Freewriting // Day 8

Is Curation Broken?

what I learned from getting no views or reads from a curated article

I reflected on whether this title seems like clickbait, but this question genuinely arose this morning as I looked back on the previous day’s free-writing challenge.

This is the piece:

For one, I didn’t expect this series to be popular, though I did expect that to some degree, after writing daily, at least some articles may get curated or may become viral over time, just by sheer luck and coincidence.

In a way, writing has been a slot machine, where the articles I think will do really well might not get curated or popular at all, but random pieces here and there might burst in popularity.

In other words, my intentions and predictions about a piece have a poor record in predicting the true popularity outcome.

But, I did have some expectations about curation and how it supports readers, which is why this picture was confusing:

It got curated?

But has no views, no claps, no responses after 12 hours.

[1] It confirms my belief that my stats don’t matter in the first 24 hours

I’m not exactly sure how the stats are tabulated but I think it’s only actually updated once a day. So if something had only been published for fewer than 24 hours, it’s hard to tell whether more recent stats have just not been updated.

But is that true?

I’m really curious about this piece and how it will do in the long term given that curation is supposed to get this piece in front of eyeballs and therefore drive more overall traffic.

[2] Less is probably more ???

There are more recent accounts that it’s much easier to get curated now. On the one hand, as a writer, this gives us fuzzy feelings. We’ve already associated curation with this highly sought-after, rare thing, that it feels like growth when we get curated more often.

But will it become an inflation issue?

To me, similar to yesterday’s topic that sometimes we assume that what we can control directly influences the outcome more than it actually does, particularly in the case of choosing which topics lead to bursts in popularity, maybe curation will begin losing its competitive edge over time.

What we’re witnessing is existing, established measures of things we can seemingly control aren’t actually creating much of an effect anymore. It’s a situation that fosters helplessness, because of that feeling of loss of control.

Or, a situation where people jump in and offer advice because that lack of control means people feel more vulnerable to needing information where they can begin to exert control again.

Or, if you’re like me, a ripe situation for wanting to overwork and overextend yourself in 123871237 other ways just to try and regain some kind of control again. For me, that might be to branch out and diversify into other platforms, which is a double-edged sword. I’ve recommended it before, e.g.,

where social media has been more helpful in promoting old pieces that the Medium algorithm have long forgotten.

But I also reflect on more recent pieces where branching out to social media like Instagram has left me feeling burnt out. This is especially true for platforms that need incredible amounts of engagement for the algorithm to bat an eye at you.

All I know is that I notice patterns of a) feeling comfortable and resourced enough to explore new avenues and report on them and b) just feeling something in me that tells me to just … stop. Chill. Relax.

Take a step back and realize that sometimes, “hustling harder” doesn’t work out, but rather, taking a rest enough to enter a space where creative, unconventional solutions come to me are important.

[3] I stopped caring??? Maybe I’m broken, not curation

In a way, I kind of laughed when I saw these stats in the morning. I typically only see stats for articles that have reached a certain milestone (because of emails I get from Medium), and don’t retroactively check new articles because it’s not in my workflow.

The only reason I’d started checking recent stats is because of this free-writing project, and because I was curious about what I wrote about yesterday and how that might shape today’s piece.

I also laugh as I’m writing this because in a way, I do care enough to write about it but am trying to 😎 stay cool 😎 and unattached. Only time will tell, and yes, you can judge.

But the general outcome of this free-writing project is that I’m liking writing again, even if no one is reading it. Is that weird?

I had the time of my life writing about Latin Squares yesterday, and I needed that fire re-ignited again, even if this specific topic doesn’t resonate with readers. That fire, once re-ignited, will generate more firey spicy topics that others might be interested in, in the future.

That’s why the short-term effect doesn’t matter as much as the long-term effect of BEING EXCITED ABOUT WRITING AGAIN (and yes, please yell in your internal monologue voice when you read this).

That reminds me why I don’t check stats <24 hours after publication, and I focus on generating new ideas, sharing what I love with the world. Because that’s what keeps me going, not the idea that some of my previous pieces have flopped.

Summary

I asked: is curation broken?

The answer could be:

• Possibly broken, or possibly just changing and causing all of us a lot of damn stress recently as we try to exert an incredible amount of control over something no one truly has a grasp on, which brings me to
• Am I broken? Maybe a little bit, but I’m recognizing it early enough to shift back to doing the things I love rather than being obsessed with numbers, which brings me to
• Hey you, are you broken? In which case I hope this piece offers some solace that we’re all headless chickens trying to make sense of the world, and that it’s okay if you ran in circles today with your writing, with the hope that at some point your running will mean your skinny little chicken legs will press the button on the floor that re-heads you in some Frankenstein’s monster kind of way. (That analogy really ran away from me, but I hope you, dear reader, are doing okay).

Hi I’m Lucy Dan 蛋小姐 (she/her/她) and I’m taking a breather and focussing on the basics. And the basics for me is sticking to a routine, making sure that a portion of what I write still interests me and building a community by uplifting others. What about you? Ps, feel free to tweet me a recent piece of yours and I’ll read it, RT it and share it with the world!

^ by R. Rangan PhD