WRITING
Keep Going Or Jump Off
Artificial intelligence is coming down the Medium rails
Medium, in its April 12, 2024, weekly newsletter, announced that it had passed the one million member mark. Congratulations, Medium, you‘ve made it! But as big a deal as that milestone is, it’s made me consider whether it’s time to end my own membership.
I joined Medium a couple of years ago looking for it to be a motivator. I’d been putting off getting serious about writing, and I expected Medium would poke a stick into my vacillation and spur me into actually doing it. And so it happened. I started contributing and eventually worked myself into a routine. However, I’m not one of those achievers who can pump out two or three articles a week. In fact, I’m a relatively underachieving member who makes it into print about twice a month on average.
I never got caught up in the rah-rah, go team spirit that Medium admins hype. Or in the make money with more followers and more claps. No one of my pieces ever performed well enough by those standards. But the reactions I did have to pieces that clicked, I truly appreciated and gained from.
But the truth is that I’m not going to be a success story, a “Medium poster boy.” And that’s for a couple of reasons. First, I don’t write with success in mind.
I write to leave a record for those who might be curious after I’m gone, those who might want to know something more about who I was. It’s kind of like leaving crumbs along the road. I know if my friends and relatives were like me, they would not have asked for details and musings directly from the source while I was alive. Their curiosity will be piqued after I’m gone. I did that with my parents and grandparents and after letting many friendships wither.
But I learned early on the lesson of Ozymandias that posterity won’t give a good goddamn for any of my writings. It’ll all be lost under the desert dunes some few years after I depart. I have no unrealistic illusions about leaving a lasting record, and, in a way, I’m actually relieved. I don’t want to think that anything I wrote will be subject to misinterpretation or hate speech later. If it’s forgotten, I’ll be saved the indignation of spoiling my heavenly reward by ghosting my naysayers. I don’t think you’re entitled to say “What the fuck?” from your heavenly abode.
Okay, okay! Truth be told, I don’t believe in heaven, and I don’t believe in ghosts. I’m still a little undecided, though, on the question of reincarnation. I did a Buddhist embedding for a few years and took the possibility seriously for a while. The idea is that how you come back is a matter of the accumulated karma you’ve racked up in your past and present lives. It’s not a given that you’ll come back as a human again. You’ve got to play your cards right this go-round.
So if there is the possibility that I’ll come back as a human again and, in addition, that I have some recollection of having been a writer previously, I might want to know if any of that writing is still around and see who’s bad-mouthed it or praised it. But, see, here’s the thing. If I do that, I’ll be screwing up my future karma because of the desire. Wanting stuff, including ego stuff, is a Buddhist no-no.
So it’s better to anticipate and forestall that possibility by not worrying about the fame and fortune during this bout. This, by the way, is not intended as an indictment of those who do want fame and fortune. If those wants are stepping stones on some righteous path, including keeping yourself alive, then absolutely go for it. My righteous path doesn’t need either, though.
Now, for the second reason, I’m thinking of leaving Medium. It’s become overwhelming. It seems increasingly to be warping my motivation, as I explained above.
I write to keep the hounds at bay during my retirement years. For me, these hounds feed on complacency, the feeling that self-indulgence is the reward of retirement. When I was working, engagement was a given. Work presented constant opportunities to connect, learn, and contribute. None of that, of course, came without a dollop of stress, which was occasionally more of an avalanche. I’ve still got the high blood pressure and a damaged heart as remembrances of those ill effects. But so be it. The benefits to my brain health outweighed the detrimental effects on the heart.
Writing as a retiree is the right thing for me to do to keep the brain humming and provide exercise to avoid creakiness. It’s a lubricant of a sort. For sure, writing isn’t the only thing that can keep the mind healthy, but it was always something I had thought I could and should do. I’d be disappointed on my deathbed to realize that I had left it untried.
But since hooking up with Medium and taking it on as an online Calliope, the writer’s Muse, I’m finding that the energy to keep up with a million (!!!) other writers is daunting. I don’t think I’m wrong to say that the expansion of writers also implies a growth of readers. But no reader can engage with a million writers. We’re back then to the same formula for attracting readers — claps and followers — and the means to get both, that being writing full-time.
Fortunately, the reading part of Medium is still appealing, if you can get tapped into the right publications and not find out that you’ve been praising or panning the creations of a bot. It’s offensive to think you’ve become invested in the “bot’s career.” Bots don’t care what you think. They don’t even care what they “think”, lacking consciousness as they do.
But now the reality of today’s huge advances in computing means that a good many of those million writers and readers are going to be AI bots, prodded into existence by actual people who want to use my writing, not for edification and enlightenment, but for personal profit. And the bots are increasingly trying to scam me into collaborating with the deceit. They follow me, they highlight me, they even comment. They invite me to follow them. They falsely claim to be people who I do legitimately follow.
I know Medium admins have said they’re trying to increase their oversight of this problem, but I’m inclined to think the bots are going to win out.
So, is the bot issue reason enough to leave Medium? Not sure, though it’s reason enough to think about doing so. What might be better?
I’m thinking smaller might be better. Something more in the line of a writers’ collective, safe from bots, where each member knows enough personal details of each other’s lives, motivations, and emotional realities that they see each other as potential friends. But that sounds too much like social media, in which I have no interest at all. Or faith, either, since the bots and self-promoters are there too.
Until I do get this figured out, I’ll probably continue to hang in there, focusing on just a few publications at a time, reading and commenting more than writing thousand-plus word pieces. Maybe stop actively exploring so much and rely instead on the voices I’ve come to trust to inform me about what I’m missing out on. Oh, yes, and build up my AI sixth sense.
