One Editor’s Workday

You Don’t Need Followers

Followerless and Medium’s Alghoritm

You don’t need followers

because you’re a river.

You’ll always carry life with you, either on the surface or deep down. You may be small, but the current’s strong: You’ll always be a part of something bigger. Your currents move in ways that are unseen: You always start at point A and move to B. No matter what the season, your water is cold. But it’s not alone. It’s united at source - it comes from a place with divine powers. So whatever happens after you’ve left your source- just know that you’ll always be a part of something bigger, and you’ll always be a part of something beautiful. And so you’ll never, ever need followers. You’ll always be a river. So you don’t need followers because you’re a river.

Medium is an algorithm. But, like all algorithms, there are infinite possible variations. Medium is one of the most exciting places on the web. There are lots of interesting things to read and watch. My experience as editor of the Power of Poetry tells me that the number of followers differs from the number of views. The longer I have been at Medium, the more I observe an inverse relationship. It happens that people with a few followers have a thousand or more views. You never know how many views a post will get.

We are all followers. Every single one of us, working in unison, we make up a whole lot more than we could ever be apart. Working together as if we were one person, not working at all but just being ourselves with each other. Not forging ahead but following behind and ahead at once, following like a wave that has already broken to be again and break again in advance of itself. Not being led but leading, being led at the same time. Not marching in step but weaving in and out of each other, backward and forward. Not following like a flock of sheep or a school of fish; following like a wave that has already broken to be again and break again in advance of itself. And here’s the best part: we get to be told things. We get to know things before they happen.