Trespassing Medium: Behind the Rope
In a new, elaborate and slightly celebratory announcement, Medium’s own Buster Benson announced quite a few changes of everyone’s favourite writing platform coming our way which are primarily aimed at “incentivizing high quality human writing”. It’s high time for improvements indeed, especially certain fields bordering on spam, like countless get-rich-quick articles. Or advice on audience development and outreach, as if it was a universal solution. Daily news with all its depressing peculiarities gives you anxiety and incentivizes suicidal tendencies.
On the contrary, Medium puts you in a different position with focus on our shared experiences and that dreaded human condition. Occasionally it helps me laugh at myself or with others whose wits provide relief from the boring predictability of everyday life. Prioritising quality instead of quantity is good news. Quite a few fundamental elements of Medium are affected by this, like that follower number benchmark replaced by the prerequisite of Medium membership. There’s a special cherry on top of that cake: they’re opening their fabled velvet rope for 12 members of their exclusive country club. Within this community, it’s an answered prayer.
It means someone up there finally heard what members were telling them all the time: due to the structure of it, you can clearly see the outline of their target audience. In slightly exaggerated terms, it reads like the invitation list to the coronation of King Charles. This distasteful approach looks like digital neo-colonialism. It means they’ll easily charge you for membership but it would be too much to ask them to treat you equally like your first-world peers. It’s not your fault, geography’s a bitch so keep writing into thin air: that’s all you’re getting here. Among the new members are countries like Lichtenstein and Malta. My own hometown’s population is at least three times bigger than Lichtenstein’s and our capital has almost as many inhabitants as the entire population of Malta. Winners of Oscars and the Nobel Prize for literature call this country their home. And yet.
I’ve already adressed the issue before and I will again because while we’re slowly reaching to Mars as a species, there still are countries in the midst of Europe on the fringe of the digital galaxy. Those complaining about the original list should be aware of one thing: there are two kinds of Europe. The cool kids are culturally and politically influential countries like Germany, UK, France. then there are those that look like eternal summer on Instagram: Spain, Portugal, Italy or Greece. After the fall of Communism and the dissolution of Yugoslavia, more countries joined the table yet not quite in the same way. The new kids on the block brought a baggage of corruption and flamboyant nationalism. Since the EU soup wasn’t stirred properly from the onset, it was bound to be a bumpy ride.
If Europe were the Titanic (into which the EU seems to be turning into), that would be the lower deck crowd. Those that grew synonymous with illegal immigration, criminal and prostitution. For example, you’ll often find Moldova topping the charts of poverty or worst human rights reports. In 2021, the ECHR recognized 69 violations of the European Convention of Human Rights in the country. It means that the only place where Moldova still looks great is Eurovision. At the helm of Belarus is Putin’s chum Lukashenko and Hungary has turned into something I call a democratorship. Pretty in pink with very dark undertones.
It’s easier to smuggle someone through the immigration corridors of the EU than land in the Medium Partnership program if your postal code doesn’t match their criteria. Former Yugoslavia is still being discriminated against: the only two new members are Croatia and Slovenia, which happen to be in the Schengen zone. Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro and North Macedonia are still in Tony Stubblebine’s waiting room. As a writer from the region, let me assure you their partner program is missing out on a whole lot of gifted and acclaimed writers. Even if through some divine intervention his golden gate would open for us, too few are aware of the platform’s benefits or existence in the first place.
Chains like KFC, Burger King and McDonalds don’t behave as if we weren’t good enough for them. In fact, some are already here and since you can’t eat the articles on Medium, people would prefer a burger and a supersize soda anyway. It’s not as good for you as a new piece of wisdom from Robin Wilding, but even a mind like hers needs food to thrive. But if she ever does show up, there are much better places to eat and drink yourself to oblivion. Paying members banned from the partnership program feel like asylum seekers in a country that provides shelter but not a job with which to maintain oneself. You’re one step above a beggar, one step beneath a citizen. That’s an equation you’re bound to lose and Benson knows it.
They’ve announced further expansion by the end of the year but I’m not optimistic. You get slowly sick of being that place which is permanently out of delivery reach for some good stuff easily available to people that happen to live in countries that matter. My country has many problems but we don’t exist in a vacuum and we’re actually on the map if you know how to use it properly. Right there bordering one of the newbies. Edging might be a new thing in masturbation but it’s a continuous historic experience for us: always on the fringes of something bigger and conceptually good, yet never quite there, never fully embraced. Always the busboy, hardly a guest. It’s a genuine mood killer and I’ve had enough. The leash is too short.
It’s not really a matter of staying or leaving. If I were to leave tomorrow, the country still stays here. Too big for my cabin-size luggage. Were I able to choose though, I’d pack up the two rivers that I spend my childhood on, their color and sound, in waterproof package. Or a leaf from the tree standing next to my mother’s grave. No amount of money is big enough for that. The little petty cash people earn here on average even less so. Fortuanately, some things in life aren’t strictly a matter of income but of habit and need. That’s writing for me. A necessary form of expression and the wave I’ve been riding for as long as I can remember. One thing is sure: it’s unlikely to stop so be prepared for much more of me.
There are probably a few people here that won’t mind having me hang around here. Elsewhere in the analog world too: yesterday, a little girl arrived that’ll be calling me her uncle. Her hair is dark and scruffy, her onesie is pink and cute. A perfect blank slate shocking in its purity and touching in its innocent beauty. Uncle duties have their advantages: you get all the playtime and more often than not, less of the screaming and crying. Now that’s a club that I’ll always be welcome in. How about Medium? Who cares? I have no idea but I won’t let that stop me. Keep typing away guys, it’s a craft that requires nurture. Like that little girl that opened her eyes yesterday, for the first time. Hopefully the light ignited in them will never cease burning. She’ll always be able to rely on my helping hand.
Let’s see if by the end of the year, Benson will live up to his prediction. If you’re all about inclusion, listen those that pay you and don’t be so fucking exclusive. There’s many more that deserve access to your piggy bank. If I recall correctly, United Arab Emirates are known for many things, but overall poverty isn’t one of them. The average freelance writer in the waiting line in front of your entrance can’t afford too much decadence with his income. Let him at least keep his face and his dignity. Falling back on escorting is out of the question when a gym membership is too expensive to make your money maker look like it’s making more money than your writing. But what the hell, hurdles are there to be overcome.
