COMMENTS | MEDIUM | HUMOR | SATIRE
Medium Stopped Counting My Comments After Reaching the Maximum Sane Number
I maxed out the red line of the comments counter
As I was approaching a key number of total comments on Medium I wondered if I would get a bonus, a penalty for over-commenting or if a medium sized paddle would emerge from my monitor to spank my ass.
I ruled out a bonus but was not sure about the other two. With Medium one can never know. I have never read a piece, comment, tea leaves or chicken entrails about this so I was completely in the dark.
Well, what I never expected was that the comments/responses counter would just freeze. That was the lamest, most unsexy non event ever occurring to me on Medium in the 18-odd months I’ve been an active member.
That was like Mistress Luciferia Morningstar leading me on and then leaving me to hang dry. So what was the key number? By now I assume you have surpassed 30" reading so I think it is safe to disclose it.
Clap, highlight and comment too by the way, don’t just read. Medium will spank you if you merely read.
If you read up to here without blinking once and scanned the words like your eyes were on fire you must be great fun at parties. Anyway, this is where my comments/responses counter is now stuck:
In retrospect it should have been obvious. The above values are somewhat tightly fit together. Not as tight as the anus of a Scottish Abbess but tight enough.
So the designers of Medium presumably never accounted for someone posting a 5-digit number of comments. Or they thought that number would be so low that allowing space for one more number would not be worth it.
The youngest of you have probably read about the Millennium Bug only in history books, but the above frozen counter reminded me of it. When computers and operating systems were developed the last year they accounted for was 1999.
It is beside the point, and rather technical, to explain why but if the bug had not been fixed in the nick of time all computer clocks would have reverted to 1900 at the turn of the new millennium and the world might have ended.
Not sure if it would have been better for the comment counter to revert to 9900 and start counting again. Perhaps that would have been sexier. Groundhog Medium Day.
By the way, this only applies to Medium’s web variant. Medium’s mobile app does not report total number of stories and comments at all. It just lists them, numberlessly. A neat way to circumvent this?
Let me know in the comments if you have also faced this Medium Bug and if so how did it make you feel? Personally I am still processing this. I worry it left me with a bit of trauma.
How I am going to count my comments now Medium? I liked seeing my comments grow in number. And I was so eager to see them enter a big, fat, juicy 5-digit domain. Well, they did, but it is not reported.
Give me back my lost comments Medium! Do not skim from their top please 🥹
Nikolaos Skordilis might have been under- or over-caffeinated when he wrote this. His latest piece is this:
I also recommend this dreamy piece by Jenny Lane that moved me:
