Senpai Dave has never noticed you, you say? You’re not alone!
Medium Writers Who’ve Never Been Perlmuttered, Take the Hi-Liter Into Your Own Hands and Perlmutter Yourself
Next to liking your Instagram posts and digital detoxing, “self-perlmuttering” is the greenest way to practice self-love online.
Quit Listening to Your Inner Critic’s Greatest Hits
Besides a functional keyboard, internet connection, and brain, publishing an article on Medium takes courage.
What if nobody reads it?
What if nobody likes it?
What if David Perlmutter doesn’t highlight it?
These are some of the Inner Critic’s Greatest Hits, shuffling on repeat in the minds of every Medium writer.
Consider the following thought experiment:
If I publish writing on Medium and David Perlmutter isn’t around to highlight it, is it any good?
If your articles are entirely monochrome, consider taking the Hi-Liter into your hands and perlmuttering yourself. Give yourself the gift of a self-perlmutter, if you will.
The gift that keeps on highlighting.
Especially When You Feel No One Else Will
You deserve it.
Don’t give me that look, fellow Medium writer.
Your work deserves to be noticed, read, and perlmuttered. After spending so much time and energy distilling your mind and soul into digestible text, you deserve better than to be snubbed by internet strangers.
Shrug your hesitation off to the margins of self-consciousness.
Leave the noise and negativity to Twitter, a platform better suited to lowlights and piss-poor takes.
The Chief Twit himself — deadbeat CEO that he is — drip-feeds his twits a daily supply of self-aggrandizing, gassed-up drivel.
And he’s nowhere near as clever as your average Doctor Funny contributor.
Elon and I would both agree democracy doesn’t function as well in practice as a Tesla does on paper, highlighted or not.
Also, I’d like to nominate Lex Fridman as the new Chief Twit. Lex, at least, has valuable thoughts and insights to share.
He’s also a Medium writer: Lex Fridman!
One of us!
One of us!
One of uhhh—y’know, assuming I didn’t just tag an imposter.
Maybe Lex will read this and invite me on his podcast. Or guest on mine.
With The Power of Perlmutter, all possibilities are within reach.
Self-Perlmutter Yourself to New Horizons
After your first self-perlmutter, new horizons will come into view.
The possibilities, like Perlmutter’s highlights, are immeasurable.
If you were to compile all the text DP has ever highlighted, lining up one sentence after another, they would span galaxies.
If he were alive today, Carl Sagan would write an entire book about DP’s intergalactic digital footprint.
It takes only one self-perlmuttering to prove the content is not greener on the other side—or article.
The thirst for external validation is a thirst trap for progress.
This “need” will dissipate like fog when faced with The Power of Perlmutter because all the validation will come from your own hand. After all, online self-love is the best medicine, next to laughter and masturbation.
I bet Medium’s resident surgeon of satire, Michael Burg, MD, would agree.
If the work you publish seems doomed to be blacked out by the sharpie of obscurity — and not in a dope way, like blackout poetry — you’re not alone in the darkness.
I, and countless other Medium writers, are in the same boat.
Let’s keep rowing, shall we?
David Perlmutter: The Man Behind the Highlights, AKA Medium’s Banksy
David Perlmutter is an artful dodger among Medium writers.
Venturing into the green pastures of Medium like he owns the white space, David always opts to explore far beyond the For You and Following tabs.
After chortling in the bare face of his Inner Critic, David nods dismissively but politely before performing perfunctory breathwork, wrist rotations, and finger curls to warm up.
David removes his spectacles, slips them into his speedos, then nose-dives into whatever topic tickles his fancy. The reading marathon begins.
Like a behind-the-scenes crew member, DP is fond of shining a light-green-hued spotlight on articles he enjoys and holds in high regard.
If Medium Boosts amplify our work, David Perlmutter—if that is his real name—accentuates it.
If David highlights your article from top to bottom, it’s safe to assume he thinks it’s all good.
The Hi-liter Haters and Anti-Perlmutterers — mutter in comment sections about how DP is a literal menace to Medium, accusing the serial highlighter of “prosaic vandalism” with no regard for the sanctity of white space.
Medium’s Banksy, if there ever was one.
Beyond his writing and highlighting style, little else is known about the man behind the highlights besides how he’s one of Medium’s most engaged and supportive writers.
A published one, at that.
Nice blue check you got there, Senpai Dave.
Does “David Perlmutter” Autofill?
Sadly, unlike the name “Hogan Torah,” “David Perlmutter” does not autofill.
And if it does, the first result will not be the Perlmutter you are looking for.
‘Til about 32 results down on Google.
Hey, how about scrolling through his Medium profile instead?
