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Proclamation: Time for Grandpa Jay to Do Some Housekeeping

An open letter, and warning, to the intentional scammer and the misguided traveler along Medium’s highway

Photo by Alexander Krivitskiy on Unsplash

Please, understand — I am not speaking for others, here — only for myself.

But I have had it!

I’m up to the gills with being prudent and forgiving.

Like the rest of you, I had been getting my share of clap ’n runners. For the one or two of you who don’t know, the act of clap ’n running is the same as a pickpocket reaching into the writer’s wallet and pulling out money. (Okay, regarding Medium pay, the reach in the wallet is petty theft, and not grand larceny, but petty thefts do add up mighty quickly.) When a person claps but does not follow through by reading the text, by highlighting and responding, then Medium’s algorithm records it as a view only — not a read — and the writer loses money on that “transaction”.

A lot of Medium writers, realizing this, went on the offensive and started blocking any and every clap ’n runner who jumped into their private space.

And I applaud them.

Up until today, however, I chose to hold back … well, a little.

I decided to give them the benefit of the doubt, considering they might be newbies, who thought they were complimenting me by clapping and following me. I wouldn’t block them. Not immediately. Instead, I would put every one of their names on a list with a number ¹ in front of it. Then, the next time they clapped ’n ran, I blocked their asses without a blink.

Before long, I had hundreds of one-time-offenders on my list. But over time, I was able to remove some off that list because the second time they visited me, they fully engaged with my writing. Several became good friends and supporters — and I was happy I hadn’t block them the first time around.

Then … long about June of this year, I started noticing a sizeable increase in a new type of activity, while, simultaneously, it appeared clap ’n runners were on the decline.

The new activity was deceptively simple. The scammer studied the new rules of engagement as laid out by Medium. He (I’m calling him “he”, but we all know scammers can be a “she” as well) — He sees that the conscientious reader claps, at least 10, but up to 50 times, that he highlights two or more lines, and he leaves a response. The scammer’s aware that notifications will credit the writer with all three, which he anticipates will make the writer squeal with elation.

The scammer also realizes the following: Conscientiousness is slow! All the above can be accomplished in less than a minute, without reading so much as a sentence of text. Why, he can cut the process down to half a minute if he pastes his comment from a list he’s prepared ahead of time.

And so, he chooses to make a phony comment that says nothing about what the writer worked so hard to communicate to his reader. A vapid comment like: “Great read!” or, “Well written😍🙏💯💝,” or “Damn fine article!” (an “article”, even if it’s a poem or short story!), or this: “I wish I had half the talent that you have [insert name]… You had me from the beginning.” (He’d definitely want to paste this last bit of malarky from his pre-prepared list — otherwise, he’d have to waste his precious time by actually thinking.)

What the scammer hopes we don’t realize — is how incredibly transparent his ruse is. Does he think he’s fooling the writer? How fucking stupid does he think the writer is? *I’m sorry, Mom. Yeah, I know. I know. Put 2 asterisks between the f and the king. But I’m just pissed, Mom (read that as p**ed).

The point is, the writer sees right through him. In fact, if he’s like me, he’s insulted by the process. Truth be known, I believe most writers are embarrassed to be sharing breathing space with a person of such low character and intelligence.

But there’s something more substantial to chew on, and I don’t think enough of us serious writers are considering this beyond the annoyance factor. We must ask ourselves how stupidly unsophisticated do we think Medium’s algorithmic spider-bot¹ is? Do we think it’s not going to recognize a phony comment? PLEASE!

He’s gonna spider-walk right past it (flicking his little spider foot in case some of the shit stuck to it). The post is not going to be considered complete engagement. Just a view. Once again, the view/read ratio is thrown out of kilter. The writer is f**ked.

The spamster is dipping his hand into your pocket! How does that feel, Ms. Reader?! How does that feel Mr. Reader?!

I’ll tell you how this reader feels: Grandpa Jay is gonna start doin’ some serious housekeeping. Gramps is gonna start implementing a sweep, on an individual scale, like Mama Medium’s been doing on a platform-wide scale for the better part of a year.

As for me, I’m gonna start lopping off those fingers that have been playing fast and heavy in my pocket. Both the clap ’n runners and the generic responders. Yup, I’m gonna start blocking both their asses.

Though they’ve evolved from a salty, single-celled sea-scum, with their clap ’n run technique; have climbed, from that, up the evolutionary vine all the way to developing something that is one dendrite less than what’s found in the brain of a chimpanzee — I’m going to halt their evolutionary scambiosis by blocking their asses.

To me, I’m forced to resort to the survival of the fittest!

Buh-bye scamster!

And that, dear reader, is my proclamation!

From this day forward, if you — and you know who you are! — happen upon my name above one of my posts, and you think, “Hey, ol’ man Jay’s always good for a returned read. I can waste a minute of my time on one of his,” expect this when you click on my post:

“You have been blocked form reading Jay Squires’ stories.”

Now, we both know the reason why.

To the rest of you lovely people … Thanks for reading this, and have a blessed holiday.

FOOTNOTE:

**¹Algorithmic spider-bot: *Close to 10 years ago I took an internet course in Search Engine Optimization, or SEO. In it, they described how Google’s algorithm was much like a spider* that crawled all over a published piece of text, picking up “sticky” references, here and there, as to what would make the piece relevant when it was searched for by the reader.