The Medium Clapping Etiquette
A deep dive into the mysterious claps
Who invented the clapping system on medium?
I would have loved to be in that meeting…
As a reader, you can basically give anything from 1 to 50 claps. I don’t think readers realise that claps are both free and unlimited. In any case, the way people clap here is a mystery that I am trying to decode.
After almost 4 months here, I have noticed there are a few types of Medium clappers:
The stingy clapper
No matter how much they like your article, they will give you one clap. One. It’s like the minimum expression of a clap. It’s the equivalent of tipping less than 1 dollar, but they feel good because they tipped…
The clapper with good intent
That’s me: starts with the intent of giving you 50 claps but I get finger fatigue and the clap dies somewhere along the way. It’s usually a random number that was totally unplanned like 27 or 34, a bit like the tip: it’s your change, your coins. It’s not that you don’t deserve the full 50, but it feels like I’m wasting my fingerprint away.
The methodical clapper
They will give you something modest like 10 or 15 claps but it has to be a round number. They get mild anxiety…
