Satire
I Hate Medium. I Love Medium
My three obvious reasons for each
Why the hate?
- Because Medium is not fair. I was convinced that a certain story was the best one I’d ever published only to find out, in short order, that curators had not selected it for distribution. What in the world? I spent hours on the story, researched it thoroughly, revised it 37 times. It was a masterpiece certain to be plucked out from Medium and reprinted in The New York Times!
- Because Medium doesn’t make sense at all. I read a lousy story on the same topic as the one I’d published two weeks prior and it had 27k claps (which means at least 540 fans, if every fan clapped 50 times), while mine, which is SO much better has accrued just 83 claps from two fans, one of whom is my buddy I made a pact with to clap 50 times for any story we publish. Not only that, the lousy story was picked up by Human Parts while mine was rejected by a certain up and coming publication followed by a mere 542 people. Those editors will never get my work again.
- Because Medium’s algorithm is all wrong. I read that the single story that made the most money last month earned $9,764,31. I, by contrast, earned a total of $9.47 dollars for the 11 stories I published. And that was thanks to that 2-minute read I wrote on a whim and that raked in $7.51 of the total.
Why the love?
- Because a story that just came to me while I was driving to work (my paying work), that I drafted in 16 minutes, didn’t revise once, and published with minimal expectations, got curated right away under four topics, had 24 reads within one day and 1,022 views within one week!
- Because Medium makes me feel supported and safe to write what I please. Because the space is one where I can take risks, including writing about the morbid topic of dead bodies in a fun way!
- Because I got to learn about a disability called Misophonia. I don’t have it, but think my son might.
LOVE will prevail. It always does.
Here’s the story about dead bodies I mentioned:
Here are my suggested rules for clapping on Medium:
Finally, should you be interested in learning about misophonia, here’s the story. Fascinating. I didn’t write it.
