Three Reasons Not To Follow Someone Who Follows You

Or why you shouldn’t follow everyone who follows you on Medium

The Medium feed recently threw an article onto my homepage that lamented arrogant Medium writers who did not extend the simple courtesy of following back those who had chosen to follow them. (Unfortunately, I failed to bookmark this article, and, having read it, I am no longer able to find it. I apologize to the original author, for normally I would have provided a backlink to the article.)

The author was angered by the egotistical Medium writers who did not follow her back. In her view, these narcissists were simply trying to be seen as “influencers” — self-important members of the community who thrived on the fact that they were followed by a much greater number of people than they followed. This was a breach of courtesy and an offense against the rules of networking and community-building. These self-centered individuals were a blight on Medium and should probably be flogged from the site with sashes stolen from the Muses’ bathrobes.

To distill: if someone follows you, then you owe them a follow back.

I didn’t follow her. Moreover, I believe her entire thesis is desperately flawed. Readers and writers should only follow writers whose work is interesting. Leave the follow-for-follows and #writerslifts for other platforms. We must resist the urge to turn Medium into a social-media-for-writers-club.

The Curse of Social Medium

For reasons concealed in the minds of Ev and the team, Medium incorporated the idea of followers from other social medium platforms. I imagine that follower counts play a role in the mysterious algorithm — you could assume that better writers would attract more followers, and thus their stories should receive an algorithmic boost.

They should have left the followers where they belonged — on Instagram and Twitter. Rather than allowing a reader to follow someone, the algorithm should silently log the stories which hold a reader’s attention, and then feed them more stories like that — from the same, and similar writers. If the reader visits an author’s profile and reads several of their stories, the algorithm should assume that the reader is interested in that author, and toss stories into the reader’s feed as the author publishes new material.

This could all take place under the hood; there is no need to have or display a follower count.

Not only do follower counts create a false quality hierarchy, the existence of the metric leads to the same sort sort of gamification that plagues social media. We end up with Medium users trying to boost their follower counts with old tried-and-true social strategies like the follow-unfollow method. Follow fifty people each day. Two days later, unfollow everyone who has not followed you back (or, more radically, unfollow everyone you followed if you want to improve your following to followers ratio). Medium’s ungainly method of displaying followers, which does not even reveal if someone you are following is following you (see Twitter, which does a much better job at this) makes it difficult to see who might be scamming you this way.

When I first joined Medium, I reflexively followed people back who followed me first. When my following/follower pages only boasted a few users, it was easy to see who was playing the follow-unfollow game. As my numbers grew, I found that I had neither the time nor the desire to police the scammers.

Therefore, I resolved to only follow writers who interested me.

Readers vs. Followers

This led to a second revelation: I don’t want followers — I want invested readers who are interested in my writing. The person who follows me and then never looks at another one of my stories has done me no favors. On a similar note, I absolutely loathe people who clap for my stories without reading them. It seems like a pathetic attempt to attract my attention — perhaps so that I will follow them — but they are wasting my time.

Following another Medium user implies no commitment. Someone who follows me, and hundreds of other writers, may never see another story I write. Their indiscriminate mashing of the follow button means they are unlikely to read anything else I write. How has their follow helped me? Why would I want to return the favor?

Do you know what would interest me? (Pay attention, Ev.) A list of the people who read my stories on a regular basis — my audience count. There is an old saying: “actions speak louder than words.” A follow is nothing more than words. On the other hand, the reader who seeks out my stories, on a weekly, monthly, or semi-annually basis, are doing something for me. I would like to know who those people are, the readers who really do follow my work.

Once again, this is something that Medium could show me and no one else. The size of my audience list need never be revealed to another soul. We wouldn’t need to compete to see whose audience list was longer.

But I sure would like to know who my readers — rather than my “followers” — are.

How One Writer Follows

So sorry, Virginia — there is no Santa Claus and I won’t follow you if you follow me first. This doesn’t mean that I am a raging narcissist who is proud of the fact that I have four times as many followers as the number of writers I follow. The simple fact of the matter is that I don’t want to read articles written by most of the people who follow me.

That’s not harsh, nor is it egocentric — it’s simply the way life works. I have limited interests and a limited amount of time to pursue them. I would like Medium to present articles that I am going to enjoy, rather than everything written by everyone who has followed me.

For example, let us assume that Jane, who is as far as I can see is a lovely writer, decides to follow me. I click Jane’s profile and discover that she writes long articles about collecting Humel figurines and poems about her cat.

Well, having no interest in either of those topics, even if Jane’s writing is excellent, why in the world would I follow her? Why would I clog my feed with tales of Hummel-hunting and odes to her Friskies-loving feline?

Would I walk into my local bookstore and purchase a book on German statuettes? Absolutely not. So why, in the name of Sister Maria Innocentia, would I follow someone who writes about topics that don’t interest me? In the world of social media, there might be an unspoken code of etiquette that demands the follow-back, but in the world of reading, I want my feed to show me the good stuff, the writers and topics that interest me, rather than having to wade through material that has no appeal.

And that’s what I want you to do as well. The only reason to follow me, or any author on this platform, is that you like what we write and want to read more.

Let’s strip the social media games out of Medium and get back to its essential purpose: creating a space to connect authors and readers.

When not condemning pernicious technologies, Richard Goodrich writes about history and culture. Keep up with his work by subscribing to his monthly newsletter:

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