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I Finally “Got” the Clap on Medium!

Lucky for us, I haven’t run out — I can give it to you, too.

If I don’t get kicked off the platform for that title, alone.

When I was new to Medium, and knew only a very few people, Rasheed Hooda and Dr Mehmet Yildiz were very generous with the clapping. I vaguely remembered something from the old days — back when I thought of myself as “just a reader” (not realizing that every comment was a story) that we could only give out three little hearts, or hands, or whatever the currency of approval was, back then. So I was surprised to see that we could now give 50! Was this the equivalent of a standing ovation?

Money for Nothin’ and Your Claps for Free

I was a tiny bit disappointed to learn that applause was no longer tied, in any way, to compensation. But such a system would be too easy to game, and I had seen several sites similar to Medium go under, due to nefarious “writers.” These were not writers, in my opinion, at all — they were more like people at a casino who’d worked out a way to cheat the house and were riding that high like the Wolf of Wall Street. That story always ends with everything crashing down around their ears, but often takes the house and all the other players with it as collateral damage. So kudos to Medium for trying to stay ahead of the scammers.

The Magic Number

Now, though, I was left with a dilemma: If those little hands cost me nothing, and gave the writer no material compensation — just warm fuzzies and a little love — why even limit them to 50? Was 50 a magical number? What did it mean?

I thought of writing a humorous piece on what I thought it meant. Listening to other members’ thoughts, though, I became less and less certain. One said, “I give 50 claps to everyone, to raise the visibility of their Stories!” Well… yay? Now their claps no longer felt as special to me, when I received them. “I usually just give one,” said another. “One, or none.” Very old-school. Another said, “I give at least 20, but never more than 49. Nobody’s perfect.” And finally, there were a fair number of applause intuitives: “I just keep pressing the little applause button until it feels right.” And finally, the metrics geeks: “It only takes 8.5 seconds of mashing that button to give all 50 claps. Since we’re paid by the time spent reading the article, that’s a small price to pay to reward the author.”

All righty, then.

I decided to develop my own system:

1–15 claps: I liked it! I might come back later and add a few, if what I read sticks with me a while. I need to digest it. OR, “A single Haiku? That’s it? That’s all ya got? Well, you did sort of follow the form, so… fine.”

16–20 claps: Good poem. Not a great poem. But you tried, and I didn’t feel like my time was totally wasted. OR, “Shoot — phone’s ringing, be right back.” Only, I didn’t get right back. Maybe later. After I’ve digested it some more.

21 claps: This one is very specific — it’s my equivalent of the “21 Gun Salute” — your writing is awesome! Loved it! Did you know that it takes more thought and effort to actually stop on 21 than to just mash that button all the way to 50??

22–30 claps: I liked it. I didn’t really think about how many claps I was giving, but you’re not actually keeping score, thinking, “Why 23? What does that even mean? Did she like it or hate it? What would I have to do to get 24?” are you?? Are you? (Or is it just me?)

31 or 33 claps: My lucky numbers. I have actually won Roulette with these numbers. And my birthday is 3/3. So consider these as either, “Good luck!” or “Positive vibes!” or “Whoops — passed 21, so I’ll give you one of these, instead!”

34–41 claps: See 22–30.

42: Douglas Adams fans will get this. The rest of you can just think of it as 31 or 33.

43–49 claps: Whoops, I passed 42 and yet you’re not quite “perfect”! Well, who is? You’re pretty amazing, anyway.

50 claps: I just kept mashing that little button and forgot to take my finger off. No, okay, you’re perfect. (You’re not, you know you’re not, but you’re good enough that I want you to think, for 3.8 seconds, that you are, in fact, perfect. Because I like you, and that’s how I roll. Now, get your ego back in check and consider this a 49.)

Clearly, I am the Master of Overthinking Shit.

How It Actually Works

The truth about clapping on Medium is that it feeds the Gerbils of Despair. Just as your monthly membership fee helps to feed the Serverweasels, the Gerbils of Despair must be fed and appeased, lest they lie down and allow your stories to sink into the Abyss of Obscurity.

But here’s the deal: If you clap equally vigorously for everybody, then the Gerbils of Despair become fat, satiated, and lazy, allowing everything to fall into the Abyss of Obscurity at an equal rate. “When ranking stories,” says Medium, “our system will evaluate claps users give out on an individual basis, assessing their applause for a particular post relative to the number of claps they typically give.” So if you give 50 claps to everything you read, you might just as well have given each thing a single clap. Does that make sense? And so as not to spoil the Serverweasels or kill the Gerbils of Despair, Medium does give each member an unspecified, but limited, number of claps in their feeding buckets. It is possible to run out of claps before the month ends.

What they don’t tell you is this: When you run out, you must tickle the Gerbils of Despair to make them run, until some time after the start of a new month. So be generous, but not profligate, in how you allot your claps.

For additional technical info (with less humor) see:

Readers: Do you have a method of budgeting and allocating claps to the stories you read? Care to demystify your magic formula?

Medium, Medium Staff: Consider increasing the monthly “budget” for owners of large publications, so that they can continue to encourage their new writers — you know, not make them beg like trained seals for the occasional herring — with a few more claps than individual contributors are allotted, each month. It’s not like you’re paying anyone extra for receiving them!

Writers: Remember never to ask for claps. This is a red flag to the Serverweasels, who are evil and are in league with the Gerbils of Despair. It is an iron-clad guarantee against disproving the notion that Curation is nothing more than an Urban Legend. Besides, it’s unseemly. You should merely expect a few claps as your due, having poured your time, sweat, and a few melodramatic tears of blood into your work — right? I know, sometimes you feel more like a hungry, trained seal, begging for a herring. But have a little dignity.