Are You a Crab In a Bucket?
The corrosive mindset now popular on Medium.
Crab Mentality refers to someone undermining anyone they see as more successful than them or showing more significant potential.
If you put a crab in a bucket alone, it will climb out, but if you put a bunch of crabs in a bucket, they will pull back any crab who tries to escape.
This mentality presents itself in all kinds of environments: work, school, sports teams.
And now it’s on Medium. There’s been a wave of hit pieces flooding our feeds. Writers have cynically learned that attacking big-name writers equals clicks.
These writers invariably have smaller audiences than those they are attacking. They are trying to take others down not on merit, but out of jealousy.
Instead of thinking “If I can’t have it, why should they,” maybe just…write better?
