This is Your Ultimate Guide to Clapping Etiquette on Medium

Because every beauty contest has a darker side.

I thought¹ I had another funny idea to satirize our shared writing experience on this platform, so I did a search for “Clapping on Medium.”

The vast majority of these articles boiled down to “whatever you want to do is fine.” Of course, these painfully boring responses were met with thousands of claps.

I guess people need validation, and that’s okay.

But that’s not why you’re reading this, is it?

You hunger for the kind of trivial knowledge that can only come from wasting hours of research into a subject no one in their right mind would explore.

Naturally, that meant waiting for me to do the heavy lifting.

When I revised my search to simply “clapping,” the results were spectacular.

Without further ado, let us begin the ultimate guide to clapping etiquette.

The one time when you want to get a case of the claps, but can’t enjoy it.

Here’s a shout out to my friend Tom Mitchell, who wrote a funny article on his clapping policy.

While he told people he would only clap once for their article — after giving a humorous list of reasons why he wouldn’t clap at all — his fans responded with the kind of viral response most of us only dream of.

Too bad this baby wasn’t behind the paywall.

Nope. Poor old Tom is like Medium’s version of Tantalus, gazing down for eternity at the mound of cash that continually rises to his lips, and then pulls away when he tries to stuff some of it into his wallet.

Then I found another article that was so funny, it made my sad attempt at humor completely unnecessary.

On the other hand, when has that ever stopped me?

Roz Warren went above and beyond the call in spelling out the significance of every single clap she gives out, from 1 to 50.

Here’s her comment on 50 claps: “I wonder if I could plagiarize this and get away with it.”

This is an actual rule that I live by, as evidenced by how often I cite the funny stuff produced by my spiritual sister (Sorry, Roz).

Fortunately for me, anonymity means never having to say you’re sorry to anyone outside of family.

Only people who get published in New York newspapers, seem to get caught in the act.²

Finally, somebody brought scientific methodology to the subject of clapping.

And now my original idea is completely dead.

So, Donna Barker, how dare you occupy my niche of pseudo-science satire?

Not only do you occupy the far more popular sex-sexuality-very sexy-not so sexy-sometimes sexy-sex confessional niche, but you have the nerve to have a sense of humor as well?

All I can do is laugh. Then I’ll cry.

When you come to the party as late as I did, be grateful for table scraps.

Here are a few observations about people’s behavior and attitudes toward clapping:

#1: One young, naive writer was outraged at getting claps from his writer’s group, when the stats showed that no one read his article.

My response: if you’re upset when someone buys you a beer but doesn’t hang around to talk, you need a serious lesson in gratitude.

#2: My friend P.G. Barnett unleashed a rant about people not clapping for articles, and got over 1,300 claps for it.

My response: how the hell does this amateur ranter get ten times more claps than I do for my professionally designed 500-WORD RANTs?

At least I can one-up him when it comes to getting no respect. I’ve had people who not only read my post, but highlight the good parts, and sometimes even leave comments, and still not leave a single clap.

#3: There are only (t̶h̶r̶e̶e̶) five³ reasons that people leave odd random numbers of claps.

Trust me on this one thing.

Once the clap total goes past 25, no rational human will stop at 38, back away from the keyboard, raise their hands in triumph, and shout: “Honey, I just gave this article the perfect score!”

• 49 claps means their phone died.
• Numbers like 22, 37 and 43 mean the reader has a form of OCD and added claps until your clap total reached a round number. For example, I clapped for one article until the total reached 1,100. It was too hard to pass such a beautiful number, regardless of the article’s quality. (Of course, if I read the article again and the number has changed, I would clap some more to reach the next good number.)
• Any double-digit number ending with a 1 was a combination of user error and carpal tunnel syndrome. For example, they were done at 20, and their fingers couldn’t stop. But the carpal tunnel syndrome leaves them unwilling to clap until 25. And they definitely don’t want to erase all their claps and start the count to 20 again.
• Do you remember that sibling who took joy in knocking down the first domino of an intricate chain you spent two hours building? Or that older “friend” who laughed so hard when they blew down that house of cards you sweated over? How about the frat bro on the football team who thought it was sheer genius to spray you with beer just as you were walking out the door in a suit to meet a job recruiter? On Medium, we may have similar characters who love to troll all us tidy OCD clappers by destroying the beauty of a number like 250 and turning it into 253. I apologize in advance if this was an innocent case of a dead smart phone, or a software glitch where a clap got lost in the ether.
• You have a “friend” who disapproves of you leaving his table at the Medium cafeteria to hang out with some group of weirdos, losers and misfits (my current esteemed friends). This friend still follows you, reads your work, and even highlights what you wrote, but they can’t stand the subject matter. So instead of not reading, not highlighting, not commenting and not clapping, they leave you little F-bombs in the form of tiny random numbers of claps (1,2,4,7) in place of the normal 20s, 30s and 50s they leave when you write about “good” subjects.

UPDATE, 2024: every once in a while, a newcomer explores the very edges of our shared universe.

While I was ready to shame Corey Richards for trodding on now-sacred Medium canon, I got to the end of his article and found a tiny miracle.

It has been five years.

Five years since someone thought outside of the box on the subject of clapping.

But it’s not just an insight into clapping, it’s a statement of universal importance, the unified theory of online writing, if you will.

“Fifty-one claps: MEDIUM IS BROKEN.” — Corey Richards

Thank you, Corey, for your contribution to our collective mental health.

To every writer who has ever felt addicted, bitter, confused, dysfunctional, embarrassed, fearful, gaslighted, helpless, insecure, jealous, loathing, marginalized, neglected, overwhelmed, paranoid, queasy, resigned, scammed, tormented, undervalued, vulnerable, wrath, x-posed, yucky, or zany, it’s not you.

It’s our corporate overlords.

Medium is broken and I have sooooo much proof (every link above is a different story about this crazy place).

Here’s to better writing, hopefully.

¹Notice the tense. I found out within the first three paragraphs that “my” idea had already been done better by the people who came before me.

²Journalism in the digital age has had some bizarre twists. Watch the film Official Secrets and you’ll see what could have been a world-altering event changed because of using a spell checker.

³Thanks to the readers who reminded me of other psychological dynamics not originally included in this post.