To All My “Followers” Who Recently Discovered Me

I’ve been fascinated to learn that during the past six months or so that I’ve been off Medium, I’ve attracted a following that reads some of my past humor writing, but also likes to hear me bitch about the mean deal I’ve been getting from Medium regarding “payment.”

Payment is non-existent, at least regarding me, so it’s merely a philosophical abstraction. An algorithm that perhaps Medium shares with Facebook maven Mark Zuckerburg. What do they have in common? According to an esteemed whistleblower, Zuckerburg cares more about money, money, money, than morality. Sad but true.

I’ve never especially liked MZ, but that’s only because he’s too smart, too rich, and too entitled to inhabit any square footage on this planet and call it His California Chalet. Perhaps when he grows some grey hair under his armpits and revs up his bad breath, I’ll like him better. But until then, I’ll stick to defaming Medium and their noxious policy of cheating me out of hard-earned monies.

I figured that with everyone and everyone’s uncle deciding to follow me and occasionally reading my work, I’d be able to pay the monthly Medium fee of — what is it now? — $5 or $6. Well, as I’ve been so much in real life, both in my various careers of teacher, librarian, and freelance writer, I was dead wrong. Medium has seen to it in their infinite wisdom that although hardly a day goes by when I learn that a new reader has joined the ranks of my followers, Medium has concluded that the only fair way for them to reconcile my past with my followers in the present is to pay me $1.36 per month.

Can you believe it? I am not just humiliated, but I’m sick at the thought that some actuarial type in a back room or attic-garret has used me as their model for extreme failure and “rewarded” me with nada, zilch, nothing, zero….. Instead of paying me with real empty dollars, they have chosen to embarrass me for my rejection of Medium. My punishment? I earn demerits for every follower interested in why I quit Medium. So really I can’t avoid failure. If you don’t read me, I get nothing; if you read me, I get the same authentic nothing but with the snide, snarky disapproval of Medium.

At first, when I recognized that Medium was not even paying me enough to cover my monthly expenses, I was angry, bull-red angry. I thought to myself that these people fronting for Medium are the lowest of the low. They belong in the Museum of the Miserly. Then my anger turned to pouting, and I mulled my…