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Can’t we just connect?
With the change to the Medium pay structure and all the resultant discussion around it, I find myself a little overwhelmed and beginning to question the whole thing. In the end, isn’t it a little like your boss originally saying I’ll pay you per item (claps)and now it’s changed to I’ll pay you for as long as you can stand there and flap your arms and someone will watch (dwell time). I don’t know. The whole thing is starting to feel a little content mill-ish to me — which isn’t totally bad, but I think it misses the point of why people write on an online platform anyway, or why I do.
Medium is nothing without people willing to put their work up. If we all stopped one day, they’d run aground pretty quickly with no new content. But then we, the writers, benefit, too, because you can pretty much post whatever and chances are some eyes are going to see it and, maybe, even connect with it. Just starting your own blog and putting content up isn’t going to garner the same attention for a good while, if ever. And the there’s the possibility of money — wow — even better — in this bloodsucker economy, who doesn’t need a little extra something on the side.
But that’s also where it goes a little awry for me.
