More Failed Methods to Gain Readership on Medium, But Don't Worry, It is not Just Medium but all Paid Social Journalism Sites
Send poems to people you think might like them.
Because it makes a lot more sense than sending them to other kinds of people.
How I sorta cheated my way to more (a lot more, 2.3K) followers.
I did it by following others, sometimes up to the max of 150 per day. And some of them fol’d me back. I could unfollow a bunch and they’d never know, thus making “my following” and “followed-by” #’s more equal, but nah...too much trouble.
How to Win Over a Huge Online Following
I’ve had about 25 or so visitors and far fewer readers the last few days, so let’s try this...
I have no idea, obviously, how to win over a huge online audience. Perhaps great graphics, eye catching, super-sexy shit might help.
Perhaps pithy, angry raging attacks on a much disliked POTUS, combined with nasty mock pics of the guy...I hate him, you hate him, we ALL hate him, #VOTEBLUE or don’t follow me.
Perhaps deeply sentimental and or inspirational tips on living and life (especially listed in bullet point order):
- like this
- telling you stuff
- you already know
Perhaps just confusing graphics/memes of mysterious origin and conceptual intent?
Perhaps somehow grabbing the attention of a curator and flattering them or threatening them or...I don’t know, or you’d already be following me on the home page every day, a part of my HUGE Medium following.
How to Win Over a HUGE Medium Following?
I have no fuckin’ idea. . . but I wouldn’t advise insulting Islam...
FUCK (fuck)
Surprise, this ain’t about sex
A couple days ago, I posted a piece titled FUCK Medium, b/c I was annoyed and frustrated with aspects of Medium and the apparent impossibility of figuring out how to make it work better, (you know get more followers more viewings and readings and fans and make a little more $).
My FUCK Medium story had a huge day and looked like it was going massively Viral. Yay me, Yay Medium.
I even wrote a piece about the piece and the overwhelming interest and support it had generated in just 24 hrs or so, in another posting Lovers and Haters.
Although I had literally scores of sympathetic responses, the only counsel I got that seemed to have practical applications was a one word note by pardner, Christine Stevens also, the boss at The Haven where we edit Haven on alternating days. She typed up her secret to success on Medium, although she sometimes makes me wait for her latest pieces, and I think, “Come on baby, give it to me, come on, I want it bad.” Words that should have held insight for me but ones she’s heard many times, but probably not in how I mean them.
She simply said “sex.”
But then Christine looks like this (maybe, I’ve never actually seen her in RL):
Goddess, Boss and Chief of Chiefs Christine Stevens
Whereas, I look like this:
Author’s Self-Portrait (wearing T-shirt of last big Lit. festival to which I was unceremoniously uninvited.
She says she wants me to write new though. Yeah, okay. Here you go.
How much Viagra is required to raise 500 rock-hard words of new bullshit?
Asking for a friend, all friends actually, over 73 fuckin’ years old!
Need I explain further as to why her formula might not be 100% transferable to me?
No. I didn’t think so.
Still, I got to thinking what was it that made FUCK Medium explode into apparent virality for one day, then just stop. Hit the wall. A concrete wall. Rebar reinforced. Hard. Head-on.
I figure it must be the use of “fuck” all in bold caps, like a naughty primary school boy muttering a suppressed silent scream FUCK!!! At the top of his secret lungs/voice. Hundreds of Medium writers and readers seemed to relate to that sad, angry, hurt, not butt-hurt, but hurt enough lad to give me their nods of approval and attention.
I dug it.
Therefore, this posting, FUCK (fuck) b/c perhaps this last great obscenity and taboo word, especially when it has zero relation to sexual conduct in any way, may/might have just enough juice left in it to ignite excitement for a few hours and create just enough buzz to trick me into believing I’m back on Medium’s fast lane, racing into a new future and a new ME.
FUCK ME!
Hey Christine, I used to look like this;
Youthful Glamour shot #2 (circa) 1968
Yeah, I know.
FUCK age and getting old too.
Just, you know, FUCK (fuck) it!!
And now we wait.
Will this new use of FUCK generate a tsunami of views, reads, fans, love, marriage proposals, divorce petitions, indecent reactions, pithy commentary, flaming indifference? Who knows?
If nothing else works, I guess there’s always “sex”
I mean,
SEX!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
In the Beginning, There Was SEX, and A LOT of it
There is no substitute for sexy stupidity (Unless you add a lotta Vodka)
It bugged me that a serious piece had such a slow response, so I went back to sex and attraction and beauty (female) with zero content just to A/B test if strong, smart content could beat out simple, sexy, “pretty women” stuff.
I started my test with the following article simply to test whether or not the clickbait power of pretty women.
Two Pretty Young Women and a 3rd, Nude From the Waist up (her back) in a Brown Field, Probably Wheat
That’s all I’m sayin’
Yer welcome.
I wanted to see if the above article beat out, for claps, viewings, and readings my other story posted earlier the same day which lacked response. Here is that story:
WRONG Understanding and the Bassackwards Ways Americans Fuck-up Our Grasp of Everything
Do you understand what I’m saying?
It maybe starts with language, or education, or the lack of it, or simply being smart vs being stupid, or...god knows WTF else. But the thing is that between our ignorance and our stupidity, we have a massive WRONG understanding of so many matters that are important to NOT wrongly understand.
This includes the critically important reality of “understanding” itself.
Being Anti-woke, Anti-Antifa, and Anti-PC (Political Correctness) — is by simple definition being: Pro-Unawake, Pro-Fascist, and Pro-prejudiced, (Pro-racist, Pro-misogynistic, Pro-Homophobic) and so many other social ills that a proper level of political correctness (and Right understanding) could help us to change for the better if only...if only...
The second step on the Buddhist’s Nobel Eightfold Path is “Right Understanding” and if you can’t handle and properly grasp that good sportsmanship and never giving up are NOT contradictory, that honesty and diplomacy are not always in conflict, that kindness and weakness are not the same things, that right and wrong are not always black and white nor always shades of grey — if you can’t embrace this complexity, you are incapable of Right Understanding. And if you can’t engage in Right Understanding you are doomed to WRONG Understanding which ain’t good.
Whether arguing politics, philosophy, or property disputes big or small, like in this example It-s-the-little-things, with Wrong Understanding you’ll be screwed. You will be doomed to walk through the world endlessly and haplessly bewildered and in circles of confusion.
Again, not good.
That moment in the Super Bowl commercial last year where Larry David, questioning the founding fathers about their new ideas for democracy asks if even stupid people would get to vote and they answer Yes, and he screams “No!!!!” This seems to me to be a fine example of how much trouble a society can be in if WRONG Understanding is encouraged and supported —
And yes, I’m looking at you Fox News and GOP politicians!
IMPORTANT UPDATE AS EVIDENCED BY ALL THESE FUCKIN’ CAPS!!!
The A/B Test Results Are In — Medium Readers Still Prefer Pretty Clickbait Images to Deep Bullshit
Actually, the contest was closer than I’d thought it might be — But in the end in terms of visits and claps (Not REALLY claps, but that makes a better story) and other psychometrics (I just wanted to use that word) the click-baiters won out.
Not a big surprise; “sexy” always sells.
I did deal with the heartbreak of rejection here on Medium when a pal of mine, in fear of condemnation by her editorial peers and lessors rejected the simple clickbait piece with the explanation that her female co-editors would be apoplectic (my word not hers) were she to post it.
It happens that they are all feminists, and this would go against their goals of making the world stop considering women from a perspective of beauty and sexual attractiveness. Again, I was honestly shocked to see this rejection and surprised and disappointed to hear this explanation.
So, in all its high fulutin’ intentions sex beats smarts and that’s all I’m Sayin’.
Or, it turns out, that’s NOT all I’m sayin’.
Clickbait Rules, Anti-Re-posting Policies & Other Medium Idiocies
Yes, I freely admit these very attractive women, used to illustrate this article’s efforts at challenging some of Medium’s one-size-fits-all Rules and Regs, were selected because the more I see and stare at these images, the more deeply in love I fall with these two goddesses of beauty and sexiness whom I will never meet, much less bed.
AND because whatever else we might think about them. no one would argue that their expressions include withering looks of disdain or dismissal or bewilderment — It’s as if they are asking, “Why can’t poems, posted several years ago to very limited exposure, be simply re-posted for newer readers to Medium to find and enjoy?”
