The Last Goodbye + Sunset
Everything has an end – sometimes it comes before you know it
Finally, I pulled myself together and killed my Medium membership. It was annoying to know that I paid $50 per year for the potential to earn money on my writing, and then I was in reality seeing a profit of 3 cents per article (which I will not even get, because they do not pay out less than $10).
Something has gone completely wrong over there, and where I did have readers from the start, did earn money, then, suddenly, it stopped.
I have told about it before, so I will not go into details with how Medium suddenly decided to stop working for me.
I don’t know if the platform is cheating with the view counts, or if it has stopped distributing my posts to people – or, indeed, if people still see my posts and all of them simply decided to stop reading them, simultaneously.
No mater what is happening, I find it grotesque.
Especially, because Medium promised that all I had to do was write — then they would bring the audience. That should be the main advantage with that platform over other writing platforms, “comes with a built-in audience”.
Have you tried anything like this — on Medium or elsewhere? I would love to hear about it.
It is always hard to say goodbye. Almost 100 articles, 1,000 followers, many, many comments that I have made, claps I have given, and I can see now that it was all made of dust and mirrors, able to vanish by a spell, in a second.
To finish off decently, according to my own thoughts about it, I wrote a general post, telling about the problem and that I was leaving, plus a post for each of the two publications where I have accepted and published other Medium-members’ articles.
The first one is called Sunset, and I’ll put a copy of it here below as well, just because I found it almost too nice for the occasion, especially since it is not being read.
The other two, “Current State of…”, basically tell the same but for each of the publications’ audiences and writers.
I’ll put links to them here, if you should be interested – they are not paywalled.
Current State of Modern Leaders
Current State of Language Talk
Sunset
it was intense while it lasted, but then you turned your shoulder on me
I don’t know what went wrong, really.
At first, I was excited about our relationship and made use of every moment I could escape from other duties to go and see you — write you letters, see your responses and feel your presence.
It was so lively, so immediately rewarding. So meaningful.
When you made it clear to me that you wanted to go further, I was all happiness — “Yes!”, was my immediate reply. Yes, yes, yes! I also wanted to take it further, because, the thing we had going together was so good that more of it only could be even better.
At first, it was merely a declaration. And some costs. Nothing changed, really, only the fact that we expected something to change, which just didn’t happen.
A disappointment, for sure.
Funny, how things can get worse without changing, just for not getting better.
And as I felt how this couldn’t go on, we couldn’t continue feeling sad about things being as good as they always were, I decided to roll back our relationship to what had worked well.
Maybe that was wrong. Maybe I really should have stayed in the sad situation for longer to show how I was dedicated to making it work.
But it happened that way. You then lost interest in me. Completely. I still spent a lot of time with you, but you ignored me. Ghosted me.
I soon began longing for those other duties when I was with you. They were not as cold and distant, they did at least pay me some attention. And then I started staying away for periods, which just made everything worse. You clearly started considering me a non-existence.
One day, I then took my things and moved out. I had found another, but not officially, just on the side. As I was already air to you, it was difficult for me to see how that made you feel, if anything.
However, I got more and more convinced that you and me had nothing left to do together. You didn’t read anything I wrote to you, though I really tried to make it interesting, to make you feel that spark again that I am sure you once felt when I was there.
You have new friends now! Many of them. That could be a reason for forgetting about me. I don’t know if they are more charming, if they write better, have more money, show more gratitude, or whatever it is that makes them more interesting, but you spend a lot of time with them now, and, of course, it makes me happy to see you happy. Somehow.
But as we have no life together, and keeping my toothbrush at your place just feels like a farce, like hoping for something that is completely impossible, I decided to leave for good.
I just now sent you the final letter, giving you back your key. Signing it with a “Leave”, as you requested. Silly, I think, as I was leaving no matter if I would write this or not. But if that makes you happy…
Who knows what the future will bring. I still love you, somehow. Or what you were, perhaps, not so much what you are now. But maybe the old you is still there, somewhere behind that cold facade.
You can always contact me. I’ll leave my new address below. It is all up to you.
Message from the author:
I joined Medium many years ago, however, didn’t start writing on the platform until the beginning of 2023. After about a year of writing and a flirt with a Friends of Medium membership that wasn’t fulfilling, I quit the latter — and found that I was afterwards frozen out of the platform, with no distribution of my posts at all. No readers, an earning of 3 cents per article, if any.
Maybe the freeze had nothing to do with the cancelling of the Friends of Medium membership — maybe it was rather a matter of Medium changing everything to fit into their new, bigger world; with all the new countries that got the possibility to become earners, not just paying members as before. Or maybe it was the platform’s new preference for fake accounts and bots writing and commenting. I don’t know, but the net result for me was that I became air on Medium, nobody reading my posts any more.
So, just a moment ago, I finally pulled the plug and cancelled my Partner Membership.
If anyone by chance sees this post, which doesn’t look very likely, considering the way things have become, it is possible to see me over at my substack, A Rich Life — you are welcome, I’ll serve you a nice cup of tea if you drop in :)
Oh, and who knows: If things again look better some sunny day in the future, I may decide to try again with Medium.
I hear you. Medium is a laughable platform now.
Writers are only using it to repost content and it generates cents on tue dollar because there are no real readers.
I never encountered the true golden age of the platform, but I don't understand who would read articles any more. Members only? The same members who want to write? The ones who can't make sense of the bonkers UI and non-existant feed? Members with no way to interact and message each other?
I cancelled my subscription too. I also can't stand the fake Medium influencers they have Shilling their product.
Substack and other platforms have their issues. There is no silver bullet to getting reads and making money. But there are innumerable advantages to writing here as opposed to Medium.