Fuck Medium. I mean, Fuck Them
Clickbaitorama!!!
Ha, ha,ha. You clicked! Are you here for the rant against Medium or to investigate the drowning ass above? Welcome to my spider trap. No, don’t worry, I’m really going to rant about Medium, but what were you thinking?
That upsplash photo is something, right? I promise that it’s not a gratuitous sexy photo whose sole purpose is to trick you into clicking. That, my friend, is a metaphor. Met-a-phor. I am that ass, barely keeping my head above water here on Medium. I’m sinking.
What do you mean “that’s not a metaphor”? Sure it is, and, furthermore, when you click on a post entitled “Fuck Medium” you shouldn’t expect intellectual precision.
Let me start by saying, “I love Medium”. I spend most of my time here. I found another sexy picture of a young woman that illustrates my overall comportment with regard to Medium.
I am that woman on the undersized carousel horse. I want to be on the big horse. The big horse on Medium is the tag “Top Writer in Mayonnaise”. I’m not that.
Now, don’t tell me that the little horse is “just as good” as a big horse. I spent my summers in Watch Hill, Rhode Island as a kid. I am a beast on a flying carousel, and my older brother and cousins told me for years that the little horses on the inside were “just as good” when clearly they were not. I’ve been on the big horse… not here on Medium… I’ve caught the brass ring… again, not here on Medium… but… oh, I forgot what I was saying.
Before I go on, I have to ask, what is the background of the first photo, the one shot in Buenos Aires? Did someone set up a carousel in a warehouse? What the fuck? I can’t help but be worried for that young woman. Did she agree to a photo shoot where a guy had set up a carousel in a warehouse? Can you imagine? I want you to play the carousel music in your head and then say out loud the photographer’s next direction to her. For me, that’s something along the lines of ; “Squeeze the horse tighter with your legs and make love to the camera”. What? That’s just me? The direction in your head was, “fix your hair”??? Well, maybe we will agree on our complaints about Medium.
Complaining About Medium
I love to complain about Medium. I’ve done it lots of times before. I won’t link back to any of the previous complaints because complaints go bad faster than fish. I also love to read negative posts about Medium. I’m not sure why, but I do. I’m aware that my love for this genre is due to the fact that I am rotting from the inside. I’m a negative person and I love to complain. Recently, I read Tom Mitchell’s article on Westworld.
In which he says:
Years ago, when people didn’t like a thing — a film, album, book — they didn’t feel the compulsion to announce that the thing was the worst thing ever.
I take that line of thinking to heart. I could do better… but not today.
I’m know that Medium is growing, and will concede that maybe it is working better for people. People in general. Not me, and, in case you were unaware, you’re reading my blog. By clicking on this article you pulled the handle on the slot machine of Gutbloom blogging. You’ll be happy to know that you hit the “ME, ME, ME” jackpot!
Why Am I Unhappy
My main complaint is that Medium is focused on gaining readers when I think it should pay more attention to maintaining its #1 status as the best place to write on the Internet.
What threatens the buzz is that somehow, and I don’t really understand how, it is getting harder to see the the writing of the folks I know and like to read. I use the “From Your Network” silo and then click on “People”. I don’t understand the particulars of it, but that system is wonky. I miss a lot of stories I would like to read. Worse, the people I like are writing less and less, and I’m finding it harder to find new people to replace them. The community buzz is diminishing. That’s a drag.
What I Want
I’m already boring myself, so I’ll cut to the quick (like the beautiful young woman above cutting bread) and tell you what I want.
But first, let me explain that I write as a hobby. I see myself as the artistic equivalent of the old people painting watercolors of birch trees and showing them at the local civic center. I am the 30 year-old woman who pays $500 a year to belong to a “dance company” that puts on two recitals a year and loves it. I’m the guy who works at a bank and each December plays Jacob Marley’s ghost in the local production of “A Christmas Carol.” Writing here, as far as I’m concerned, beats the shit out of driving two hours to play trombone in a parade with my volunteer marching band.
Here is what I want.
Gutbloom’s Listicle of Medium Wanting
- I want to be able to gift subscriptions to other people. I have two readers in other countries and until I can give them access to my Partner Program stories, I won’t put anything behind the paywall. Livejournal did this from the beginning. You could gift a membership to someone else. It worked great. The practice of giving subscriptions was widespread, though I’ll concede a year’s membership to Livejournal was cheaper than Medium.
- I want in-app purchases. I would like to be able to buy features that are not given to trolls and spammers using sock-puppet accounts unless they put up some cash. Give me my custom profile page for $10. Allow me to control ONE of three chumboxes at the bottom of my story for some amount of money. Add a subscription to a photo site or grammar editor that is integrated with Medium for a reasonable fee.
- I want gameification. Specifically, I want to see n00b protection, the ability to form clans and cabals, and ranking stats for the entire Medium universe. It won’t bother me when I find out that I am rank twenty millionth in reads. My goal will then be to break into the ten million club.
- I want people to post more nude pictures of themselves.
- I want to be able to put links to my friends on my profile page. Just like in gaming, where there are all kinds of completionists, critics, curators, and unboxers, there is no way to “go meta” on Medium. If you let people create pages of curation, or allowed curation on profile pages, you would see a proliferation of people essentially mining the content of Medium for their own advancement. The problem with publications is that the writer GIVES SOMETHING UP when they have their work included in a publication. While we can passively link to other people’s work, as with Tom’s article above, any story with such links gets quickly lost. There is no stickiness to it.
- I want better comments. I would like Medium to buy the Kinja comment system and put it on Medium. While that’s probably impossible, let me say this: Fark and Digg worked better. It’s 2018. How come you can’t have a conversation in the comments on Medium? You know what? Sometimes the funniest comment is two words long. Again, check out the comments at Deadspin. How great would be to have that system here?
- I want to see my own stories in “From My Network”. Say what you will about my vanity, but the fact that I never see my own stories in any feed is a fucking drag.
The End
I am still a devoted fanboi of Medium. Not only do I love the platform and the writers here, but I am also a believer in the idea that Ev can develop a way to distribute information and literature that is not supported by advertisement.
One of the things I like about Medium is that I can complain about Medium on Medium. I’m serious! This is fun for me.