Weirdo.
David Perlmutter on Wikipedia is a celebrity doctor from Florida who, like Doctor Funny, is a doctor who writes. Likely during breaks and holidays.
Any doctor-writer extraordinaire would warn that writing in excess leaves insufficient time for reading and highlighting. Take it from them. Celebrity doctors know their shit.
Moderation is critical unless you’re performing a self-perlmutter.
Incidentally, Dr. Burg is a strange case of a Medium writer. Not in a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde way, but rather in a Patch Adams meets Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas meets Adult Swim way.
Many of Dr. Burg’s articles have received the DP treatment, which is no surprise since the doc routinely lives up to his name.
Doctor Funny is that sussy blob on your CT scan that turns out to be some talking fly played by Jeff Goldblum who invites you out to a naked lunch—nudity optional and confidential.
Like a Ketamine-injected hose (sic), Dr. Burg floods pubs non-stop with his uncut yet polished gems like it’s his job — and does so with perlmuttery excess.
“Medium pays a lot less than medicine, and membership costs more than Canadian healthcare. Also, your vitals look great. Love the colours, Jonah. Dismissed! Go write, laugh, and be healthy.”
- Dr. Michael Burg (Endosatirecronologist)
After that appointment, I utterly perlmuttered my clean bill of health.
Fear and Loathing While Obsessively Checking Medium Stats
DP’s Medium oeuvre underlines—plain as pigment-free prose—that he is just as good at writing as he is at highlighting, perhaps even better.
As someone who has published tens of articles, I used to ruminate on why David has never perlmuttered me.
Am I not worthy or good enough?
Imagine being a Medium writer, putting out what you believe to be quality work, and consistently getting low engagement—flop flop flop.
I mean, is it too much to ask for more clap clap clap for once?
Whose articles do I have to perlmutter to get some love around here?
Fine, I’ll do it to myself, myself.
Since I started back in 2020, publishing on Medium has been both a rewarding and frustrating experience.
Checking Medium stats used to be an obsession of mine, a habit both automatic and sadomasochistic.
The numbers grew less gratifying over the years.
Like a gel pen Hunter S. Thompson left out in the Nevada desert, I’ve felt my confidence explode in glittery fireworks displays many articles over.
My articles are like the cocaine Hunter S. Thompson packed into a lunchbox and left to simmer in the scorching sunlight, getting fewer views than the average desert mirage.
Even if your work exists inside a vacuum, good writing is still good writing.
All other “vanity metrics” are desserts for the ego.
The following is a comment I received from fellow Medium writers Samantha and Alexander that sums this section up nicely:
I envy solipsists.
They must thrive on intrinsic motivation alone.
We should start a club.
Perlmutter Virgin Club
Welcome to Perlmutter Virgin Club.
The first rule of Perlmutter Virgin Club is: you do not talk about Perlmutter Virgin Club—outside of Medium.
The second rule of Perlmutter Virgin Club is: you stop giving a fuck about vanity metrics. You’re the all-reading, all-writing Hi-Liters of this Pencil Box world.
The third rule of Perlmutter Virgin Club is: you write because you love to write. Leave your ego, expectations, and entitlement at the door.
The fourth rule of Perlmutter Virgin Club is: if this is your first time at Perlmutter Virgin Club, you have to highlight.
It’s only after we’ve published anything that we are free to highlight everything.
Writing for engagement and boosts is masturbation.
If you’re game, leave a private note and please refrain from explicitly referring to the club in the comments.
No perlmuttered writers allowed.
I will screen every word of your content to ensure not ONE paragraph has been baptized by Senpai Dave’s mint-flavored pixels.
Sound good?
Mastodon, Facebook, Slack, Discord, or T̶w̶i̶t̶t̶e̶r̶?
Pick your platform.
Writing is our poison passion.
No darlings will be spared.
No letter, number, or oxford comma left un-perlmuttered.
Your worth, merit and skill as a writer are not dependent on the acknowledgement of internet strangers.
Keep doing you—especially if you are the only one on the internet who sees you doing yourself. And subsequently perlmuttering yourself thereafter.
Who left these vandalized tropes and clichés on the Highlighting Room floor? Cutting Room is three doors down, dumbasses.
May every Medium article we publish be ever-glowing, evergreen, and blackout-free.
May our Hi-Liters never run out of ink.
May Senpai Dave notice us some day.
His name is David Perlmutter.
And Senpai Dave has proven to Medium writers everywhere that…
The future is ours to write and highlight.
Now go Perlmutter yourselves.
- Tyler Jergens (Grandmaster Perlmutter Virgin)
What are you waiting for, the end of this article?
