Clapped Out
Why Medium’s Clapping System is an Anxiety-Inducing Mess
One of the biggest surprises as a newcomer to Medium is the culture around clapping. Rather than a simple ‘Like’ button that serves as an at-a-glance guide to the popularity of, or engagement with, a post on other social networks, clapping is an etiquette minefield.
While perhaps an example of the law of unintended consequences, the clap system is such that some writers see the amount of applause they receive as a definitive score, as though the reader is reviewing an album or computer game or a book.
‘Overall, it’s a solid body of work, but the author’s long-term fans will much prefer their earlier articles. 30 claps out of 50.’
I’ve seen writers agonise about people having the gall to leave their posts a handful of claps. Others take a single ripple as a passive-aggressive insult.
As someone just dipping his toe into Medium’s waters, claps seem ludicrous.
A Like, a Heart, a Thumbs-up. They all make sense. A single token of appreciation, agreement, or empathy. Okay, they all struggle with nuance, but we understand that. Claps contort and dilute this approach into an even more flawed metric. Receiving fifty claps should be a rapturous standing ovation at the end of a third encore, but if a user leaves that amount for every article they’ve enjoyed, it devalues the entire process.
The problem doesn’t lie with those exercising their index fingers, nor those with their own elaborate methods for calculating the number of claps doled out. It especially isn’t down to people fretting about their clap rate. It’s Medium’s arcane system that implicitly encourages such behaviours.
It’s a shame to read about writers feeling slighted when another user leaves them fewer than a full bucket of fifty claps. There are so many explanations for not doing so that trying to divine intent is futile. I left plenty of single claps before a reader left ten on one of my own posts — I had no idea you could leave more.
Now, I tend to round up to the nearest zero, like leaving a tip, and it’s always meant as a compliment rather than ‘It was fine, I guess.’
Would any other system reduce this angst?
Instagram anxiety is a well-known phenomenon. The serotonin hit from likes and (positive) comments is addictive. But flipping the question around, how much worse would it be if you could bombard influencers with fifty hearts instead of one? At least you know where you stand when you take multiples out of the equation.
Maybe part of the concern is because claps play a part in how Medium pays its community. Algorithms are always opaque, and rightly so. I’m an SEO, and you could boil my job description down to ‘Deciphering Google’s algorithm to help your website rank better.’ It’s an unsubtle, reductive take, but true.
How Medium divides each member’s $5 isn’t known. Clapping plays a part in it, but so does reading time, and no doubt a host of other engagement signals we aren’t privy to. Instead of being selective, mass applause just thins out the slice of an already meagre pie your favourite contributors receive.
Let’s try an experiment to break the cycle. Whether you’d usually leave fifty claps or ten on an article, just leave one on this piece.
You can do it. I promise not to be offended.
