It’s A Lot Worse Than A Medium Problem

And it — IS — a problem

In his essay, Herr Doktor Simon sez that we should stop taking Medium (or the Medium as @Tim Barrus calls it), ourselves, and the ol’ series of tubes itself so seriously. Well, as an unserious nonperson, I’m here to tell you that won’t solve anything. It might make you feel better for a while — until (of course) it doesn’t — but it won’t actually address the underlying problem, which is real, and… problematic.

First of all, let’s remember what Medium actually tells us about itself before we’ve signed up.

“Move thinking forward.

Medium is a community of readers and writers offering unique perspectives on ideas large and small.

Sign up to read and interact with what matters most to you.”

This is the first thing you’ll see if you go to medium.com without being logged in. The “learn more” button leads to this article

by the Medium Staff which lays this on even more thickly. This is probably my favorite part of that article in context of this whole mess.

“Read Actively

Stories that mean something

The world has reached a saturation point of shallow, thoughtless content, and half-skimming through these pages of filler is increasingly unfulfilling. Every day, your Medium homepage is full of stories with depth and meaning — stories that make you laugh, cry, and actually feel things.”

Think about that. Does this platform, where lists so generic and shallow that scores of people — including some of the ones who spend most of their time making such lists themselves — have complained about how generic and shallow they are, constantly rank higher than just about everything else, actually live up to these claims? Be honest.

Though of course, no one should have actually expected it to live up to its own hype. I know I didn’t. But that’s terrible too and its implications extend far beyond the Medium or the Internet. Think about what that means. What does it say about our society that selling snake oil which no one actually believes in more than half-heartedly at most, but everyone still buys anyway because it’s better than nothing is considered acceptable, or even worse, admirable?

One could argue that society has always had these traits in some form or another. I wouldn’t necessarily disagree, but that doesn’t make it any less revolting. The defining characteristic of the hyperconsumerist dispensation is that it takes every previously available experience, commercializes, mass-produces, and grossly exaggerates it to enhance the initial emotional (even spiritual to some people) connection the buyer has to a product and/or brand.

It’s a convoluted postmodern joke within a joke and we’re all living in it. Kowtowing to the status quo to feign some transient, wishy-washy, corporate-inspired, pseudo-Zen detachment isn’t going to make any of it any less absurd. Even if we’re stuck with it, we shouldn’t let the fact that it’s all we have make us blandly accept its flaws, which are reflective of the world’s flaws and our own as well.

We’re not robots. If you want to cry, scream, or laugh about something, do it. The rationality pressed upon us by an irrational world — one that tells us we have to buy shit every so often in order for our lives to be meaningful — isn’t worth writing apologies on behalf of.

The Medium isn’t your god or savior. It’s not your wife, husband, lover, friend, brother, or sister, either. Telling people not to overreact by leaving is one thing, but why should anyone other than the staff defend it? It’s perfectly capable of standing up for itself, as is any reasonably funded corporate entity.