Rachel,

As long as you write here, I'll read it, so I wish you luck as well. Do you write outside of Medium or are you on Twitter? I'd like to see your writing outside this space.

Not making enough money on Medium is really just the tip of the iceberg. I know many people feel it is their safe place for sharing memoir and personal writing, and I can support that, but overall I feel this is a toxic space run by and primarily supporting libertarian tech bros, all of whom seem to be 25 with no dependents and no need for health insurance and who therefore still think Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk are heroes.

I went and read all the comments at your mall piece and although they were mostly polite, your take on them is exactly correct. There is no way around the Internet at this point, but it and Medium in particular really do foster a place for people to anonymously (or not, even, because they clearly don't feel threatened) sound off like the experts they aren't, and Medium supports that by punishing true journalism--it doesn't perform well here and they even discourage outside links, for god's sake, because we just want people to stay in Medium and never leave.

And also you cannot question Medium or find any real information about it. That's not healthy and frankly, every other system I have to interact with in America is not healthy--health care, education (which largely furthers our class system in that rich kids go to different schools than poor kids, even when they're in the same damn school), etc.--I don't need another unhealthy system in which to participate by choice.

Sorry to go on so long. Thank you for getting it, because I know you do.