Summary

The article challenges Medium CEO Tony to ensure Medium remains a diverse platform that caters to both the conscious and unconscious mind through a mix of quality non-fiction and engaging fiction, humor, and personal stories.

Abstract

The author of the article acknowledges Medium's shift towards prioritizing high-quality, informative content, as emphasized by CEO Tony in his commitment to sharing the best ideas and information. While supporting the drive for quality in programming, marketing, and self-improvement, the author argues that Medium should not neglect other forms of writing such as satire, personal narratives, poetry, and fiction. The platform's strength lies in its diverse community of experts and everyday individuals who share a wide range of content. The author suggests that while factual information appeals to the conscious mind, fiction, poetry, and humor engage the unconscious, which is crucial for a holistic reading experience. Citing Carl Jung, the author reinforces the importance of addressing the unconscious mind. The article concludes with a challenge to Coach Tony to make Medium a place where readers can find both the best ideas and the content that resonates with their personal preferences, suggesting that an algorithm could be employed to balance this diversity.

Opinions

Medium should maintain a balance between high-quality informative content and other genres like fiction, humor, and personal stories.
The author supports Medium's focus on quality content but believes that the platform's diversity of voices and experiences is its unique strength.
There is a concern that Medium might be moving away from being a platform that supports a wide range of content types to one that focuses too narrowly on self-improvement and non-fiction.
The author emphasizes the importance of engaging with both the conscious and unconscious mind, suggesting that fiction and poetry are essential for a complete reading experience.
The author directly challenges Medium CEO Tony to use the platform's algorithm to ensure that readers can find content that aligns with their individual tastes and needs.

Would You Like To Challenge Coach Tony?

Let’s get ready to rumble!

People, respectfully rumbling — by Akson on Unsplash

Medium used to be a place where good ideas found you, but it’s not enough to be good anymore. You have to be better.

You should be better at programming, better at marketing, and a better human overall.

In a recent post about Mastodon, Coach Tony, Medium CEO, reminded us of Medium’s mission. It’s “to deepen people’s understanding of the world by helping to share the best ideas and best information.” [bolding mine]

It seems to leave little place for humor, satire, personal stories, memoir, poetry, or fiction.

Medium appears to back away from a place where good ideas find you to one closer to the better human publication’s goal: “to bring you the world’s most trustworthy writing on human potential and self-improvement.”

When he became CEO in July last year, Coach Tony said he was “coming to Medium to double down on our publishing tools [and] on the quality of our subscription on behalf of readers.”

I fully support these goals as a prolific writer and reader on the platform. I love the idea that my feed is full of quality articles I want to read.

And that includes fiction as well as non-fiction. I want the information, but I also care for the satirical takes and the humorous articles. I want to learn, but I also want to have fun when reading (and writing) on the platform.

I think Coach Tony got it right in the first paragraph of his first article as the new CEO: “There are so many different reasons to read Medium and so many different reasons to publish on Medium. We are a very large community consisting of hundreds of millions of readers and many thousands of authors. That is our strength.”

Sharing the best information and best ideas sounds like something Wikipedia or The Guardian would want to do, and I don’t think Medium has any chance to compete with them.

But Medium has something nobody else does, an incredible diversity of voices and experiences.

Some here are experts and share high-quality and backed-up information with their readers. Others are like you and me — people who want to share their lives and writings with the world.

Some use journalistic or even scientific approaches to present their ideas. Others use humor or fiction to do so.

While ideas and information can help us become better people, I think they talk only to our conscious minds. And we also need to talk to our unconscious, the invisible part of our brains where emotions boil and steer us in unexpected directions.

“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life, and you will call it fate.” — Carl Jung.

Self-help and non-fiction articles don’t speak to the unconscious.

Fiction, poetry, memoir, and humor do.

We need both.

Medium has both.

And an algorithm trained to share them with readers. It would be a shame not to use it.

I challenge Coach Tony to make Medium a place where readers find what they want to read. It might include the best ideas and information but shouldn’t be limited to them.