The 5 People You Meet on Medium
They’re all from the Big Brother House
I burst onto Medium last month with zero followers and a twinkle in my eye.
I read the help pages, wrote ten stories and thirty days later, $114.01 (including tips) is winging its way over to my Stripe — about a hundred more than I thought I’d get and a few thousand short of what I wanted.
Now, regarding those help pages. They get you going but like little snacks, they don’t keep you full for long. I wanted to know everything! The support desk is helpful but they won’t get into a good chin-wag about how things work.
My real education about Medium came through lurking in Medium Facebook groups and article comments. I noticed Medium is like the Big Brother house with lots of mind games going on.
There are five characters making this show work. In no particular order, here they are — one of them might even be you!
1) The Medium Elite
They’ve been here forever, these writers enjoying the shade of the money tree they planted with their bare hands.
Elite writers write with well-oiled ease about topics any one of us could make our own. We covet their words, their connections, their money. They’re so humble we feel we could be best friends one day.
We live for the day they’ll mention us in their stories or share us on Twitter, that’s when we’ll be able to pay off the mortgage and retire. Brooke Krzyston asks for ways to become a millionaire — this could be one!
The Medium Elite are the beautiful people in Medium’s Big Brother house. We all want to be them and follow them to their newsletters and courses. You won’t catch them ho’ing Medium at the end of their stories. They do the pimping off-platform.
The Medium Elite are the rabbit, the lure, the bait that keeps us believing the dream is real. It’s not a content mill, honest guv.
The About-Medium Writers
Medium is a culture with rules so shadowy it sometimes feels a bit Snowpiercer. It’s a culture that’s simply begging to be written about.
- Stats are so juicy! We all want to know who’s earning what and if claps have a secret weighting in the mysterious algorithm. Excel spreadsheets charting story performance, graphs showing an unexplained meteoric rise in reads a month after publication. This is more exciting than tracking life from outer space!
- The questions are endless! Why do they call it “Views” like they are impressions when the help pages describe them as a bounce. Why won’t they open up the MPP to every country in the world. Does Ev read everything?
- Medium is the absolute simplest thing to write about on the days you can’t come up with a real topic. I want to write deep thoughts like Tony Atkinson but my brain is as shallow as a puddle in the Sahara. (Oh, if Medium ever has a quiz night, Tony’s on my team.)
About-Medium writers are the cooks in the Big Brother house. They’re the ones that know all the gossip.
Talking of goss: I’ve been stalking a few Medium Elite timelines and came across one who reposts stories every few months. Same headline, same image, different date. They don’t delete the original, the new one is an exact word-for-word duplicate of a previous story — it’s another gobble at the buffet!
I heard people talking about Medium’s no-delete-and-repost rule. Has it ever been enforced? Everyone on Facebook believes bad things will happen if they ever try to reincarnate a four-year-old post that has had absolutely zero traction for the last three-and-a-half years. Casey Botticello — do you know?
About-Medium writers feed our endless curiosity and satisfy the need to chat about our experiences in this hotbed of mystery and intrigue.
The Medium Prefects
Old school prefects don’t die, they come to Medium and live their best life.
Things run better when everyone’s walking in the same direction and Medium Prefects insist people stay in their lanes.
- No writing about Medium because Ev doesn’t like it (oops)
- No calling anyone out in public, do it privately (oops)
- No writing anything that offends anyone (oops)
When a reader is looking for something to read, they click on titles that appeal and ignore the rest. Medium Prefects prefer to announce why they won’t be clicking on the titles and they’ll say it again and again:
- I never read articles about Medium but here’s what I think about what you wrote based purely on your title
- I don’t do meta-Medium
- If I ever open an article about Medium, I’ll do it in a private window so they don’t get paid from me
- How dare a newbie tell me what they’ve learned in their first month?!
- Oh God, another earnings post — I’ll save that for my private window so they don’t get paid from me
Medium Prefects are the bossy-boot mummy-figures of the Big Brother house. They watch what everyone’s doing, impose their wisdom (they’ve been on Medium a long time, they know lots) and remind people this is serious writer shite, not a playground.
I’m way too scared of them to dare tagging one. But they wouldn’t read an article about Medium anyway.
The Medium Crowd-pullers
Like Big Brother, Medium needs ratings and there’s a two-pronged approach. There are crowd-pullers drawing people in from outside (external views) and those keeping it lively on the inside (internal views.)
Authority writers — external
External authority writers introduce people to the platform through strong SEO and existing external followings. They’re like the advert breaks during Big Brother.
Lots of people are saying how many of their articles stand at around 98% external views and earn no money from the MPP. These people are writing to build portfolios and business authority, to practice writing skills or just to pass a bit of time and blog without worrying about marketing. They’ll do it until the content mill aspects prove disappointing — but until then, Medium’s well loving the extra traffic they bring in.
Authority writers — internal
Publications and people actively pursuing followers and reach are keeping engagement high inside Medium. They network, comment and engage both internally and on external platforms.
They’re charming and easy-to-read. Their writing is sincere and fun and they take time to format and structure their work for strain-free mobile reading.
They spring into your feed from nowhere and suddenly they’re a normal part of your world. They’re like the food delivery on Big Brother. Everyone wants a piece.
The Medium Crowd-pullers are the ratings winners of the Big Brother house. They wear their heart on their sleeve and aren’t afraid to cry in front of the camera.
The Medium Nasties
Big Brother wouldn’t be what it is without a villain. These are the people who don’t discuss disagreements, they spread hate. No thinking in layers, no reading to understand.
They’re always looking to game the system:
- Building accounts using follow-for-follow techniques to sell on reddit
- Stealing articles to publish under their own name elsewhere
The Medium Nasties are the glue that bonds everyone else together. They act as a mirror, letting the audience see what’s unattractive in a person and how not to be.
If I was a Medium Elite , I’d have found a way to turn this into a curatable article. Instead I’ve landed in the About-Medium Writer box!
What do you think — who did I miss while I was lurking and learning?
UPDATE: I missed loads of people! New categories are in the comments!
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