Or perhaps their questions would be, “If using my free-use image to draw readers to articles that may have some value to them, what’s the fuckin’ harm? I mean do you really have so little regard for your readers as to distrust their ability to keep reading or stop reading after being initially attracted to the posting b/c a sexy, gorgeous woman is illustrating the point?”
Never mind questioning why it is that stories with thousands and thousands of visitors, people who might otherwise never have discovered Medium pay the creator of such stories virtually nothing?
Just sayin’, the girls & I, we’re just sayin’ and wonderin’ why these suck-ass policies continue to exist?
Ah screw it, never mind.
Sex and A Dying Man
Spoiler promise: Title is as utterly unrelated to subject matter as is pic below
The screengrab headline promised, “Rhihanna sparkles in sequined bik . . .” Of course, I assumed “bik” was “bikini,” and I was right, but I must admit I was surprised to see that Rihanna is about 7 or 8 months pregnant in the photo. They called her enormous protruding belly a “baby bump.” Isn’t that simply adorable?
Better yet, it took me awhile to even get to the story about Rihanna in her bik, because when I clicked on the headline I was directed to an article about Tyra Banks defending Kim Kardashian’s “skims shoot” (whatever the fuck that is,) but after the bikini shorthand I could guess pretty well.
Sooooo, “SEX AND A DYING MAN” if you clicked on that shit you deserve this below b/c we are indeed a confused class in a confused profession in an insane nation!
Some people probably think that my earlier poems are my best. The little poems, and by little, I mean short, and more or less meaningless —
“Lyrical,” if you’re being generous.
“What-the-fuck-is-that?” if you’re not.
Others will prefer the newer stuff. Although there was a lot of time and space in between them: sometimes years, sometimes decades.
I almost always was writing something, but for a long time it came in bursts, inspiration more than perspiration (cliché, I know). Never a good recipe for writing anything especially good.
Let’s face it, most people will never read any of what I’ve written.
But I haven’t written for these last 50 years so that some people or others or anyone really will read ALL of it. Maybe someday somebody will, but I doubt it.
Even the best poems by the greatest poets are rarely remembered in their entirety, but rather for a single image or idea or feeling of a single line impacting a reader in that moment:
“Do not go gentle into that good night . . .”
“I knew a lady, gentle in her bones . . .”
“When I have fears that I may cease to be . . .”
“Love set you going like a fat gold watch . . .”
Searching Unsplash, my go to site for free-use images, and typing in the names of the “famous” poets who wrote the lines above, I found this for Sylvia Plath:
“Partenos Sylvia” (Image courtesy of Kevin Lanceplain, Unsplash) No relation to Plath at all.
And this for John Keats:
Tree Shade in the Park, (Drew Coffman courtesy of Unsplash) That’s about where and when I stopped looking.
While I’m sure neither Sylvia or Keats would be offended by these lovely images being called to mind by their names and work and perhaps lives, I know most of us who write would prefer to imagine and fantasize that memories of us and our best lines might draw a bit more literal and less artistic representations.
But alas, we’re poets and writers and the work of plumbers is far more needed than ours (a line stolen from Bukowski).
So, below is an image for one for my best lines, “Lindy felt the early tugs/her womb becoming/tidal and loud . . .”
Sheehan
My writing has been a lifetime spent dedicated to possibly (only POSSIBLY) creating an unforgettable experience; a brief moment of resonance and connection with another soul touched by something I’ve poured my mind and heart into. It may or may not ever happen. That’s okay though, I’ll take it.
Writing beats working for a living. And if it doesn’t you should consider being a plumber or choosing some other worthwhile and helpful occupation.
Or maybe jerking-off to headline grabbing horseshit of online madness.
Orgasm in Subtle Pastels
If you stare at her long enough . . .
IF you stare at her, really STARE . . . for long enough, for a looonnnnggggg time...you can see her asking, “What the fuck is happening here?”
Same thing for staring and staring and indeed really STARING at our gymnast below!!!!!
If you look at either of them long enough, STARE mind you, you will not turn to stone, you will not achieve some blazing orgasmic insights, nor will you understand women or yourself or life, much less any fantasies of divine wisdom, any better than if you’d never noticed them at all.
You just fuckin’ won’t!!
And yet you may begin to appreciate the truth that from time to time orgasm is attainable via light pastels too and that you must be more careful of what you click on based on a pic or a promising, attention-grabbing headline/title.
Maybe.
Probably not since you're looking at Medium.
