The Most Ironic Question You Can Ask on Any Writing Platform
Why are you following me?
Have you ever wondered why people followed you?
Yesterday, Medium informed me, “In the past month, 105 people started following you.”
What do you do with this information?
I click on each one. I immerse myself in their writing for two or three hours. I’ll clap. I’ll comment. If I liked what I read, I’ll follow them. If their writing is compelling, I’d subscribe to their stories.
It isn’t such a hard task. Many had written nothing. Some wrote on topics I had no interest in, or so were so badly formatted that I had to give up on them.
Some writing made my eyes bleed. Some writing made my ears “Ping”.
I was in a happy state.
Until I got to wondering — why are you following me?
It’s an ironic question because the followers this question is addressed to will not read this.
I’m not sure how many of those 105 new followers read anything I’d written. Other than one or two, I didn’t recall seeing their names in any of the comments I’d received on my articles. I didn’t see many of them clapping my words.
Some people (the majority) click the follow button and then bugger off to the next person to click on them. That’s it. You never see them again.
The question is for them. Why do you follow me?
Which got me thinking.
Why am I following you?
I wonder how many of these apply to you.
***Some of you tick more than one***
- You told me something delicious and fascinating.
- You told me something I’d forgotten, and it felt like a kick up the backside.
- You made me think about the world differently.
- You told me something about yourself that I found so endearing I wanted to read more about you.
- You make me laugh.
- Your words are curiously hypnotic.
- You told me my thinking was wrong — without making me feel stupid.
- I’m jealous of your life. I want to be you.
- You are as mad as Mad McMaddie from Madsvilles and I follow you out of morbid curiosity.
It is rare for me to stop subscribing or unfollow writers. I might not be overly engaged with some of your writing — but I don’t have to read it. I’ll happily sift through lots of writing, picking the best bits.
By the way, it’s against Medium rules to use mentions to draw inorganic attention to your content. I soon learn to avoid this little trick and ignore you — which means I might miss your good stuff. Just saying.
There are very much fewer reasons I will unfollow you.
Why I unfollowed you?
- You wrote nonsense about curing cancer with mumbo jumbo.
I’ll qualify this:
If you tout factually incorrect, unproven, unscientific nonsense, I assume you are one of those people who are incapable of listening to reason. And if you are incapable of listening to reason, there is no point engaging with you and the fewer people who do, the better the world will be.
2. You are no longer writing on the platform.
There you go.
If you read this far, my question is rhetorical.
If you follow me and didn’t read any of the above, why are you following me?
If it’s Medium you’re doing, read Malky McEwan.
