I use Medium mostly on my phone, and I got through what you are going through a year or so ago.

What I did, is I subscribed to the email of the people I really follow and then, I get notified directly when you publish something.

Some people I check on every now and then. Sometimes I drop a note on an old story to ask them “what’s up?”

Sometimes I assume they are no longer writing.

But I know this is not where you are going with this.

Yes, you want to know the faces (or some other descriptor) of the people you read the most.

I am not too sure why they remove it. I suspect they want to steer the public in certain directions, brake a little the emotional connection with the writer. I mean, if I write relationship advice, and you read that kind of stuff, they want you to jump from me to the next guy who does that. Because at some time chances are I’m going to stop writing here.

Probably I won’t, I’m too lazy and with a fragile ego to submit to literary magazines.

But the thing is that most people come here for the promise of making money with their writing. I did. But if you are coming here and you are not making money, you will eventually leave.

So, they are using the old Human Resources thing of “we are all replaceable.” Fortunately for you and me, we are not. Unfortunately for you and me, they don’t care.

Therefore, they feed the algorithm with “content,” and when that person who told their followers all their secrets leaves, there is someone else waiting to tell all about their life experience. And hoping to finally get out of poverty. Of living paycheck to paycheck. Of for once, fulfill their life dream. To tell a story that matters. To tell their story.

I feel I left off topic, but I didn’t.

Maybe the solution is to encourage our readers to go and read outside Medium? Nah, I mean, there are great things here.

Would it be nice not to have all this noise here, on every social media?

I think the direction I wanted to take the discussion was to say that part of the problem is they want to anonymize our writing, so poetry is poetry, and not Pablo’s poetry and so on. Because they want to maximize revenue. Of course, we all know that. Unfortunately on doing so, they are removing diversity from the landscape. And everything starts to look the same. Like cities in the US, where one looks and feels like the other. And in the meantime, ideas get lost among the mist. Unless we keep on writing, or find alternative outlets.

Sorry, this is going too long already, but I think this may be why it is always the same things and ideas that sell, why we keep on seeing The Avengers 23.

This brings me to the MPP and its reach.

Maybe I’m idealizing, but I feel that in other regions people are not so willing to consume whatever they are fed. I mean The Avengers will make money anywhere, but when I look at movies that are being made in South America, I think they are a little more daring, they are willing to go a little beyond the normal. But maybe it is they have actually less players than here and it is harder to brake into that market.

Enough! I think I took too much of your time.

Hang in there. Don’t leave us. I got too use to your mini sci-fi stories and your prose and your presence in the page.

Pablo