The 12 Biggest Mistakes You Can Make On Medium

I am prepared to offer an extremely valuable free service. Why would I do this crazy thing? Just to make the world better. And, more selfishly, to save myself from being bombarded by nightmarish tabs.

For free and for nothing, I will speed-read your Medium draft and warn you of any dangers it might present. Yes! I will be like “HEY THIS PART IS RACIST” and “NO ‘MISANDRY’ ISN’T A REAL THING” and also maybe “LOL you have no idea what you’re talking about here.” And then you will be happier, I will be happier, and the Internet will be happier. (Yeah. Mostly these tips are for men. Most of you ladies can just carry on.)

So try me. Bring it on. Choire [at] theawl.com. Someone has to keep this place from going down the tubes. Let’s do it together.

But you can also help yourself! Here’s some things to avoid.

• What X Taught Me About Y
No one believes that O Brother, Where Art Thou? taught you five valuable lessons about engineering.

• Transparent Startup Boosting Designed Basically To Get Ev Williams’ Attention
Spoiler: he isn’t reading.

• Open Letters
Don’t do them. They’re not reading.

• Open Letters that were on your Facebook
No, Joyce Maynard. Don’t shame people on your Facebook and then put it on Medium. (Best of all, the response from the person she was concern-trolling was SILENCE.)

• Sophomore Year Libertarian Rantings
Yeah. Bring your A game, Libertarians. But don’t bunt.

• CrossFit
IDK what is the deal with this but CrossFit does monster traffic on Medium and everyone thinks it’s hilarious.

• Developer Incoherence
Buddy, what? Words are like code. You have to put them in the right order for things to work. Maybe the great thing about Medium is that it’s going to teach developers that writing is actually sometimes hard.

• Proposing Totally Sensible-Sounding Solutions To Common Problems But Actually When You Look At It The Solution Is Totally Insane And Not Ever Going To Happen
I see you.

• Livejournalling
Meep.

• Thought Cataloging
Baby, sugar, lamb, take it to Thought Catalog. They’ll actually pay you. Maybe they’ll even save you from your busted thesis. (Probably not though!)

• Malcolm Gladwell Light
Or something???

• Unfinished Stubs Of Ideas
This was going somewhere. Would have been nice.

• Calling The World Is Flat Your “Game-Changer.”
Oh pussycat, no.

Together we can make the Internet better. The Internet is like the environment. I learned that from watching Cocoon. No wait. Maybe it was Ghost? Anyway, it can be polluted irreparably. Let’s preserve the Internet for our children and our children’s children, so that they have something also to blog upon. Thank you.