Medium is Now Bonusing Influencers to Write Advertorial for its Audio Listen Feature, Which Amounts to the Shittiest Form of Journalism Possible
I’ve seen 5 advertorials in one day from influencers with 1K+ followers, and my mind is going to spring a leak if I don’t say something right fucking now.
God help me.
Hey everyone, I just want you to know I used the listen feature last month. It was amazing. So much better than my baritone human male voice, don’t you think?
What? Haven’t tried it? Just click on the listen button above and you’ll have a good laugh. Because of the writing. I don’t want to offend AI.
Medium, forgive me for only having 400 followers, but I just wrote an advertorial for your new listen feature while dismissing the impact of my own voice. May I have a bonus now too, please?
And while you’re at it, please send one to the rest of us peons that are paying to keep your lights on.
Give me a break.
I’ve made Medium way more than the $50 they’ve (farted, excuse me) paid out in the last three months as a form of payment after I incessantly cranked out typewritten books, Tarot cards, and over 170 articles, with 600+ responses to other writers. For $50. I should be working in a factory reserved for undocumented laborers. I’d make a lot more there. I’d also make more selling tacos al la canasta in the streets of Mexico City. They sell for five cents each. And I think that math beats my average pay per article.
Which is all to say, you’re welcome, Medium.
Yes, I’m the guy that complains we don’t have narration/podcast features on Medium. We need this. Heck, keep the listen feature too. Seeing you’ve already wasted time on it. See which feature prevails: Human Podcasts, or Botcasts. Then leave it to us, the paying subscribers, to decide which gets the priority in development with a poll.
Announce it globally and let us handle it.
Remember us? We’re the peons who continue paying to keep your lights on.
Advertorial should not be here on Medium promoting features we are not asking for.
Was there not enough engagement in this above article to merit a single response? Not even — we’re looking into this while stroking other priorities like this listen feature that you should really check out.
Too busy handing out bonuses to encourage advertorial on the listen feature. Nice. I imagine that must be consuming a lot of time, with all these articles showing up on the same day from the folks you paid to write about it.
That said…
I challenge every writer on Medium now to prove yourself. All of you who play it safe with your words, your topics, and the algorithm. And life. You know who you are. Sitting in the back of the room so as not to be called out. Struggling through every phrase and word. That’s not writing. That’s agony. Flush it out and be honest. Write in the first-fucking-person.
And to those who aren’t willing to take a real leap of faith, and expose your hearts, I’m sticking it to you right now. You need it because I want reality to mean something here on Medium. So get on it. Write from the heart, and not from a place of fear, or comfort zone, or complacency. Try truth.
Try to avoid sounding like a paid advertisement.
