Ten (No Wait, Thirteen) Ways to Really Annoy People on Medium
A quick primer on making enemies and getting yourself booted off
No. Seriously. You cannot make this shit up.
Out of respect for my favorite publisher, his hard-working and unpaid editors on Illumination, the events of the last week have led me to this. To my fellow Illumination writers, this is your primer on how to piss off really good people.
- Demand that you receive payment for your work, even if it is shit work.
- Demand that editors of publications publish ALL your work, even work that is several years old, of poor quality, and in bulk (as in forty articles at a time) in front of all other writers, who may well be and often are better than you are, then get royally pissed off when said work doesn’t show up three seconds after you’ve submitted it.
- Demand to get paid for what has to be volunteer work (like being an editor on a major publication). In other words, make unfounded assumptions that the publication originator is making money hand over fist, somehow earning an override on every article published. Really? In other words, don’t bother to do the work to understand how Medium works.
- Assume that the publisher and all the publication’s editors are in place JUST FOR YOU, that YOUR work takes precedence over everyone else’s, that YOUR lack of skill, lack of commitment to good work, your laziness around not properly editing, providing captions for photos and the absolute BASICS of responsible writing are their responsibility. To make you look good, natch. To help you make $10,000 a month. Right.
- Don’t bother to read, study, understand and abide by all the detailed, helpful articles by generous and thoughtful Illumination writers on editing, captioning, social media and all the other information that would help you be a better Medium/Illumination citizen. That’s for peasants. You’re royalty. Of course you are.
- Assume that the publishers and editors are God, utterly omniscient and prescient, can see, keep up with, monitor and change any and all articles, even articles that the writers change after publication and curation to include what Medium considers illegal material. They owe you that, right?
- Ignore or turn off the private messaging feature of your articles which ensures that unpaid, overworked editors can’t possibly ask you to fix, add, change or otherwise improve your article, then be pissed at them that the article didn’t do well. After all it’s their job, right, to be your personal promotion team, ahead of more than 3300 other writers? Of course it is.
- Ignore the rules, standards, regulations and requirements of Medium, and publish hate speech. That’ll get you LOTS of friends.
- Accuse hardworking, over-pressured and unpaid editors of censoring your articles when you submit old shit, aren’t willing to produce new, submit WAY OVER the limit per day, and expect everyone on the publication to bow to YOU, the almighty writer.
- Demand that the publisher and editors, all of whom are unpaid, be utterly, completely and totally responsible for censoring material that you personally don’t like for moral, religious and other grounds. After all, they’re God, and they know what YOU find offensive, and it’s THEIR job to be the Tone and Morals Police so that you never ever have to read the work fuck in print.
- Assume that it’s everyone else’s job to improve your writing, promote your work, edit your crap material, put YOU ahead of everyone else, and ensure that YOU make scads of money, ensure that YOU don’t have to read ideas and opinions that YOU consider reprehensible (even though it’s not to most other folks), and who cares if they don’t get paid for it? You’re OWED.
- Pitch a hissy fit when you see something you don’t like, don’t bother to inquire to gain understanding. Then…..
- Publicly and unfairly and without basis attack a publisher, editors and others that you feel have wronged you without doing even the most basic of research. That’ll make you lots and LOTS of friends and admirers.
There’s your list. You wanna get isolated, removed, become monumentally unpopular, disliked and eventually invited off? You wanna become a pariah?
You go right ahead.
For my part, and I suspect and hope most of my fellow regular writers, will support the publication, I work hard to abide by the rules, take responsibility for the quality of my writing, mind my manners on line and be damned appreciative of the extraordinary commitment both Dr Mehmet Yildiz and all his talented -and UNPAID- editors are doing to make this publication amazing.
And one more thing. To my fellow writer Linda Caroll’s point, yes, be kind. I’m happy to do that until folks are abusive, puerile, hateful and ugly to people I care about. About that time, kindness goes on the shelf while I make a point. You cannot expect kindness if you are ugly and abusive on line. Get HELP. If your life has gone sideways,kindly do something about it. It’s nobody else’s job but ours to work out our personal stuff, and it is NOBODY else’s job to carry yours. Just saying.
