Why Does Medium Think I Care That You’ve Just Highlighted a Sentence That I Once Highlighted?
And Is There Some Way I Can Make Them Stop?
My Medium Notification Cowbell tells me about lots of things I care about.
When a publication posts one of my stories.
When that story is curated.
When that story is highlighted, responded to, or reaches 100 fans.
Medium also insists on notifying me about something that I have absolutely no interest in. Which is? When someone I follow on Medium highlights a sentence that I’ve previously highlighted.
I follow 3K people. So I get notified about this a lot. In fact, I receive notifications about this pretty much continuously.
Kyrie Gray just highlighted the same line you highlighted last week!
James Knight just highlighted the very line that you highlighted 10 minutes ago!
Why on earth would I care about that?
I’m always thrilled to learn that somebody has highlighted my work. Every time I learn about that, I get a happy little ego boost.
But what’s the point of learning that one of my medium pals has highlighted a sentence that I’ve highlighted? That we both have excellent taste in sentences? I can assume that. You don’t have to tell me that 70 times a day.
I highlight a sentence. Two days later, you highlight it too. And Medium notifies me!
It’s like getting the weather report for San Francisco when I’m living in Philadelphia. It’s completely irrelevant.
I would like to state for the record that I don’t give a damn what other people are highlighting. (Unless, that is, they are highlighting my work. And then I do care. A lot.)
To my knowledge, there’s no way of pulling the plug on these Highlighting Congruence Notifications without getting rid of all of the notifications that I do care about.
So I’m doing what I always do when something bugs or frustrates me. I’m writing about it. In the hope that (1) Medium might make it stop. Or (2) somebody who knows their way around this platform better than I do will teach me how to make it stop, or (3) somebody will give me a good reason why I should care about Congruent Highlighting.
I hereby challenge anybody who reads this to come up with a reason why I should give a damn about Congruent Highlighting and post it as a Response to this rant.
If other Readers agree with you? They can highlight what you’ve said.
And then? Medium will tell all of us about it.
Writing Coach and editor-for-hire Roz Warren, who writes for everyone from the Funny Times to the New York Times, can help you improve and publish your work. Drop her a line at [email protected]. (That’s Ros with an “s,” not a “z.”)