One Thousand Claps And Sixty-Five Cents
Medium Announces Bankruptcy
It was fun while it lasted
August came along and we were all excited about the new changes on Medium. Writers were suddenly doubling and tripling their previous earnings, as The Coach and Buster confidently announced opening business up to several new countries.
The buzz word from the top was all about transparency, fairness, and consistency. In case you had already forgotten, here was Buster’s wonderful news announcing the recent new changes about better rewarding “high-quality human writing”:
And most of us were delighted to write our little all-too-human guts out.
Profits from many more memberships came flowing into Medium’s coffers, and so the trickling down to writers went from tiny sesame seeds to more respectable-sized walnuts.
There was a dramatic before and after effect of Medium’s August changes, and many writers were over the moon as they suddenly found themselves able to afford a second cup of coffee.
Here is a look at July, before the changes, where 1.5k claps would fetch you two dollars and twenty-eight cents of you-must-be-the-biggest-sucker-on-planet-earth money:
And then August came like a fat, happy Santa bearing Christmas gifts, or walnuts to be more precise. Here is a look at the month of August, after the new improved changes:
As you will notice, because you are writers who know how to discern detail and irony, 1.5k claps now earned you ten dollars instead of two dollars.
Put differently, it bought you two coffees instead of zero coffees.
Now some of us more seasoned cynics were thinking this can’t last, but then the same trend continued in September…
…until it didn’t.
Here is a look at the dramatic fall during the final week of September:
As you can see, because you are observers in the habit of writing, 1.5k claps now brings in $3.88 and 1k claps a gratifying 65 cents.
Or, if you prefer that last figure in dollars, 0.65 dollars (as in less than one dollar).
Anybody feel like a little rat being experimented on? Are you feeling played?
Luckily, the suspense has now ended as The Coach has announced Medium Corporation has gone into liquidation as of yesterday after they sprinkled the last 65 cents in their tank on Tom Brady’s Deflated Legacy and you all have 30 minutes to make duplicate back-up copies of all of your work before the website will show this screen:
At an official press conference, The Coach announced:
We would like to thank all of you for your high quality human writing. Now you can go pack up and cry your human tears.
One reporter said that she thought she heard the CEO say under his breath,
I’m so glad I’m not a writer.
© Carlo Zeno 2023
Here are two more writers who also just discovered they have been played:
But before you give up complete hope, you have one more day to enter a prize for real money, as mentioned by the eternal realist, Grandma Smillew:
