What Happens When Millions of People Read Your Medium Story
Advice from writer/director Julio Vincent Gambuto
Last month, Medium’s own Amy Shearn interviewed writer/director Julio Vincent Gambuto as part of our Creator Workshop Series. Gambuto shared how he wrote his breakthrough essay — “Prepare for the Ultimate Gaslighting” — and how it helped him launch a writing career and pitch his upcoming book.
Here’s a full recording and transcript of the interview. This transcript has been edited for clarity and concision.
Amy Shearn: Why did you write “Prepare for the Ultimate Gaslighting”? Why did you choose Medium?
Julio Vincent Gambuto: Writing that piece was a surreal experience. I had written on Medium a number of times before (I’d only published around six or seven stories). Originally, I was attracted to Medium because I liked the cleanliness of the space. I liked that you could write something that felt like you were writing in a magazine — but you didn’t kind of have to jump through the 19 hoops to get into a magazine. And it was immediate and you could link to it.
So many of my first Medium pieces started as Facebook rants. I’d think to myself, “Oh my God, I don’t want to be that guy ranting on Facebook… let’s move this over to Medium and make it more thoughtful and polished.”
I’d written about Hillary Clinton, local politics. And then this moment came along, four or five weeks into the pandemic, when we were all trapped in our houses. I’d just moved into into Manhattan full-time three weeks before the pandemic started, so I was in this new apartment, alone, on full lockdown.
That week, five people in my larger orbit friends of friends and family died. The night before writing that piece, I went to bed just totally overwhelmed and probably more depressed than I’ve ever been in my life. I woke up the next morning thinking it was going to be a “normal” day, poured coffee, and got this email from J.Crew. And that email was the spark that frankly changed my writing and, just — I got so angry.
A few weeks earlier, every brand in America had sent out these massive emails about things like how to clean your hands. So I was bothered by the fact that J.Crew and brands like them had taken the time to care about us by explaining how to wash our hands, but then a week later, they just switched to: Now you can buy a sweater for 40% off.
It enraged me. So, I went to Facebook (as was my habit) and started writing. I was a paragraph or two into it when I realized I needed to move it over to Medium. Then I spent a few hours at my desk working on it and posted it.
It was the craziest thing… because it just started getting shared on Facebook. People were saying “Oh my God, you said what I wanted to say,” and “That’s what I was thinking.” I had never seen this happen, but those share numbers kept going up on Facebook. And then suddenly it started to get shared around social media… an hour, two hours later, there were thousands and thousands of shares, but by that evening, it was at like 400,000 views, and then it kept going up. That was Easter weekend, so by Saturday it was at 10 to 12 million views. By Sunday it was at about 15-16 million.
It was a very wild experience, but I’m really grateful for and humbled by it. I very much understand something like this can’t be repeated intentionally. So I’m just grateful for that moment. I got to communicate the deepest part of me to millions of people from my laptop and my house, alone.
So, you didn’t run it by anyone else before publishing — or even reread it much… you just posted it, right?
Yep. It was raw, and I think that’s what made it resonate the way that it did — because we were all raw in that moment. I think if it were more polished or edited or put through committee editing or whatever it would have wound up being a different piece.
I know you’re a filmmaker as well. Can you talk about how the experience of writing something on Medium differs from filmmaking?
Yeah. And just for context, I work primarily an independent film — and that industry has been rocked to its core by the pandemic, by the economics, by the fallout, by the shifting economics of the movie business. So some people are back to work, some people are not.
I run a company called Boro Five. We’ll shoot our second feature film, if all goes well, by the end of this year — but that’s about two years later than we’d originally planned. Delay aside, movies take time. So much time. Our first film is called Team Marco. That’s a family film, and it took four years from development, scriptwriting, fundraising, production, post-production, to getting it out, getting it on Hulu, and all of that. That’s a long process for someone like me, who gets up every day with something to communicate, wanting to connect with people.
That’s why Medium has been a fantastic tool for me. It enables me to just cut right to an audience and talk to them. I’ve done stand-up comedy before, and it’s sort of like that. You can communicate ideas directly, and really converse with people in a way you can’t with film. When you’re making a movie, you start with this big thesis and then spend an hour and a half creating a visual world that communicates that thesis. Writing is very different, it’s more immediate.
