The trichotomy of T-W-O polarized opinions of ‘to follow’ or ‘not to follow’?

The T-W-O sides of the same story. Wait. Is there a third one?

Kartik Vishwanathan
New Writers Welcome
7 min readDec 31, 2021

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Photo by Charles Deluvio on Unsplash

I am sure many of you would have landed here to find some help in decision making related to the current hot debate on Medium of ‘to follow back’ or ‘not follow back’, some out of curiosity to see a new PoV and some with the hope that this article has something new to offer other than the same old topic. The good news is I have tried to put something to cater to all, hopefully, each one of you has something to take away and to reflect upon by the end of completing this read.

When you say you have a choice to make between TWO options, you are dealing with 3. We tend to ignore the situation we already are in, which may necessarily not belong to the choices we have to make. Let me explain in detail, there is a World of ‘To’ and there is a World of ‘Oppose’ amongst which you must make your choice. Each on most occasions is very opinionated about their thoughts. Sometimes the opinions also translate to intolerance towards thoughts of the other side. But the word TWO itself has 3 letters which I guess is for a reason. So, in the word T-W-O, if T stands for ‘To’ and O stands for ‘Oppose’, what possibly does the ‘W’ in between stand for? It is the whole world that ‘Waver’(s). That’s the trichotomy of the world of TWO. There are 3 states or evolution steps of ‘Waver’ -

a. the uninformed or less informed,

b. the informed but undecided and

c. the ones who just prefer to stay in that state selectively agreeing or disagreeing with T and O on a case-to-case basis.

Whichever the case, the Waverers serve as the key target audience for the 2 poles of T and O to lure with their thoughts and ideology. This population determines which part between ’T’ & ‘O’ has the majority.

There is a swing that happens between ’T’ & ‘O’ too for many reasons which can range from things termed as a change in principles, gains, peer pressure, fame, etc. but that must pass through the ‘W’ phase i.e., a T moves to W and then to O and vice versa. The period spent in W in such cases can range from hours to years depending on the motive.

The application of the concept of T-W-O is universal in many ways. Can be applied to politics, media, sports, decision making in general at work or in life. If it is so universal, let’s try to test it in the case of the current hot topic of debate on Medium — ‘To Follow back’ or ‘Not to Follow back’. So, what’s this topic about? In August 2021, Medium announced a change to its Partner Program Policy with a requirement of a minimum of 100 followers to qualify for it. So, people without 100 followers by end of 2021 would not qualify for the Medium Partner Program to make an income from their writing. As per my understanding other than the monetary aspect, this doesn’t change or restrict writers on any other front. What happened since then was an explosion of articles erupted. Many writers tried to reach out to each other requesting a follow back. Many also write articles from innovative ones to blatant requests for people to follow them, committing to follow back in return. So, what is the T-W-O for the mentioned situation

T (To) — People who see merit in the ‘You follow me — I follow you’ approach

Their argument is what’s the harm in doing so if people mutually agree to follow each other. It is just building an environment of positive bonding and help for a helping culture. It got people out of their comfort zone to reach out to others. Owing to these articles posted by people in need of followers it has become easy to reach out to them or maybe you post one to get them to reach out to you.

O (Oppose) — People who strongly oppose the ‘You follow me — I follow you’ approach

Their argument is it is a big distraction from the core purpose of why we are on the Medium Platform. An organic way to build followers through your differentiated writing skills is the best way to get a follower base. Getting followers from this inorganic ‘You follow me — I follow you’ approach is demeaning the efforts of genuine writers. It has created unnecessary clutter and clogs on Medium which is neither ethical nor inspiring. It also makes it difficult to differentiate 100 quality followers a writer has built over several months or years of quality writing and maybe more precious than a 1000 follower base of someone who built most of it on the ‘You follow me — I follow you’ approach.

W (Waver) — People who have a choice to make the choice in this situation

People starting new (the uninformed/ less informed), existing writers on Medium who are grappling if they should go for it or not (informed but undecided) and people who are trying to pick the best of both worlds (selectively agreeing or disagreeing on a case-to-case basis) form this group. While the first 2 sets may have their reasons to be there, looking from the lens of the 3rd set of selective agreeing/disagreeing here are some perspectives (most from my experience):

The Pros and Cons of ‘To’ follow back approach,

Pros — It has genuinely built an environment of camaraderie within the structure and framework provided by Medium, hence calling it unethical is more of an individual’s view rather than a fact. Rather than starting from ground zero, not knowing how the Medium algorithm works this would hopefully get the articles written to the followers at least once, from there the article need to hold merit to click with its audience which is undoubted. People optimistic about their writing skills have also given a character of theirs to these follow back articles, now isn’t that brilliance of thinking and application of it

Cons — Easy gain of followers has taken away the seriousness of people investing time in writing and rather treating this as a game. In helping each other many have discounted the fact that the person following you may not have written any stories or even a Bio of theirs for that matter. Why do we need to commit to following these people who aren’t even serious about writing and what would they do with these followers if they haven’t written even a single article? Another issue I have personally come across is a concern of ethics. People claim to unconditionally follow each of their followers in articles for following them, but actually don’t do it or unfollow later which I assume is to maintain a healthy follower—following ratio. It is easy to identify such people. People who write articles to follow back but have a much lower number of people who they follow versus whom they are following.

Claim to follow but do not follow their followers (Source-Medium)
Followers even without a Bio or stories (Source — Medium)

The Pros and Cons of ‘Oppose’ follow back approach

Pros — These are writers who believe in the core purpose of the existence of such medium to express and are hopeful to see the merit of efforts put behind good articles to eventually succeed over such fancy inorganic way of follower building. The people who stay true to this philosophy do not tend to stray away due to these distractions. They have a hard-earned base of followers who most likely follow them for their writing. This is the kind of loyal followers each one of us would aim to build for ourselves.

Cons — Some Opposers choose to show dissent to follow back approach with clickbait titles around it. Aren’t they too trying to get attention using the topic? Are they against it or for it? Doesn’t this approach qualify as opportunism? If they are against it why not stay completely away from it focusing on the core ethos that they talk about in their articles.

Who suggest not to follow but are in a way trying to capitalize on the topic (Source — Medium)

So which side is it good to be on? This answer is never simple. We all eventually align in the part of T-W-O basis our perspectives in Life. The existence of trichotomy is essential for a system. It gives options to individuals; hence it is unfair to say any aspect of this is completely correct or wrong. What isn’t healthy though is the manipulation. If you chose a stance, stand by it with pride, ethics, without demeaning others’ views and acknowledge when you are proven incorrect. Apply the goodness in whichever of the 3 parts of T-W-O you choose to be in irrespective of whether it is Medium, work or life in general.

Happy writing, keep inspiring.

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Kartik Vishwanathan
Kartik Vishwanathan

Written by Kartik Vishwanathan

I live in Shanghai, China, work in the business of media & communication. Life teaches us every moment, I try to capture some of those in my writings.

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