Dear Writers On Medium, Please Have Some Respect

I’ve been on Medium for a few months now. The first reason that pushed me to try it was the need to take a break from the excessive amount of visual content on Instagram. I wanted more articles and textual content to read every day, and Medium came along.
Of all the articles I’ve read, only a few haven’ t satisfied me, but you know, you cannot please everyone! It was only a matter of personal taste, no offence.

At least, not yet.

At first, I searched for articles under the “Mindfulness” and “Productivity” categories. I needed something to tell me what to do in a moment of my life I lacked mental clarity. Thus, as a result, I swooped down on the beloved listlets like “10 things that make people successful every day” or “Work efficiently in 4 steps”.
In short, every article we read at least once on Medium, aiming at revealing the supreme truth about how to improve life, relationships, work in one shot.

And why not, winning a Nobel prize between one Yoga session and another.

All these waves of articles I read every day were a breath of fresh air. New perspectives from all over the world, they stimulated meditation or even just making me smile when I was upset.

However lately, I’ve noticed a tendency for writers to publish content that follows the epidemic trend. From articles on how to shop during quarantine, or how to recognize the symptoms to descriptions of apocalyptic scenarios worthy of a Mad Max sequel. I’ m not against them, I wrote an article about the quarantine as well and I deeply understand how much it can help writing down how we’re feeling in a moment of uncertainty. The pandemic emergency is real, we’re all living it and we’re doing this locked up in our homes, dwelling on what we accomplished so far and what we could have done instead of sinking into the sofa.

Again, I’m not against those articles even though posting on the same topic every day leads to saturation such that the relevant news, although they’re in a separate section of the site, is diluted on the enormous amount of, let me write it, useless content. And this type of articles is not even the worst.

I saw titles such as “I saw my husband die”, “My best friend died”, “COVID is destroying my family” and when clicking on that, here a fictionalized story, fed to the platform. Articles in which you can read the last moments of a loved one, articles full of families that fall apart, couples who separate and the pain that comes with it.

When you’ll understand that in a world where oversharing everything about our lives is seen as normal, the pain of these moments should be processed healthily, that is FAR from any social platform? Have some respect. For yourself, for who’s not here with us anymore, for anyone who’s losing loved ones and for those who are trying to save as many people as possible. Everyone has the right to process grief the best way for his mental and social condition but, resulting from all I read and saw, all these articles are only attention-seeking.

Don’t tell me this is a healthy way to mourn, because I’d tell you that you need to turn off your computer/social media/ phone and -really- look at what’s going on out there.