Welcome to the Metrics

Will you choose the Blue Pill or the Red Pill?

In the Matrix Trilogy, the character Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne) offers the opportunity to Neo (Keanu Reeves) to choose between one of two pills. A Blue one and a Red one.

“After this, there is no turning back. You take the blue pill — the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill — you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes. Remember: all I’m offering is the truth.”

Morpheus — The Matrix (1999)

This iconic movie scene is a metaphor representing the human choice between the harsh and sometimes painful reality (the red pill) and the safe and comfortable illusion (the blue pill).

At Medium (and pretty much at every other social media platform), we have our own little version of this concept — The Metrics.

I don’t pretend to play Morpheus on this subject, but I do think you should do as Neo and choose what to believe. Will you choose your truth (the red pill) or will you follow “The Metrics” (the blue pill)?

Taking the Blue Pill

Living according to the metrics will be somewhat easier.

In the beginning, you’ll write your stories and then check your stats, but after a while, you’ll start doing it backwards, checking your stats and then writing your stories accordingly.

Depending on your Operative System, pressing Command + R or F5 will become your favorite activity (The Metrics Reloaded, ah!) and you’ll measure the engagement of your readers carefully.

• What topics had more followers?
• What title formatting got me more views?
• What kind of structure got me more readers?
• What tags used were more often curated by the Medium editors?

In this distorted reality, writers at Medium will care more about their stats than about the quality and integrity of their writing.

Metrics will be in command of your editorial line and you’ll base your next story on the topics that seemed to have a bigger engagement from your readers.

“What readers want, readers will get.”

But this corrupted point of view will ultimately threaten your authenticity.

Is this really the best way to thrive on Medium? Is “giving the readers what they apparently want” really the best way to serve them?

Taking the Red Pill

Those who choose to embrace their true reality will probably suffer more because reality is always harder than an illusion, but in the long run, this will prove to be the correct path for their creative work.

These “resistants” will be authentic, original and reliable and their readers will be those who truly identify with them.

Their writing will be meaningful and challenging to the readers, not “targeted” to their profile.

The initial numbers may not be so good as the ones showing in the Metrics, but they will be real and will reflect the true feedback of your genuine work.

Author Srinivas Rao wrote an excellent article about this topic, defending that creatives should commit to mastery instead of metrics.

“Anyone can game the system when it comes to metrics. They can spend a ton of money and drive traffic to a shitty blog post or lousy podcast. They can hire a company to buy thousands of copies of their book and make a best-seller list. But gaming the system is not a sustainable long-term strategy to build an audience for your work. If you commit to mastery, eventually the metrics will improve. But if you commit solely to metrics, it’s unlikely you’ll ever reach the point of mastery:

Constantly checking the traffic to your website won’t cause it to go up. Writing something worth reading will.”

— Srinivas Rao

Living for the metrics will prevent you from evolving your skills, at least at the pace you could if you focused on them, but even worse than that, your writing will be corrupted.

Having followers and a regular base of readers is important for any writer, but those readers were “conquered” by your genuine work, so why would you replace your most intrinsic thoughts and ideas by some biased ones?

Your readers became such by finding your work and appreciating it, and this happened before you knew anything about them, which means they liked your style, your topics, your voice without you shaping it to their supposed tastes.

Writers write because they have something to say, something of their own that need to be shared with others.

But if you start writing what you think your readers want to read, then you’ll be losing the integrity of your art, the soul of your own writing.

Ask this question to yourself:

Why do I write?

Is it just for money? Fame? Authority?

There’s nothing wrong in aspiring these things, but if they are the main reason for you to write, then tour journey will be very difficult in the long run.

If you don’t have a deep desire for putting on paper your thoughts, either to share with others or simply because they're better on a paper or on screen than confined inside your mind, then your writing career will be nothing more than a full-time office job, where your tasks will be analyzing your clientele and provide them the products they’re looking for.

I’m not saying you should ignore your readers or that you should write and publish your stories like they were a brain dump exercise.

No, you should be faithful to your art, be genuine about your opinion and will, but at the same time be able to present your work to others.

Readers can’t be influenced by something that they can’t find or interpret.

Recently I came across a great post by Ayodeji Awosika where he talks about the necessary dynamics between the quality of your writing and the ability to market it.

“Great art and marketing aren’t mutually exclusive.

If you think high-quality literary writing should stand on its own two feet and spread through pure word of mouth, you will fail.”

— Ayodeji Awosika

Conclusion

The takeaway is simple: you should be you.

Write what you feel you need to write and do it in a way that allows it to reach the biggest public possible, but not at all cost.

Aim for the correct public, the readers that will receive your writing with an open mind and open heart and that truly values your voice, even if they disagree with you.

This is the true meaning of being a writer, and the best thing, like Srinivas Rao says:

“When you focus on mastery, the metrics will eventually move in a positive direction. It’s an inevitable byproduct of being so good they can’t ignore you.”

Write for the wrong reasons and you’ll have to work all your life to have them.

Write for the right reasons and you’ll get to enjoy the wrong ones as well.

The choice is yours, pick your pill.