Welcome To Medium; Now Get Out
Welcome to Medium, where what little we pay you can be taken away from you.
Welcome to Medium, where all our talk of quality is torn down in favour of “engagement”.
Welcome to Medium, where people you’ve never met before, and never will, decide your value.
Welcome to Medium, where meritocracy means what it does everywhere else; nothing.
Welcome to Medium, where grandfathering rules to help those with use from the start is just not worth it.
Welcome to Medium, where we’ll still benefit from your labour.
Welcome to Medium, where we’re your soft boy ex; it’s different when we fuck you because we’re wearing glasses and pretending to read.
Welcome to Medium, where we market ourselves to those who want to feel superior to creators on Tiktok, Youtube, Twitch (even though we pay worse than them, which is saying something).
Welcome to Medium, where we don’t run ads on content (but you know we’re going to in the future if we’re already pulling this shit).
Welcome to Medium, where we care about you so much we basically put it on you to find 75~ new followers when we literally have the power to promote the hell out of you with a single button; we care, but not that much.
Welcome to Medium, where we incentivise content that’s either way longer than it needs to be or way less in-depth and nuanced than it needs to be.
Welcome to Medium, where the most promoted articles are listicles and pay-walled “must reads” with little substance.
Welcome to Medium, where we’re just like any other website of the 2020s; desperate for attention, even more desperate to find a way to profit from it.
Welcome to Medium, where we’re sitting on a mountain of content, articles, stories, poems, essays, arguments, theories, thesis’, blogs, journals, inner thoughts, and beliefs and we still have to get whatever crumbs we’re offering and gobble them up too.
Welcome to Medium, where we’re no different than anything else. For all our daily posts, all our talk of “community” and “partners” and “creation”, we’re just a business.
Welcome to Medium, where you can complain and we’ll still make money off you and your complaint.
Welcome to Medium, where we’re constantly trying to sell you something; membership so you can read from writers we don’t pay, partnership to write posts that much harder for the plebs to read, creator corners on how you can make us more money and by extension (maybe) yourself.
Welcome to Medium, where you’re everything (the writer, the editor, the proofreader, the agent, the promoter, the social media intern) except the platform so you’re still basically nothing.
Welcome to Medium, where we have the best of both worlds; we’re not a publisher so we have no obligations, but we’re a platform so we have expectations (of you).
Welcome to Medium, the fetishisation of the subscription model where everything, even people’s thoughts, can be, is, and must be constantly rented out to people.
Welcome to Medium, a place full of people wondering why people don’t trust mainstream media or website anymore, yet insists on charging people for every word they read, regardless of the quality or value (both elements we alone decide).
Welcome to Medium, where we pray to God you don’t remember Vocal, Wordpress, and other platforms are a thing, because we wouldn’t make as much money if we weren’t the only game in town.
Welcome to Medium, where we are just one acquisition away from either being the next link in another monopoly, or from swallowing up competitors and starting our own chain, continuing in the beautiful tradition of “fuck you”.
