My experiment with the writer's platform Medium continues.
Anyone who is a creative can become a slave to the little bell icon. That little bell icon. Twitter X has one, YouTube has one, Medium has one. I assume that all the social media platforms have them. It is a reminder of how popular, or not, you are.
Let me explain.
The bell icon tells you when someone has responded to your story or comment on Medium. It also tells you if you have any new followers. It is there in the top right-hand corner of your profile page when you sign in. It is right next to your profile picture. If it is blank, then that means there has been no activity on any of your stories and articles. No number on the bell icon, means no activity. No responses, no views no reads, no claps. When you log in, you instinctively look at the bell icon, to see if anyone out there has responded.
There are times when the wait for a response seems to last forever.
Of course, it would be nice to be overwhelmed by hundreds of responses-or would it?
I have decided that I wouldn't mind turning the bell icon off, but I don't think I can. I haven't found anything in the settings of my Medium account that allows me to do that.
But why turn it off? Well, it can be too much of a distraction. It leads to too much time being taken wondering what you need to do to reach a bigger audience. Twitter X is just as bad, although on that platform, you have to beat the algorithm. I think I have given up on that one.
So, there it is, the bell icon looking at me all the time, reminding me of just how difficult it is to find an audience.
For now, I will try to ignore the little bell icon of Medium.
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