I think it’s good that you left Medium for a while, since it worked to benefit your sanity. I didn’t do that because I — like everybody else here — have grown far too attached to this platform, which is both a gift and a curse.

Even though I appreciate the great lengths Medium is going to improve its platform and monetize more content and whatnot, it is moving dangerously close to a lot of the social media (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube) that does the very thing that you say the claps are doing — keep scores on all the content we like, how much we consume and like it, and decide who we are based on squiggles on a blank screen.

It is this very thing that makes Medium worse than blogging. We like to delude ourselves into thinking that this is a community of writers that will always support each other’s ideas and whatever the Medium corporation says, but this is still the Internet.

Illustration by Steve Cutts

I have a very complicated love-hate relationship with the Internet. On one hand, it has given me the other 60% of my education that school never will and an opportunity to have my own little slice of the power only the super-prosperous indulge in. This “power” that I speak of is not money, or oil, or any other material influence. It is narrative, for the ones who control the narrative control the rest of the world. A good story, told well, can obscure the lies and deceit that would otherwise cause people to think for themselves, do things for themselves, and create a universe for themselves.

On the other hand, there’s always that voice. It first starts out a whisper that follows me everywhere the minute I feast my eyes on any screen. Then it gets louder and louder until it’s an earsplitting scream once I reach the comments or response section at the bottom of the page.

YOU AREN’T WELCOME HERE.

So I’m proudly unaffiliated… I used to think that was a good thing. I’m a very difficult person to sway, and since when did politics become nothing more than a spectrum? When did being anything but leftist become atrocious? Who changed the narrative? When? How?

Then, the voice again:
PICK A SIDE OR YOU DON’T BELONG.

I thought there weren’t any rules! I argue. You said I could be myself.

Yes, be the version of yourself THAT THEY LIKE.

So I read one story about somebody’s porn addiction. Does that make me a pornographer now?

We’ll have to see your previous claps to find out….


They say writing on the Internet is the most humbling thing you could ever do, and it is…but reading on the Internet? Not so much. I know nothing about Medium’s algorithms and prefer not to, but it’s very difficult to find content other than the kind that continues the tribalist cycle.

There’s a difference between reading brilliant ideas and just reading stuff that goes along with the majority; the latter sounds smart in the beginning until it gets boring. Everybody’s saying the same thing, you know? And then if you want to do this thing called being open-minded, you have to comb through articles for hours (I have wasted so much writing time doing this) or risk having a mountain of accusations being chucked at you. And accusations are dangerous for two reasons — they are black and white (like Medium’s new logo), and always assume.

The Internet is the largest repository of accusations on the planet, and I guess that’s the way it will always be. There are some conversations on here that are no better than the civil wars that go on under YouTube videos, Tweets and Facebook articles. Medium is social media just packaged in a higher-quality wrapping paper, and I have to hand it to them — they did a very nice job with the wrapping paper.

It’s still centered around approval and disapproval, which have been made to be very superficial things. On social media, approval and disapproval always have to be voiced. You either like it or you don’t. But what about silent appreciation? It’s not the same thing. One can approve an article, but what really is there to appreciate? The person telling them stuff they already know and agree with? What about the education that comes with reading things one doesn’t agree with, but unearth what hasn’t been said? That is where true appreciation comes from, and it doesn’t need to be approved or disapproved of. To approve or disapprove, one only has to think about the words for less than five seconds and then they’re done without another thought.

I think they’ve all codified this equation in which the content we consume equals the person we are, which is all wrong on so many levels.


I’ve had some pretty horrible teachers who really couldn’t teach, but I learned to teach myself while others were complaining. I do the same on the Internet, for they’re both infested with the same types of people — the laziest and dumbest you’ll ever stumble upon.

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