A Click-Bait Experiment, and the Navel-Gazing Problem that Threatens to Ruin Medium
Check out the update to this article here: https://medium.com/@henrywismayer/down-with-the-triumvirate-db9aed77d8b5.
Medium, this wondrous platform for taking thoughts out of your brain and turning them into words, has a problem.
As I write this paragraph, the Top 20 stories on Medium have some common themes. One is about getting dumped, another is about getting hired. Another is about Twitter (of course). Several are headlined with didactic commands of the “Live-this-way-or-your-life-will-be-shit” variety.
By my count, 14 out of 20 of them cover the sort of subjects that have come to monopolize the site’s bandwidth recently: ‘TECH’, ‘LIFE-HACKING’ and ‘ENTREPRENEURSHIP’ (this last being a sort of bastard offspring of the previous two) — let’s call these themes ‘The Medium Triumvirate’.
Because for anyone that hasn’t noticed, Medium has been hijacked. Not by terrorists, though that, while unwelcome, would arguably be more interesting. Instead, it’s been hijacked by life-hack gurus, designers and San Francisco people. And we, the people who don’t subscribe to life-hackery, who don’t work in design, and who don’t live in San Francisco, have had enough!
