Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy?
Someone, please explain this Medium . . . to me
The more I read and explore on Medium, the more I feel as though, like Alice, I’ve fallen down a rabbit hole or stepped through the looking glass. And not just because I’ve already encountered the equivalents of the Mad Hatter, the Tweedles, the Cheshire Cat, and the Red Queen.
Naive me, an old print journalist, retired, I created a Medium account and started writing and posting under my own name, assuming that was true of everyone else I was reading.
Now I realize pen names are common enough that you can’t be sure who a writer you’re reading is or where he, she or they is coming from. Even somebody who comments on your posts or commiserates with you may be somebody else entirely and just gaslighting you.
More disconcerting still, writers who may not be who they present themselves to be are largely free to make outrageous, inflammatory statements and sow discord and despair, yet challenging them by name, attempting to do basic investigative journalism, can get a writer flagged for harassment, mocking or doxxing.
I learned that lesson recently when, in good faith and the spirit of public service, I did some poking around in an effort to reconcile the prodigious popularity of a certain…
