The Blue Checkmark of Irrelevance
Nobody cares about the book you wrote
After a seven week absence I am back to writing regularly on Medium.
The two months I took off wasn’t by choice. I’d been targeted by a advanced persistant threat group who kept me offline.
Who did that? Assholes.
I kicked some edgelord loser out of my amature porn space on Quora 3 years ago for being a weirdo and they haven’t let it go. Long story. Being me is weird.
Let’s not talk about interesting things, this is Medium after all. Let’s talk about everyone on Medium’s favorite topic, Medium.com
There’s still a bunch of crap in my feed I’ve little interest in reading. That’s familiar and comforting to me. Good to see people are still writing about their lives as writers.
PROTIP: If you’ve already exausted and milked your past trauma, Intentionally do one stupid thing a day to fuck up your life. This will give you something to write about. Normal is boring.
Blue Checkmarks now on Medium
Let’s talk about Medium’s new checkmark program. It’s not about followers, fans, relevance, or quality. You need to have published a book.
98% percent of Medium: Hey, I’ve written a book!
Medium: No, a real non Amazon book
97% percent of Medium: Shit
If I tell people I’m an author they ask how many books I’ve published.
If I tell people I’m journalist they ask what publications I’ve been published in.
If I tell people I’m a blogger they ask how Tila Tequila is doing and laugh at me.
Nobody uses the word blogger anymore.
I’m a storyteller.
I write short stories and I’m good at it. It takes me less than 2k words to tell a compelling story.
You want me to stretch it out to 60k words? Isn’t this a Mitch Hedberg bit?
As a comedian living in Hollywood, everyone wants me to do things besides comedy. “Can you act?” “Write us a script!” They want me to do things related to comedy, but not comedy. It’s as though I was a cook, and I worked my ass off to become a really good cook, and they said, “Okay, you’re a cook. Can you farm?” — Mitch Hedberg
Hogan Torah is a social media personality who writes on Medium.
Two months ago before the APT attack I wrote a story that made over 3 grand on Medium. Why would I waste my time writing a book? It’s a dying format.
No blue check for me on Medium.
Blue Checkmark changes on Twitter
A blue checkmark on Twitter was supposed to be something that money couldn’t buy. You had to be a significant person. It was something to aspire to.
Originally the checkmark was to authenticate the real accounts from the fake for famous people. Then their standards loosened. Rumor has it that for 15k anyone could have a checkmark.
Being a writer was the path of least resistance to a checkmark. They see the checkmark and follow me. My musings would have gravity.
I thought I sounded nuts with my Quora arch nemisis.
Getting users to pay isn’t going to make Twitter profitable. Socal media is free because we are the product. Hell, Medium was created to train AI to moderate longer content.
Elon says things. We’ll see if he follows through with it. I wanted to earn my blue dot the right way. Sigh.
No blue checkmark for me on Twitter.
Sign up for Mastadon with Medium
Mastadon looks like Twitter but it’s void of any fun. From the monochromatic color scheme to it’s feed’s adhearance to static interests. I signed up and got bored in 3 minutes.
It’s nice to see the Medium platform team up with other obscure sites that are destined to remain obscure. Maybe if Medium wants writers to talk to each other they could install a DM function like every social media platform ever.
Medium is Twitter for stories. With Elon in charge the butt-buddy relationship between Twitter and Medium must be over.
Mastodon reminds me of Microsoft SharePoint. It makes sense on paper but a company will spend millions to set it up and everyone keeps using their email as a cloud drive.
Mastadon feels like it was coded in a weekend by a grad student who thought they could make their own Twitter. It’s like MySpace but if Facebook came first. I’m not using Mastodon regardless of what happens to Twitter. It’s not fun.
Medium rewarding you for publishing a book is like your car insurance going up if you get divorced. It doesn’t matter.
Keep your blue dot. I’m not chasing meaningless milestones.