Medium Cheaters

The Folk Who Fake Reading Your Stuff to Gain Followers

Illustration for Cheating, Harriadhi, Creative Commons Attribution 2.5, 2007, Wikimedia Commons

I guess I am now joining that not-so-elite club of people on Medium who write about Medium.

I have no grievance, no bone to pick or axe to grind or crow to pluck with the platform, just with some of the new writers.

There seems to be a novel species of would-be Medium contributors responding to our blogs; these people are collectors rather than readers. Or perhaps even writers.

Greedy and Disrespectful

They seek a plethora of immediate followers, without writing more than a single piece or two on the platform. They make haste to be accepted into the Medium Partner Program without putting in the effort to build a following based upon their words. They merely pretend to follow other writers.

We are all happy to have more eyes on the work, more jingle in the pocket, more thoughtful comments requiring our equally thoughtful responses.

But that is not what these new folk are offering. They are playing a sort of tit for tat game, and their comments are actually requests; basically “I’m following you so please follow me.”

When I look at the discussions regarding my work, along with the seasoned, thoughtful, and usually complimentary (though occasionally…