Is Medium Writing Degenerating into Mass-Produced, Formulaic Self-Help Porn?

3 observations and lessons for all of us on Medium.

I have a confession to make.

I’ve been trawling through Medium posts and I sometimes have difficulty finding original content.

So, I decided to do a quick search what kinds of Medium stories perform the best.

Unsurprisingly, the most popular topics seemed to be about productivity and self-improvement, based on a Medium article posted in Sep 2020. (Source: The 10 Most Popular Articles from the 10 Most Popular Medium Publications | by J.J. Pryor | Better Marketing)

This led to me wondering the unthinkable: Has Medium degenerated into a place for authors to write self-help porn?

Many Medium stories are a lot like candy

Sugar tastes good to our calorie-hungry brain. Containing 4 calories per gram, they’re the perfect go-to for a quick energy boost.

That’s why we evolved to seek it out. Sugar boosts dopamine — the feel good and super-motivating neurotransmitter— levels in the brain.

I bet reading Medium stories gives you the same dopamine hit.

Engineered like candy to hook the masses and keep them reading.

I’m torn between balancing between writing what is popular and writing what I really want to write:

• my thoughts on capitalism peppered with a touch of poetry
• the dangers of DeFi for the uninitiated drawn from real examples
• my own experience transitioning from grad school to corporate life

Yet, it seems to me that a lot of writers are just putting out “feel good writing” — “you can do it too!” cheerleader type of stuff. Recommendations by many writers suggest keeping the text length to no more than 1000 words to keep it digestable. It’s no 30,000 word dissertation by any means!

Lesson One: Sell candy in your writing. Make sure your reader feels good after reading it. Write short sentences. No big words. Soundbites!

The algorithm gods will raise or break you

Most writers have no problem writing a minimum viable product.

So how does one compete with the many writers on Medium? By marketing your stories. And the first step of the marketing funnel is awareness.

Yet, to create awareness in Medium, you need to rely on the algorithm gods to push your stories out there.

Apparently, Medium keeps changing the algorithm so no one is able to game the system. At least, not consistently.

But, I found out that there is a way to game the system.

That’s by playing the quantity game.

Publish 5–6 times a day, and you can win by sheer visibility. Give the algorithm gods a higher likelihood of favoring you. When you get featured, you can slowly build the small wins you need to slowly achieve top-of-mind awareness.

Have you ever gone to the convenience store and delighted at having the option to choose between soda, sports drinks, fruit juice or even healthier options like tea or even bottled water, even when actually they’re all being sold by Coca Cola?

Lesson Two: Write a lot. Publish a lot. Quantity trumps quality. In a game where you are given limited digital shelf-space, having 20 minimally viable products is superior to having a perfect one.

Sliding towards self-reference is the way to go

Haven’t you noticed that a lot of content sounds like one of the following:

1. If you do X, you can change your life.
2. Do you want to change your life? Do X.
3. Don’t do X if you want to change your life.
4. Do X if you don’t want to change you life.
5. X things you haven’t done to change your life.
6. Why X means you will fail to change your life.
7. You need to start doing X to change your life.
8. It’s not too late to start doing X to change your life.
9. X is the reason why you haven’t changed your life.
10. Forget X if you really want to change your life.

Another trend I’ve noticed a trend of Medium writers announcing their earnings. Or teaching other Medium writers how to improve their earnings. Or how many followers they got and the actions they took to get there.

Turns out we’re all suckers for this. Even I have jumped on the bandwagon of writing about how much I’ve made on Medium! Talk about the whole “meta-ness” monetizing monetization.

Bloggers who read other bloggers blogging about making money blogging. Youtubers watching Youtube videos teaching you how to make money from Youtube. A never-ending self-referential meta-inception echo-chamber, where the medium has become the message. The medium can change but the modus operandi doesn’t seem to!

Lesson 3: Use formulas like the above to publish a lot. Repurpose your writing by permutating the messaging. Then build a virtuous “monetization feedback cycle.”

Writing about how using formulaic writing made you a ton of money on Medium. And then write about how much you made the last month. Then write about how Medium let you become financially free.

Finally, write about how you quit your job to become a full-time writer. Write about how that decision was the best/worst/insane one of your life. Rinse and repeat.

The author writes on a wide variety of topics. His key topics are Japan, society, culture, modern work, and cryptocurrency. Discover his most-read stories here.

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