Humor

Why Medium’s New Incentives Remind Me of Whack a Mole

I won’t get the Big Head any time soon

An incentive is defined as anything designed to reward peak performance, to let you know you’re special, and to motivate people to keep up the good work. Incentives are a motivational “carrot,” if you will. (taken from How Employee Incentives Work by Tristin Hopper)

With this definition in mind, I looked with delight at the new incentives Medium has rolled out to keep me motivated and inspired to keep churning out stories. Because they want us to stick around, right? When you’re selling a product, don’t you want more customers?

The first thing I noticed was the incentive of curation. It’s gone. No more emails popping up to tell me that because of the quality of my writing, my story will be distributed in topics.

These emails were an unnecessary boost to my morale, obviously designed to give me the “big head.” Nowadays I need to track down curation status. (because what you don’t work for you don’t appreciate, yada yada yada) And when I do hunt for more information, my stats either say “distributed” or …nothing.

Does nothing mean the story is still in limbo, or is nothing the final word? I’ve got a sneaky suspicion it’s the final word. No more limbo. No more “hanging tight.” Aren’t you relieved?

I interviewed Medium curators for greater clarity, and here’s what they said: “We got sick and tired of all you writers pestering us about curation. Why didn’t my story get curated? Can’t you consider it again? How long am I suppose to hang tight? Am I in Curation Jail? On and on and on it went. You writers were driving us crazy! So we got together and said, Enough of this crap. We ain’t telling you jack shit anymore. Leave us alone.”

Moving on from curation, the second thing I noticed was the incentive of being a top writer in topics. Wow, that used to be a high! Who wouldn’t want to read and follow somebody who was a top writer in humor? Or relationships? Or whatever?

I remember the first time I got that inspiring notice, “You are a top writer in…” With that sort of an ego boost, did it matter if I made 29 cents on my last story? Of course not! What is money when you can be a top writer? I thought to myself, These guys really know what they are doing, boosting our ego in lieu of pay.

Well, folks. That little carrot is gone. Top writer status did nothing anyway, except give us one more thing to draw people to our stories and keep us going despite writing for pennies. But who cares? Now we won’t get the Big Head.

I’m sure you realize how writers are always prone to get the Big Head, given that we get so much positive feedback in so many areas, what with all those acceptance letters and seeing our name on book jackets and whatnot. Losing this incentive will make us better, more humble people. Medium knows it’s stuff!

The incentive of gaining followers is gone too, because we can no longer see who is following us! Isn’t that great? We don’t need to worry about all those people who read and follow us anymore. Because we can’t find out who they are!

When I interviewed the Medium staff about this, they said, “We want to emphasize relationships more. Your followers will now count more than ever.”

Makes perfect sense.

Another incentive that’s gone is the obnoxious focus on earnings. Now people can read our poetry and a large portion of our stories without clicking on them. Isn’t that great? This saves readers from having to open the whole thing, and keeps us focused on what is really important, which is…which is…which is….

I hope you can see from this analysis what Medium’s new incentives are designed to do. They are designed to make us better people! We will no longer be motivated by money, followers, top writer status, reads and claps and fans and that feel-good boost that comes from our own small successes as we try to remain positive through the daily grind.

It’s kind of like Whack a Mole. Some little measure of success pops up, you whack it back down. In this game, Medium holds the hammer.

Aren’t you glad? If this won’t keep you from getting the “Big Head,” nothing will. So polish that writing. Keep up that good work. Write some more listicles on 5 ways to succeed despite setbacks (only don’t use a title that includes 5 ways of doing something because that might draw attention to your work and be considered clickbait which is the new BAD, and your story WILL NOT BE CURATED…or rather, DISTRIBUTED.

So get busy. You’ve got your work cut out for you. This is designed to make you better.

Or just give it a rest and go read a book or something.