The Shrinking of Medium
I agree with you, Vico, that Medium’s topics are a huge mess. And I am frustrated that Medium is turning into a magazine exclusively for people under the age of 35 who live in San Francisco.
If you saw the photograph of the Medium Staff that was posted some time last year you’ll notice that there is not one single solitary gray hair among the entire staff. It appears the entire staff is under the age of 35. And they live and work in San Francisco. It is no wonder that they feature articles that appeal personally to them. It is no wonder that Medium is turning into a magazine about San Francisco culture.
I truly wish the Medium Staff represented a wider swath of humankind. I wish they would discover that there really is a world outside of San Francisco and that people over the age of 35 are not all stupid and irrelevant. But as long as the Medium Staff remains cloistered in their San Francisco bubble this is not likely to happen. As long as they stay laser-focused on only one demographic (under 35 San Franciscans) they will continue to be a San Francisco social magazine.
The other day I scrolled on my home page feed down 100 articles. Out of those 100 articles there was only one poem and there was not ONE SINGLE SOLITARY WORK OF FICTION! Not one! This is not new. Medium has always had a red-hot burning hatred of fiction. (And this is why there still is no fiction category.) Apparently people under the age of 35 who live in San Francisco don’t care for fiction so those people who live outside of San Francisco (in the big wide world out there) who do like fiction can just go suck an egg.
The San Francisco snobbery that has come to permeate Medium is starting to get rather annoying. And the home page feed has become more of a joke than it has ever been. Medium is in a state of contraction. Instead of being a reading and writing platform open to all people of the world — people of all ages and interests — it is becoming yet another mainstream magazine with a very narrow focus featuring a very small selection of San Francisco appropriate authors and mainstream publications. In my opinion Medium is headed in the wrong direction. No doubt Ev Williams would probably disagree with me.
