Did I Just Invent Something on Medium?

I Had a Lightbulb Moment When I Highlighted My Own Article

Photo by Jakob Rosen on Unsplash

I was rereading an article of mine that’s getting a bit of traction. To be honest, of all the pieces of that I’ve written, which is just over a dozen, I didn’t expect this one to be the one that took off.

As I was perusing my article, I suddenly thought to highlight a phrase and respond to it. My real intent was to add a bit more detail to the selected text. Yes, I could have edited the story itself, but I was quite happy with how the story was in its current published state.

Instead, I added the text as a response. To myself.

I added the text in the response to act like a footnote

Did I just invent a way to footnote my own articles?** Of the millions of articles and writers here, I’m sure someone has highlighted and responded to their own articles. But was their intent to use it as a faux footnote?

Is There a Side Benefit?

When I did this, the article was already published, in full flight, with a fair amount of activity.

Could this be a way to kickstart comments on an otherwise dead comment section? Are users more prone to add their own comments if they see that there are already comments, even if the first comment is just additional text from the author?

On the other hand, I hope this doesn’t become something that gets abused. If anything, use this “trick” very sparingly.

** Probably not. This is a real footnote.