3 ms·

Yeah, I don't understand the appeal. The Medium community is pretty insular. Check out what's popular and it is a very narrow part of society - basically what

Yeah, I don't understand the appeal. The Medium community is pretty insular. Check out what's popular and it is a very narrow part of society - basically what appeals to someone in the Bay Area. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that but why pay money for it? If it couldn't attract a larger audience while being open, this is going to only embed that in-crowd further. And, like you said, in asking people to play money, you are now competing against more diverse free content that is both professional and amateur. The average Medium blog post is already pretty forgettable, there are a lot more quality things to spend money on. I get just as much if not more value from HN or Reddit and don't have to pay a dime. I don't know who's going to pay for this. edit: this is what currently shows up on the frontpage: * An open letter to Jason Chaffetz from someone who attended his town hall * Why did I name it “Dear White People?” * Acquisitions, Mergers, and the Purge * 11 Essential Movies About The Lives of Immigrants and Refugees * Tech and the Fake Market tactic * The Alt-Right Is A Doomsday Cult * This May Be the Most Exhaustive Study of Manspreading Ever Conducted etc That's an incredibly narrow worldview that's only going to turn off people who don't come from it. It's a bunch of political op-eds. You don't have to pay money for that! You can go to any Internet forum and find it.

bshimmin 10y ago
I was feeling masochistic so I read the "manspreading" article (having first googled "manspreading", a term I hadn't heard before and wish I hadn't now). Having read this piece, I think the only viable decision Ev Williams can make is to return all the money to the investors and switch the whole thing off, right now.
- type0 10y ago
  > I was feeling masochistic so I read the "manspreading" I thought it meant some social science term for disproportional migration to other countries by men. I'm not sure if feminists claiming "manspreading" as patriarchal phenomenon are deliberately disingenuous or just plain stupid and uneducated. Being concerned with your reproductive health is a human right, men also have this right (if we would assume that men and women are equal). Spermatogenesis is dependent on male gonads to be about 2 centigrades below the core body temp; too high temperature reduces both quantity and quality of the sperm (that's the whole reason why scrotum is outside the body), I honestly thought even kids knew this. I would say that from scientific perspective I'm much more concerned with "boobspreading" because it solely represents matriarchal oppression of men without serving any physiological function.
  - mjrbrennan 10y ago
    The amount of time, effort, and brain cycles going towards talking about such an irrelevant "issue" as manspreading is mindboggling. It's enough energy to power a small country. That article reads like it was written by an insane person. Everyone takes up extra space on the train either by spreading out, putting their bags beside them, or being obese. You know what a sane person does instead of writing ridiculous articles? "Excuse me can I please sit there?"
Ralfp 10y ago
I've started treating Medium's staff picks as reference of what's US's caviar left is currently about, but I can't really blame them. They go for 'Valleys interests in tech culture and controversy that US academia/progressives are discussing at the moment. Two groups they are targeting and that overlap over each other. I'm still finding interesting read on Medium, just from other authors and subjects.

bshimmin 10y ago

I was feeling masochistic so I read the "manspreading" article (having first googled "manspreading", a term I hadn't heard before and wish I hadn't now). Having read this piece, I think the only viable decision Ev Williams can make is to return all the money to the investors and switch the whole thing off, right now.

type0 10y ago
> I was feeling masochistic so I read the "manspreading" I thought it meant some social science term for disproportional migration to other countries by men. I'm not sure if feminists claiming "manspreading" as patriarchal phenomenon are deliberately disingenuous or just plain stupid and uneducated. Being concerned with your reproductive health is a human right, men also have this right (if we would assume that men and women are equal). Spermatogenesis is dependent on male gonads to be about 2 centigrades below the core body temp; too high temperature reduces both quantity and quality of the sperm (that's the whole reason why scrotum is outside the body), I honestly thought even kids knew this. I would say that from scientific perspective I'm much more concerned with "boobspreading" because it solely represents matriarchal oppression of men without serving any physiological function.
- mjrbrennan 10y ago
  The amount of time, effort, and brain cycles going towards talking about such an irrelevant "issue" as manspreading is mindboggling. It's enough energy to power a small country. That article reads like it was written by an insane person. Everyone takes up extra space on the train either by spreading out, putting their bags beside them, or being obese. You know what a sane person does instead of writing ridiculous articles? "Excuse me can I please sit there?"

Ralfp 10y ago

I've started treating Medium's staff picks as reference of what's US's caviar left is currently about, but I can't really blame them. They go for 'Valleys interests in tech culture and controversy that US academia/progressives are discussing at the moment. Two groups they are targeting and that overlap over each other. I'm still finding interesting read on Medium, just from other authors and subjects.