Jerks Ruining Writing Sites and Why To Challenge Yourself As A Writer Anyway

Sometimes jerks make you wonder why you bother. Here's why you should.

Oct 25, 2024

Usually I do pretty well at sticking to one topic, but that’s because the delete key exists. But if you were at my kitchen table? Totally different kind of conversation.

Pong. That’s how the best conversations go. I was going to talk about how and why to challenge yourself as a writer, and what that actually means but I got sidetracked by jerks. Thing about jerks is sometimes they make you wonder why you even bother.

I’m not talking about rude and insulting comments. And there’s a lot of those. If I had a dime for everyone who showed up without manners I wouldn’t even need to write. And yet rude is a nothing-burger in the whole mess that is writing online.

Here’s what I mean by jerks.

Couple of weeks ago I saw some guy on Medium who plagiarized a writer I read regularly. By the time it hit my feed, the jerk had 7K claps. On a post he stole. In the partner program. What a gig, hey? Why write when you can just steal?

Yes, he got shut down. But it happens every day. Every. Single. Day. Whackamole.

Here’s another. AI posts behind the paywall on Medium. And yes, I know the terms “say” AI posts aren’t eligible to earn. But there’s no way to prove if a post is AI or not. Chaps my butt to work hours on a post that gets declined for boost and someone uses ChatGPT to vomit out some lame self help crap, gets 10K claps and it’s behind the paywall but you can’t prove it’s AI.

Another one that came up just this morning.

Weird stuff showing up in “trending” at Medium. Look at it and say — hrmpfhh, that looks familiar. I manage an affiliate program for a client and regularly have to whack affiliates who go to smarmy “traffic” sites and pay twenty bucks to send thousands of views, but it’s garbage traffic. Is that how you get a post to “trend” on Medium when the title is a barely legible sentence in variable case? Maybe. Can’t prove that either.

And I’m not throwing Medium under the bus, even if it sounds like it. In September Medium suspended 212,355 user accounts for violations like plagiarism, spam, impersonation, phishing, and harassment. Jerks are everywhere. A lot of them.

Substack doesn’t get a pass. There’s far more rage bait here than at Medium because there are no curators marking that crap as network distribution. Lots of man-bashing here. And women hating, political button pushing and every other kind of hate.

See some dumb arse post a rant about boo hoo, poor men got their fee-fees hurt and getting a crap ton of response because she pushed anger buttons and it’s real hard not to engage. But it’s worse. See that crap, makes me wonder why I bother.

Seriously. Why bother. If that’s the crap people want to read. I could say to hell with writing. Go sell websites and fonts, let them have the mess.

Tell you why I do bother. Why I keep writing and tell you to keep writing.

Because the day I let some a-hole drive my bus, I’m done. Might as well jump off a bridge. Fill my pockets with rocks and walk into the river.

I figure most things in life work out to 50/50 odds which means half the people out there are good and decent people and the other half are cheats and assholes. They don’t get to drive my bus. This is the only life I get. They don’t get to steer me.

And maybe in some strange way, those cheats and a-holes make it even more important that I become the best me I can be. And you become the best you.

A few years ago I went to an outdoor light symphony. Standing outside in the dark of night down by the river. The moon a buttery crescent in the sky. The music started playing, softly first and then growing louder. And then tiny lights were dancing through the treetops around us in time to the music. It was utterly magical.

When the show was over, I could hear people whispering in the dark. How magical it was. How beautiful. How moving.

Funny thing is, that’s exactly what’s happening in our heads every minute of every day and I’m not even kidding. Tiny little electrical impulses jumping from one neuron to another as your mind works, guiding you through all the things you do. You just don’t see it. If you could, it would be just as magical.

To your brain, tasks are tunes. Every time you drive home from work, those little lights jump the same path. It’s why you sometimes get home don’t even remember the drive. Same for taking a shower, loading the dishwasher, mowing the lawn or shoveling the walk. Your brain knows the tune. Same light show every time.

Twenty feet from the light show, there were trees that stood dark. Because they weren’t wired for light and sound. Your brain has those, too. Neurons that don’t light up because you don’t do stuff that lights them up. But learn something new, they start to light up. Tentatively, at first. Because they don’t know the way yet.

Which is why you fall when you’re learning to skate. Why you don’t know how to conjugate verbs when learning a new language. They don’t know the way yet.

Same thing with different kinds of writing. Writing poetry isn’t the same as writing fiction isn’t the same as copy isn’t the same as essays. Writing literal isn’t the same as writing metaphorical. Writing free verse isn’t the same as rhyming and not all rhyming patterns are the same and on it goes. All different pathways in the brain.

Thing about neurons is that once they learn to light up they start to interact with other neurons that have been active all along. And make their own music. Which is to say that when we learn new things, it affects how we see everything else.

As a writer, you have an advantage non-writers don’t. You can challenge yourself to write in ways you’ve never written before. If you’re no poet, write poetry. If you write conversationally, try writing metaphorically. For that matter, pick a writer whose work you love, try to write something no one could tell isn’t them. Push yourself.

Because when you do that, it’s not just about writing.

It affects more than just writing. It changes you as a person.

Changes how your brain functions. Creates more neural pathways and the effects of that go far beyond writing, start to touch other parts of your life. See things clearer.

Here’s the thing. A year from now? Cheaters will still be cheaters. Plagiarists will still be stealing and hacks will still be telling you how to pull yourself up by your bootstraps with articles vomited out in ChatGPT. But who knows what you might be doing?

And that’s why you should challenge yourself as a writer. Despite the jerks. Because to hell with jerks and platforms that sometimes suck, it’s not about any of that. It’s that writing can be a cheat to becoming the best you that you can possibly be.

And that’s not nothing. It might very well be the biggest something we’ve got.

Love to know what you think!