Your Own Typewriter

I absolutely love Matthew Butterick’s article regarding Medium. I previously wrote about my disappointment with the growth of Medium among established writers, so you can probably guess the tone of Butterick’s piece. Most of his critiques center around what is behind one of Medium’s proudest features, typography:

… I wouldn’t say that Medium’s ho­mo­ge­neous de­sign is bad ex ante. Among web-pub­lish­ing tools, I see Medium as the equiv­a­lent of a frozen pizza: not as whole­some as a meal you could make your­self, but for those with­out the time or mo­ti­va­tion to cook, a po­ten­tially bet­ter op­tion than just eat­ing peanut but­ter straight from the jar.

Then he comes around to the base criticism that applies to all of these social networks where you give up ownership, in fact or practice, of your content for convenience.

In truth, Medium’s main prod­uct is not a pub­lish­ing plat­form, but the pro­mo­tion of a pub­lish­ing plat­form. This pro­mo­tion brings read­ers and writ­ers onto the site. This, in turn, gen­er­ates the us­age data that’s valu­able to ad­ver­tis­ers. Boiled down, Medium is sim­ply mar­ket­ing in the ser­vice of more mar­ket­ing. It is not a “place for ideas.” It is a place for ad­ver­tis­ers. It is, there­fore, ut­terly superfluous…

… Tempt­ing per­haps. But where does it lead? I fear that writ­ers who limit them­selves to pro­vid­ing “con­tent” for some­one else’s “branded plat­form” are go­ing to end up with as much lever­age as cows on a dairy farm…

I previously wrote about the importance of having your own place online. Invest in your own home, it’s easier than ever, and much more rewarding than subletting from someone else.