Medium Is Not An Accepting Community

The problem isn’t the platform — it’s us.

Photo by on

I read an article recently from

Bin Jiang

and it saddened me to tell the truth — the title of his article was:

Nobody is Reading Pass 5-Minutes

This article and its title saddened me for multiple reasons:

1. I Knew It To Be True

I myself have gone from reading some articles close to the 10-minute mark, to now only reading articles that are 4 minutes or less.

2. Self-Censoring Myself

I recognised that I, without thinking about too much, knew this and in some sense started ‘self-censoring’ myself to keep my articles to 4 minutes or less. An article that deserved a 7-minute read time was crammed into a 4-minute read time.

3. Medium Is Just Like Every Other Platform

It proved to me something I had long been thinking about Medium — that it is not much better than other platforms. Sure, you get what you look for and want but what seems to be the case here, like every other platform, is that short, fast, and often, ‘empty’ content seems to get the clicks more…