Why I (Almost) Never Clap For Stories That Tag Me
Do you?
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About once a week, I will get a notification that someone mentioned me in their Medium story.
Every single time, I check it out. I mean, hey, who doesn’t want to get called out for something (good OR bad)? If it’s good, it’s a nice feeling and if it is bad, then maybe I have found something to improve upon.
But 99% of the time, this is what I see:
And that second one is a fraction of the easily hundreds of people that person tagged.
Ok, so people are tagging me (and a ton of others) in their stories. So, what?
Why not just read the story, clap, and move on?
Because I see it as a clap-grab
Obviously, I do not know the writer’s actual intentions.
But much like when I see random celebrities come out with perfume — which I see as a blatant cash grab — when I go to the story and see my name tagged in a large paragraph with 50–100 other names, I assume it is just a blatant attempt to get those people to view the stories and clap for them.
It’s not like tagging your posts with categories — those simply ensure that the people who are interested in those subjects can potentially see your work in those subjects.
Unless you abuse those, too, but tagging completely unrelated categories hoping new readers will see your writing.
I don’t like that, either. I understand WHY. I just don’t agree.
To me, that makes me feel like I can’t trust the writer.
“Hey, this post is about freelancing! …wait, no it’s not. It’s a random post about how to invest in crypto. Okayyyyy…” And X out of the post.
People talk about cash grabs and how they don’t want to support people who do them.
