Yes the consumer comes first.
Totally! "Customers" and "consumerism" often get a bad rap, but who else is going to buy our creations? Growing up in a tourist town, this reminds me of the eternal paradox: "Tourists suck! But we need them..." And aside from money, don't you want people to benefit from and enjoy your creations?
There are some really talented writers on Medium -- especially in the humor category -- but yes, a lot of it is drivel, especially as it grows increasingly saturated and people compete for views, which results in lots of clickbait and the aforementioned "make money on Medium" stories.
A bad rap, sure. As explained though, the consumer in this case is not throwing their money away. Sure they can stake tokens and the price could go down, but the price could also go up. Traditionally, that money would have been spent, never to be seen again. This approach the money is not spent, still in the consumer's possession, and if the content they normally support becomes lackluster or no longer interests the consumer, they can simply move on to something else and all that support they provided previously only helped grow their account balance. They leave with more than they started with. That's what I find so fascinating about this system. There's no rip offs. 100% voluntary. No pressure. No buyer's remorse.
And yes there's drivel here as well but they don't earn much. Those types end up working harder for less, burn themselves out, and the problem corrects itself over time.
This place needs more humor. I often dabble in humor but haven't been lately. Can't be forced.
Yes, my sentiments exactly regarding humor! Humor is tough to write, which is likely why many people don't do it. My favorite pieces either have a blend of humor and serious reflection or feature dark absurdist humor, which doesn't typically have broad appeal.
Those who perform on stage get to write their jokes, practice, fine tune with each new performance. Writing then publishing; you only get one chance. It can be quite humiliating. Luckily for me though, these folks around here seem to love it when I humiliate myself so I just do it without fear.
I dabble in many forms, most of which are misunderstood.
Even tried the approach where you write a really long build up, to the point where people don't even realize they're reading a joke, then I hit them with he punchline/absurdity, and carry on like nothing unusual happened. A long time ago someone showed up, didn't read the entire thing, didn't realize it was a joke, then even insisted they knew what the post was about when I asked if they actually read it... lol. That's fun though.
Totally! Yes, there are some humor writers on Medium that do a great job of blurring that line between comedy and realism, and from reading the comments you can tell that many people didn't get it was supposed to be humorous. I've even fallen for it a couple of times.