RANT

Readers (and Writers) Wake Up!

When being “gullible” is injurious to your rep

This will come off as a rant and yes, it is. But, I believe it’s a rant with merit because I’m feeling rather out of sorts by a couple of “stories” I just skimmed, and also, I’d love to hear your thoughts in the hope of initiating an intelligent conversation about the plethora of fakers on Medium. Like the 800 that were cut from my profile as well as those that were excised from yours.

Now, I get it.

Here is the title of one of the stories that made my blood boil:

The Secret To Gaining 10,000 Followers In A Few Months

You don’t need to write viral stories to gain a lot of followers…

Now, forget about the bullshit clickbait title as this platform is awash with the same sort of twaddle that this “expert” vomited up.

But, I don’t understand the gushing comments from readers who obviously didn’t take the time to check this person’s profile.

If they had, they would have learned that she has less than 800 followers!

I’m not knocking that number, please understand. However, I equate a story like this to my telling you how to self-publish your long-dreamed-of opus, even though I’ve never come close. Or how to sneeze with your eyes open, something I’ve never attempted and can’t imagine doing in the foreseeable future.

The writer in question has less than 800 followers, yet she tells the rest of us how to “gain 10,000” in a few months. I’m gobsmacked by this. And also, since followers are no longer a thing, I’m don’t know why this showed up in my feed in the first place. I’m guessing Medium is still in the process of weeding this crap out. I hope so, anyway.

So, why do we continue to take advice from people who have no business dishing it out? I’m struggling to understand what that says about us, collectively. Have we lost the ability to think for ourselves? Or to simply question, what we read, or hear from people with no supportive data to back up their ridiculous claims?

Remember the journalistic bromide that old-school newspaper reporters used as their professional mantra?

If your mother says she loves you, check it out.

Indeed! Yet no one ever confronts the phonies, the blowhards, the braggarts who have plenty to say, but nothing to say, if you get me. No one ever checks them out.

This may smack of fascism and I apologize, but I believe writers like the one referenced above need to be weeded out. Or at least, moderated somehow. And if that’s impossible then the responsibility is on us, as both writers and readers on this platform, to smoke out the bullshit and clear the air. Pun intended.

Yes, it’s on us to push back and say, “prove it.”

Here’s more bullshit that’s been stinking up this platform since its Jim Jones of a leader whipped up a pitcher of Kool-Aid the likes of which many of us have never guzzled, thankfully. But plenty here, have. Their tongues may be purple, but they’re raking in the dough!

And allegedly, the Kool-Aid addicts are making bank in a publication that exists by singing its own praises so consistently and so vigorously that, at the very least, El Capitan should be named “marketer of the year.”

A publication that publishes good stuff and a whole lotta shit. Not just shit. Embarrassingly bad shit, from people who don’t understand how to craft an intelligible sentence.

A publication that regularly burbles gorge-rising proclamations like this one:

(Shit Pub) vs. the Ascent: Can This New Pub Really Defeat a Colossus

How Shit Pub is becoming the most popular publication

To the person who wrote this, your title needs a question mark at the end, dear. Refer to your manual.

Here’s more:

Why no other pub can match (Shit Pub’s) growth?

It has something to do with the quality vs. quantity debate.

Again, to the person who wrote this, the top line doesn’t need a question mark. Refer to your manual.

REALLY? No other publication on Medium can match this dung-heap? This writer is comparing a steaming turd to The Ascent?

There’s precious little quality in (Shit Pub), while the quantity of well…shit…is staggering.

Here’s the part that really grabbed me by the throat:

Yesterday, 529 people followed (Shit Pub). Only 100 followed the Ascent. The total reading time is 11,958,342 minutes for (Shit Pub). Its writers earned more than half a million dollars in its first year.

I’m guessing that El Capitan carved himself a nice chunk from that half a mil. And I’m betting that a good deal of (Shit Pub’s) followers was purloined. That’s the word I’ll use for now as hopefully, the writer who put this particular bug in my ear will elaborate in their own story.

Finally, here’s the coup de gras:

(Shit Pub) never pretended it was a big pub

There are 16,235 publications on Medium. Most of the new pubs start with high aims, fixed rules, and lots of policy guidelines.

They pretend they are the New Yorker.

So I pretend that The Top Shelf and Rogues’ Gallery are The New Yorker because I won’t publish shitty writers? Okay, then. I’m down with that.

Hey, (Shit Pub) editor, screw you. By the way, you can’t write. Note: There should be an uppercase “T” for The New Yorker. Refer to your manual.

I apologize to those writers in (Shit Pub) whom I like and respect. But I don’t get the slavish devotion to El Capitan. He’s using you. Get that through your heads.

He is using you.

See how worked up I am? I began this story with a tirade about “generalized bullshit” here on Medium and finished up with a scathing attack on a publication that I’ve skewered in the past.

Well, hey. Bullshit is bullshit, right? It all smells the same. Like shit.

I hope that The Ascent comes back with a response to (Shit Pub’s) self-promotional and embarrassingly bad “story.”

But, they won’t. They’re far too classy.

And, I believe Medium is far too classy to continue to allow (Shit Pub) to jerk itself off on this platform, that, thankfully, boasts a hell of a lot of talented writers who understand that when you write a line in the form of a question, you need a God damned question mark at the end.

Here’s hoping. And, thanks for reading.

© Sherry McGuinn, 2021. All Rights Reserved.

Sherry McGuinn is a slightly-twisted, longtime Chicago-area writer and award-winning screenwriter. Her work has appeared in The Chicago Tribune, Chicago Sun-Times, and numerous other publications. Sherry’s soon-to-be-ex-manager is currently NOT pitching her newest screenplay, a drama with dark, comedic overtones and inspired by a true story.

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