Blocked On Medium: a Mystery?
Yesterday, I found out, by pure chance, that I was blocked from publishing in a publication here that I not just liked, but which also boosted me several times. The editor of the publication blocked me from contacting him or accessing his own Medium page. Imagine my surprise when I opened the pub and suddenly saw myself only as a follower instead on the list of authors as usual. Since I’m an overthinking kind of person who tends to invest more time into people that are not exactly a priority, I couldn’t help but wonder why. As far as my memory served me, there wasn’t anything controversial between the two of us or a severe disagreement that would lead to a conflict. Otherwise it would hardly be a surprise, so I’m at loss how to find out. But if I don’t know you in person or only superficially, I won’t mourn your departure from my friend list too much.
With time, you learn to treat your social life as a train: the road is long, the number of seats is limited but we’re serving cocktails at the piano bar in the dining car. That’s why you’re careful about who gets a seat. Who gets a bunk bed and who gets upgraded into a suite. Most importantly: few passengers stay for the whole ride, others come and leave. Sometimes it’s a disappointment because you either didn’t see it coming or it comes from someone you considered a friend but ignored hints at a change in your relationship. Either I took it for granted or there was a surprising trigger and he showed his true feelings. We have mutual friends but I don’t know if I’ll ever see him again unless I run into him by chance. But ask yourself: how many people are there who’d make the first step call you from those you surround yourself with? Nothing urgent, just a social call for a drink.
There are changes that force us to change or reduce our time with the people who aren’t our immediate family. Yet, we shouldn’t allow them to completely fall beyond our horizon because having that kind of bubble is good for our mental health and provides a respite from the boring daily grind. I meet with a selected group of regulars every weekend at least on Sundays, usually at the same place. Coffee and chocolate-filled croissants with pistachio topping on the table . It’s much more difficult to block me to my face. Maybe it’s lack of courage that prevents people from saying it. But this particular problem has been at the forefront of the social discourse for quite some time now. Hate speech is a plague that’s in direct correlation with the freedom of speech, but this is the example of something else. There are certain news media outlets where people quite openly check in only to read the toxic waste released through their comment section.
This is a social folklore that even Medium isn’t immune to. Does it make you a snowflake if your mood gets ruined by something like this? Does it mean handling real-life problems is beyond your abilities too? Or maybe you’re just too stuck in your head. But that’s better than having your head stuck inside the wrong person’s ass. Everyone’s free to decide who gets to access their content. Especially websites, with rules and codes of conducts. It happened twice that Facebook removed my Medium stories due to alleged violation of rules which were never fully explained. After a complaint, the links were back up but I still don’t know how exactly I managed to insult whoever was in charge of good behavior on Facebook. It seems I’m not the only one either, it happens all the time. I read an article here about blocking and how it protects from reaching out to you or interacting with your content. Most comments came from the opposite angle: people who got blocked like me, without a simple explanation.
Not that I don’t have any professional experience with it either. One time I applied for a school position and didn’t get any feedback after the interview. Not sure if that’s their usual policy but if I had got in, they likely would have let me know. Still, let’s be adults, don’t play me for a fool. The internet has turned into a giant battle royale of opinions, ideas and agendas fighting for space in your mind and cutting away as much of your focus as possible. The world we live in is the living proof of the success of their mission. Does blocking people protect your headspace or just shuts down people who don’t agree with everything you say? There’s no way to know all the time. Maybe due to my calling as a writer, I don’t particularly care for your hatred because that’s what critics are for. Me being one of them, I know how it feels to put someone down when the stuff is really bad. The whole point is to do it with balance and style otherwise it’s just an insult.
Tony Stubblebine’s position in this awkward situation is a bit like that bank clerk who wants to stop your grandma from throwing her money into the wallet of a Nigerian prince but he can’t. The person that gets blocked often doesn’t know why it happened. The snowflake pushes the block button and Medium follows suit with maybe a random question or two but it goes through with it. Where’s the line that divides protection from hate speech and old-fashioned censorship? Can we prevent those who block us from spreading misinformation or character assassination? Worse, it’s really a one-way street because according to others with this experience. You can’t block someone if they did it to you first. Medium should figure out what to do because it creates a very awkward mood, to put it mildly. As he put it, Medium is an attempt of creating a better internet. But when you give people tools to decide for themselves, you have to be able to deal with the consequences. Otherwise, complaints wouldn’t outweigh praises.
There are other publications where I’m still active and which publish my work. It’s one of the best thing about Medium, putting together something that looks as good as a magazine with content that’s always a learning or a relaxing experience. In my own experience, publications related to Rui Alves are most definitely worth your time: Zenite, Beloved, Rock n’ Heavy, etc. Due to the ever more depressing headlines in mainstream media, I find myself increasingly redirecting my attention to a place like this, a multitude of voices and a wide variety of topics that aren’t all about politics. I no longer check my social media first, but have a look here instead. Admittedly, there’s a little kick of dopamine when I see a new subscriber. If you’re not a confrontational person, a sudden expulsion will make you wonder what it is that you did or said. If you are confrontational, you might wonder what it is that the other person did and respond accordingly.
I fall somewhere in the middle. Once I read a rather unflattering review of my book. Let’s not pretend, it did hurt a little, but in the end, the whole point is to increase the outreach. Recently, my publisher emailed me with the idea of a collaboration with a popular tabloid with which they’d ne promoting the book. Maybe I finally found the target audience I didn’t know I needed. People curious about what’s cooking in Meghan Markle’s kitchen might be interested in the food I wrote about. Maybe they’ll give it a try. Recently a woman approached me to say there’s a group of her friends who went through all the recipes in the book and shared it with other people. If things continue that way, I can imagine Meghan and Harry nibbling on mom’s apple cake as well in their beige mansion full of flammable designer blankets. Eat your heart out, Netflix.
Medium can hardly be described as a platform for cancel culture. But locking someone out is a bit like a separation without letting the other person know you moved out but you’ll keep the key in case you change your mind. Of course, that never happens and it’s likely true in the digital realm as well. Once a strange thing happened: someone unfollowed me and threw a donation into my cash can at Ko-Fi later. You might almost say that reality became a mirror of the internet, instead of vice versa. This place is a mouthpiece for many people, some of which were a wonderful discovery. While it’s true Medium isn’t immune against ideological bias, it’s a matter of choice how much you can digest. There’s not nearly enough to make you feel like there’s a brick stuck in your appendix. In the end, there’s really no reason to sweat it: one down, next please.
