and that I should apologize to Preeti Singh because they must also know my side of the story. Yana Bostongirl, Pam Winter, Libby Shively McAvoy, Josephine Crispin, Annelise Lords, Terry Pottinger, Dr. Fatima Imam, John O'Neill, Eko BP, Pamela Oglesby, Lanu Pitan,
Jessey Anthony: Please accept my sincere apologies as I was doing this before all this happened and was unaware of it causing you pain. I am sorry to bother you and will not repeat it going forward!
I apologize to everyone who received such comments on their articles from me while I was unaware of it causing them pain.
Thank you everyone for patiently reading it and I am sorry to anyone whom I intentionally or unintentionally hurt with this post because,
By taking responsibility for our actions and offering a genuine apology, we can begin to repair relationships and make amends for any harm we may have caused.