Whenever I talk to someone who works in film, I realize you really need a lot of buy-in from people. So many people.
Totally. I was exhausted by the buy-in. I was exhausted by having an entire production team and executive producers and producers. You don’t necessarily have to get everyone’s approval on every move, but it’s a larger conversation all the time. What excited me most about this post (and made me proud) was that it was just me with my laptop in my apartment.
What lessons do you think Medium writers can learn from your story’s success?
First of all, write from an emotional place. I have a sense that writers tend to think the word “emotional” means the reader needs to be crying or you need to be crying. But that’s not it — I just mean: Write from a place that sparks any emotion: happiness, joy, anger, resentment, disappointment, sadness, glee. All of those emotions will inspire something different in you.
With “Prepare for the Ultimate Gaslighting,” I was angry. I was disgusted. I was overwhelmed. I was exhausted. And I actually used some of those words in the piece, I essentially said, “Dear reader, I imagine you’re as devastated as I am right now at the state of the world.”
Basically: If you’re moved, chances are your readers will be, too.
I love that. I know I’m onto something good when I’m having similar conversations with a couple different people. Sometimes we feel like our real life is so distant from our writing lives — but really, writing is just a conversation with your reader.
Absolutely. I publish on Medium weekly now, and I love responding to something people are talking about. Not necessarily the hottest news story or the most trending thing on Twitter — that can feel so calculated. But at the same time, that’s what people are talking about. So, if I’ve had a conversation with someone a few times throughout the week and then something happens in the world of that conversation, I’ll write about it.
How does it feel to have a piece like this blow up so wildly — and then to publish new stories that don’t do such big numbers? How do you make sense of that? Does it feel frustrating?
One of the reasons I think this particular story did well was because it was so timely. The entire world was at home right at that moment, four or five weeks into lockdown. For that reason, I do think that this particular piece, for me, was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to speak to so many people.
I could make a movie tomorrow that goes around the world and it wouldn’t reach that many people. I don’t want to take this word out of context, but it felt very sacred, frankly, to speak to so many people in a moment of devastation and have them really listen. It wasn’t a tweet — it was a 2,000-3,000 word essay. I really felt honored by the time people spent reading it, whether they agreed with it or not.
Soon after that story went viral, I said to myself: “That’s it. That’s not going to happen again, so don’t get up every day expecting it to.” I can’t put my brain through and my heart through the emotional warfare of worrying about how many people are following me, or responding to my work, or clapping for my latest post. Life is too busy to get in the weeds like that emotionally.
I just try to do my best, and to write in the moment each week. If 10 people read it this week, great. If 100 people read it, that’s great too. I try to contain my emotional experience to the story I’m writing in the moment — rather than comparing.
I love that you never talk down to your reader in the essay — that’s key. You assume everyone reading is smart and aware of what’s happening.
Thank you.
It can be hard to trust your readers! I think that’s part of what made the piece so successful — your trust.
I appreciate that. And while I’m writing, I do try to anticipate what readers are thinking — and I’ll even write it out, like: “I know you’re thinking I’m crazy” or “I know you’re thinking that’s impossible.” In that way, you sort of have to be a writer and a reader of your own work at the same time. And I’ve found that those sections are what people remember. They’ll write back to me and say, “I love that you said X because that’s exactly what I was thinking in that moment.” It becomes a way to continually check-in with the reader along the way.
Can you talk a little bit about turning “Prepare for the Ultimate Gaslighting” into a book proposal?
Sure! Well, backing up a bit: The first thing I did after that moment, or “The Essay” as we call it my house, was to just start writing regularly. I wanted to make sure I was writing at least weekly. I wanted to make sure that if people were following me, I’d be a consistent voice for them.
And then, because the essay traveled so widely, I was approached by a literary agent. We started talking about a book. We discussed lots of ideas, and eventually landed on something I’d heard from readers in comments on the story. People would always read it and ask, “Okay now what? What can I do?”
By now, we understand what’s going on with consumerism and capitalism and politics, but where do we go from here? What can we do about it? That’s the impetus for the book.
We went through a year of redrafting the book proposal and finally sold it. Now we’re working on drafts of the book itself. I’m really excited about it.
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