Crossing The Line

Medium doesn't have a clue which side they're on

I lied in the last newsletter when I said I’d see you in June. I couldn’t resist dipping into your inbox a little early to tell you that yes indeed, you can write about Medium and get distribution brownie points for it.

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This is one of the most useless newsletters I’ll ever send out but I just had to highlight the lines that Medium will and will not cross.

First, I’ve achieved the impossible.

For the entire two-plus years I’ve been writing on Medium I was under the impression that they will not curate and distribute articles about Medium. In fact, it is the number one point under “disqualified articles” in Medium’s guidelines.

Well….I did it, although I don’t know how. This entire article is about Medium and stats and publications, yet it was chosen for further distribution.

Do you suppose it’s because I was basically giving Medium an ego stroke? Or maybe it’s because they realized I have three different profiles and they’re making triple the money off me.

But then we have my very next story, published a few days later. FACT: Medium doesn’t seem to like dark humor, or shall we say macabre, as one reader remarked in the comments of this story.

Did You Know You Can Turn Your Loved One Into a Paperweight?

Come on now, admit it. The title is gold and each of you secretly has a family member you’d like to turn into a paperweight. If I stumbled onto that title I’d click just to read the comments which are also gold. But again, in Medium’s disqualification guidelines, trivializing death is frowned upon.

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So, you just never know with Medium

Do they or don’t they? Will they or won’t they? I guess we’d have to ask the same guys that decided who got the $500.00 bonus.

Okay, see you in June. I promise.