Please consider ❤’ing this story if you can relate — if you can’t, feel free to ❤ it anyway. It’s not called whoring if you are ❤’ing.™ (scroll down for the surprise dago dazzler meaning)
To ❤ or not to ❤
What makes you recommend something on Medium? Is it the Facebook Syndrome? Are we conditioned to recommend even bad writing (such as mine if I haven’t been drinking) in order to show we were there?
When someone you admire recommends a story, do you follow it because you know someone won’t steer you wrong? Do you care or notice when anyone you follow 💙’s a story?
Are you the writer who uses recommends for the sole purpose of having an obligatory recommend back — quid pro quo?
Are you a Guilt-💛’er? Have you ever taken away a recommend because it wasn’t acknowledged or reciprocated?
Are you excited when a notification pops up and announces someone recommends your story (and it’s not your mom)?
Do these 💕 matter at all to YOU? Do they matter to anyone? When you read a story and you see the writer has over a thousand recommends, do you see it as “real?” Does it tell you, “This is one you’ve absolutely got to read!”? Does it convey a positive or negative connotation?
Love them or hate them, these colorful jelly-filled-recommendations are here to stay.
Use the comments to tell us what YOU mean when you 💟 someone’s piece.
Here’s what I’m thinking: how about if there was a “Daily Recommendation Allowance,” perhaps 11 every 16 hours (I pulled those numbers out of the heart of my bottom). This gives value to your work.
Double-agent Readers (AKA writers) will be coveting their recommends because their agenda will now be twofold. They’ll want to only 💚 the very best (because now the recommendation is about them as a reader as much as it is the quality of the writing) and hope the love is returned.
If it is returned, in the world where we do not have unlimited supply of recommends, you know you’ve got the proverbial “it.”
How does a limit on 💞 appeal to you? Would it challenge you to develop controversial cutting edge stories rather than a few poems and an entire article devoted to WTF are hearts for?
All in all, when you get down to the nitty gritty… it doesn’t matter one way or another because we’re all here tithing our writing, broadening our craft, and learning to color pictures with words that sometimes go outside the lines. And it doesn’t get much more rewarding than that.
If you’re happy and you know it, ❣this story and leave a comment.
If you loved this one, thank you. If you hated it, please check out The Beauty in Cutting Lo$$e$ and You are the Weakest Link.
You should know: “The [dago dazzler is a] document [that] is given more than the usual amount of decoration — often with colored ribbons and shiny seals — solely for the purpose of impressing” ~Wikipedia
