Me and My Unexamined Assumptions

What being ‘A Friend of Medium’ actually means

When I first heard of the become a Friend of Medium initiative late last year, just before the crowds hit the shops for Xmas shopping, my tired brain associated it with charity ventures like people getting together to support neglected parks and underfunded schools. You know, a bunch of semi-retired people and mums who are not in full-time employment, pull together to improve their neighbourhood park, or help their local primary school buy library books- obviously a laudatory goal.

However, I vaguely thought to myself, as I rushed here and there, that Medium was not some small, struggling underfunded charity and my spare dosh would be better spent elsewhere!

I was in the midst of umpteen tasks like preparing my mother’s meals, giving her massages and running around doing last minute essentials for a trip away. But above all, most of my attention was focussed on analysing or supporting the resistance to yet another profiteering slaughter by, what the great writer and analyst, indi.ca terms, ‘the ‘White Empire’. A seige was taking place right that minute, and how could I and other people who were raising money, get funds across that might save lives?

But today, I realised I’d made the wrong assumptions about the ‘Friend of Medium’ initiative.

My portal to re-examining my assumptions happened mainly because one of my favourite writers on Medium, mentioned the other week that she’d become a ‘Friend of Medium’.

What? Why? I was quite surprised. I wondered why she would want to go out of her way to support a humongous enterprise like Medium. I mean, surely her dollars would go further, and have more of an impact, supporting a local orphanage or say, a medical aid organisation? (Here’s my presuppositions rearing their little heads again!)

But I made a mental note that I maybe needed to look properly into what being a ‘Friend of Medium’ was about. Especially since I had started my own publication last autumn, but I had not really made any effort to grow it. In the past couple of weeks, having invited some writers to contribute, I then began feeling a responsibility to actively engage with ideas on how to promote the visibility of these authors who have entrusted their labour of love to my publication, ‘Liberation Works’.

This weekend, I thought I would turn to someone who I regard is surely the stellar expert at growing publications — this is the writer and editor extraordinaire, Dr Mehmet Yildiz. He is the owner of several long-established publications, including Illumination, and Illumination-Curated, where I have sent many of my articles and poems over the past three or so years since joining Medium.

So it was that rooting around Dr Mehmet Yildiz’s publications, I came upon the article below and as I read it, I realised I really had not understood what ‘Friend of Medium’ was about. It might be more accurate to call this initiative, ‘Friend of Writers on Medium’

The succinct quote below explains that while a ‘Friend of Medium’ subscription does indeed help to increase Medium.com’s traffic, the significant benefit for writers is that anyone with this subscription, rewards the writers they spend time reading and engaging with, by a four-fold rise in payment to them.

The collective efforts aim to bolster Medium.com’s traffic, offering free access to external readers while supporting writers financially, as intended and designed by Medium as part of the Friend of Medium subscription.

Oh!

So does that mean when a’Friend of Medium’, reads an article by me, I would now receive four times more of a monetary value, than when they read my articles, while I have only the basic five dollar monthly membership?

Also, a ‘Friends of Medium’ membership, can send an article of mine to one of her friends, and I would get paid for that engagement, while if I were to do the same, not be paid at all?

How unfair is that!

So after this realisation, I immediately went and upgraded my subscription to ‘Friend of Medium’.

But I still think it should be renamed, ‘Friend of Writers on Medium.

What do you think?

Once more people realise this difference between a normal subscription of 5 dollars a month, and the quadrupled amount is paid by a Friend of Writers on Medium, might we find a two tier system developing, with some people reluctant to read the work of others who are paying the lower subscription rate?

Have I even got this right? Someone, tell me!