Pegasus Unpaid.
I’ll try to avoid writing paywall posts. Let’s see for how long.
Do you write for living? Or rather live for writing?
To be honest, I am rather the second one. As already mentioned, I am Digital Native, Digital Resident and Digital Hermit.
I write just because I cannot stop. Since 2000ies I’m writing blogs. I writing texts. I publish in newspapers and magazines. All for free. Without any ambition to get money and to become a big one.
And I won’t, for sure. My niche is probably too extreme —
writing about Artificial Intelligence mixed with Dadaism.
Who will read it? Dada-People may avoid AI for certain reasons. For AI people Dada is probably too suspect and disruptive.
But since Medium provides Medium Membership Program, you can allegedly get money for what you write. So it was an experiment. I am paying Medium Member. Not to earn money, but to read all paywalled stuff. Like I pay for WIRED and MIT Technology Review.
There was also the possibility to write paywalled stuff and get money, so I tried.
And I’ve got *drumroll*
Yooohoooo!
And my friends are like:
Here, since Medium cuts up the embed tweets, here is the reason for wwWtf?!
So, instead of earning money I’m about to lose readers? Because the non-members can only read 3 “member-only” posts on Medium per month. Then they have to pay.
WTF, really?
I have the readers issue, you know it. And so from now up I will post without earning money. Again. Probably without new readers. As always. Paywalled contents have brought me 0 new readers. But at least with my old readers, most of them not being member and not being able to read paywalled texts. I will also de-paywall all my former “member-only” texts.
Even if every time before I want to publish my text, Medium whispers to me like Mephisto:
And after I publish it complaints:
It doesn’t make sense anymore.
Because I live for writing.
