WRITING
What Artificial Engagement Looks Like
The difference is subtle, but profound
When October began, a friend of mine brought me into the loop about Medium’s “artificial engagement” concepts: too much engagement is punished, because it’s not quality engagement. There’s a ceiling on how many comments are considered appropriate. At first, I was outraged.
After all, I pioneered Follower To Follower, a series where I tagged writers I’d come across for other writers to find them. At its height, I was commenting over 200 times a week. Tony’s comment felt targeted straight at me — around this time last year, he showed up in my comments saying pretty much that same thing. Back then, I begged him to reconsider the concept of reaching out to people and meaningfully commenting on many articles to build a tribe on Medium.
Of course my first thought was to fight back. I would write about how wrong he was, and how awful that decision was for writers, readers, and Medium alike. Filled with passion and righteousness, the words would flow from me like rain…
Then I Calmed Down
Sure, all the things I had to say were true and valid. It’s important for Tony (and the whole Medium team) to understand that writers are also readers. Being riveted by a good book…
