I'm a start transferring work from Medium

So you'll be seeing some older works here. 
Whatever Medium is, it's not a place for me anymore. Damn shame, that. I mean I still get more views there than here, but given that they have odd spikes (they cannot explain) and other shenanigans I'm moving away from it all. 

I think the way it worked, as a proper blogging platform that was easy to use was also interesting. But the moment it shifted to becoming something that needed to make money, it just immediately worsened. 
And note that they went to a paywall instead of advertising. So this should have worked on some level. 
But it didn't. 
I mean, I was all caught up in their hype and hoped to get paid (so this is partially a blog post about sour grapes), but man I did not expect them to change so much. [1] They even claimed to have editors who would pick the best stories. But no one told us what those metrics were. We were just to assume it would be "good" stuff not clickbait. 
And still clickbait or worse got picked and shoved into the front. Seriously. There would be ten straight stories on "blockchain" then on some other topic du jour. No real insight, just cleaver headlines followed by tripe. But over and over.
So people you followed were harder to find. 
Conversations were dwindling and worthless.
And I already mentioned the odd stats which told me that they were juicing them in some fashion. 
Oh, and the diversity, of course, dropped. It became 90+% all white and for no real reason other than this is what they thought was good.
But, OFC, it wasn't good.
Then they said no more to poetry and fiction.
As far as my own writing, it seemed to me that if I wrote an deep thoughtful piece or travel essay, I would get 1 (yes 1) view. If I spat out some unthinking piece of tripe (Quitting Facebook!) then I would see some real numbers. 
If ever there were a need to show how the move to purely monetizing "thoughts" etc were a vile force, this medium experience has shown it to me (or that techies are just the opposite of Midas).
But, you might say, Nelson, this is why you're not rich. You can't think "write the truth", but think how will you shill for those with power and $$... right?
Maybe.
But I'm off it and will be transferring my work here and maybe elsewhere. Stay tuned.



[1] And as I'm writing this on a Google platform that will possibly do something worse to a platform, I'm aware of coming across as naive or foolish.
 
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Published on June 11, 2019 13:53
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