I liked the old recommend system.
This was all very well-stated, Bridgette Adu-Wadier. I actually had a sort of mini-crisis over continuing to do the Medium thing at all right after this ridiculous and transparent profiling device of “clapping” came out of nowhere.
It’s so obvious: files get kept on to what extent a given user approves of a given set of ideas, all neatly categorized and placed in ideological columns like some giant spreadsheet of human opinion. If say, an article about Donald Trump not making the correct noises against “fascism” casts him in a favorable light, and I give say, five of these silly “claps” to the thing, I just earned myself five steps closer to being reported to the Southern Poverty Law Center as a probable fascist. If enough of that sort of articles appear and I give enough “applause” to them, no doubt the witch-hunter cartels like SPLC have rankings of “hate thinking” to assign to all individuals in their vast purview, so the more I show approval for any kind of non-liberal-left thinking, the higher up the cliff face of being ranked as a fascist I am climbing, and under my own steam the whole way.
I won’t be giving ANYONE any of these “claps.” It isn’t about liking what I read or wanting to recommend it to anyone else any more: it’s nakedly a way of measuring my ideological correctness along with everyone else’s, and I won’t be a party to it. It was almost enough to have me stop using this venue at all, which I did stand down from for a week or so. But there are people like you I enjoy exchanging discourse with, and I decided after a time that my writing of comments will have to speak for itself. I will not be made to “clap” on cue only to have the magnitude of my “clapping” be used to evaluate me as a human being.
My God, I have come to despise everything about this PC paranoia, more still since the November US election than ever before, but the disgust I feel toward All Things Leftist has never in my life been so visceral as it is since that day. And it looks to be getting far worse before it ever gets better.
So Medium, not “if” but SINCE you’re eavesdropping:
Clap THIS, you delusional yuppie armchair-socialist wannabe hypocrites….
(use your imagination…..)
