I feel like I sat through a friend of mine's success coaching seminar, haha. I love my stories. I love the diversity in my experience that is illustrated in and through my writing, which has been noted by reviews to be wonderful.

However, I have written a few pieces that did great. The differences between those and the rest of my stories are that I did not care too much (but, enjoyed my work) and - the key I believe - I wrote a story following a viral news story.

The rest of my articles that do the best are about relationships and love. Because relationships and love are always in season.

But to say that a writer on Medium, who was in the NFL or a pornstar and brought their fans here, does better and is more successful because of storytelling or viral topics is stupidity.

Of course, a person who has 10,000 subscribers will get 3,000 more reads than someone with 500 subscribers. That is basic statistics.

Even your title, "Bad Writing, Big Engagement: What's Their Secret?" will gather many people on Medium to see if you had a different revelation than the dumb articles we have all read about why our numbers do not grow.

Also, women do better from startups. That is common sense, too. Because women 1) gather massive male followers in association with their degree of attractiveness and 2) are more communicative, thus bringing larger female audiences, too.

The algorithm could do better. Most certainly. Scholarship, helpfulness, entertainment, and professionalism have nothing to do with fame or popularity. A good writing platform would build on those four pillars and make sure AI does not support or boost any writing that does not fall under one of those three.