Medium Could Be That Platform
Google took me to that website because I had asked assistance for my About Me. Getting there, I looked around and started using their service. They generated decent lines which I didn’t like.
I was exploring what they had to offer — until they asked me to go premium. I immediately closed the window and moved on to my own head.
And this morning I received that email!
For its subject, it had a sentence that makes me feel empty and which I have tried to argue against for the last decade:
Never write content again
But I couldn’t resist the urge of curiosity and opened that dreaded email!
It was written by someone in the first person POV. I immediately went to its bottom to see if that someone was a he or a she. NOTHING!
I understood. It was written by an AI. A wave of anxiety ran inside me. Thoughts exploded:
Is writing dead?! Yes, writing is dead now! AI has taken over writing! Now, what do I do? I am a writer!!!!
It further explained how it could do the following for me:
- I can write sales and marketing emails that get replies
- I can provide ideas and write engaging content for blogs
- I can generate creative, catchy copies for social media
- I can write product, job, profile, video descriptions
- I can do interesting captions for your Instagram posts
- and much much more…
- It can take hours to write just one page of content. With Rytr, you can get high-quality content written instantly.
Thoughts kept exploding:
Is writing dead?! Yes, writing is dead now! AI has taken over writing! Now, what do I do? I am a writer. You should have gotten into data science…!!!!
Irrespective of the quality and nature of content such tools can generate, it is a very depressing concept for anyone with ‘pure’ writer values:
You get into writing so that you can explore your mind, life and world. You get into writing so that you can honestly express yourself with the least technical nonsense. You get into writing so that you can profoundly think of stuff and then carefully and creatively share them with the world! You get into writing because it is one of the rare professions in which you can both think deep and make money. You get into writing because you are natural and comfortable with words. All these are yearnings for subtle human nonsense.
Once you dive into the writing world, your ability to write is the only thing that separates you from any normal bicky-dickys! (and this gives you courage). Your ability to write is the only thing that provides you hope and meaning. For anyone like me finally confident enough to attempt surviving through writing — this type of tool is a curse.
Yes, I do understand that as of now these types of tools are only supposed to be used for assistance. And they can be useful for writers. Hell, I have edited this with Grammarly. But I can clearly see beyond the haze:
Every single person who has an insatiable greed for making money on the internet will use these tools along with Google-provided trends to write generic content and saturate the writing world.
Why do I care? Haven’t I just come up with the idea that marketing is the ability to pierce through saturation.
My care is not that I will have to compete with generic content writers. I do not care! I am into Content Entrepreneurship. Even if writing as a profession is dead then I will move on to writing-as-a-need and start creating videos or whatever! I mean to say, I am not paranoid about it.
My concern is regarding writing as one of the only relevant mediums remaining through which we can conveniently contemplate, experience, and express subtle human values. My concern is regarding writing as a pure human endeavor free from that disgusting smell of Machine Learning.
And this is where Medium comes into play.
While I had explored opportunities to make a living by writing in blogs through Google Trends-driven ideas —I had always left it untouched. I wanted something more through my writing. I could wait for some more time with my lofty values rather than jump into the dump called TRENDY-Content-Writing. This particular platform called Medium was what impressed and lured me.
While all other platforms had mediocrity written all over them — Medium seemed authentic. It seemed solid. It seemed to make things happen to writers by allowing them to write content of pure originality and creativity.
But what I see now is — the ever-growing size of Medium along with these AI tools will soon saturate this platform with opportunistic rats.
They will come. Mark my words. They will come with their content about money-making, celebrity gossips, tech worship…THOSE RATS WILL CONQUER MEDIUM!
This is where I justify my title: Medium could be that platform.
Yes, I sincerely believe Medium could be that platform that sustains writings of pure human originality and creativity. This belief is justified because I entered Medium, not because of the financial lure — I am from Nepal, I still am not allowed into the venerated MPP—but because of the human value, it had in its writings. Yes, Medium can be that platform that says — Rats not allowed!
But then the words-of-wisdom kick in:
Just as AI writing tools are inevitable,
Just as Opportunistic Rats are inevitable,
It is impossible for an American Company to choose value over dominance — especially if it is in competition mode!
P.S. I think all of us who want to sustain writings of human values and pure human creativity free from the disgusting smell of Machine Learning should come together and create our own platforms and economies!
