A Tale Of Two Platforms

Data silence

Image Source: Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain

Marlo Vino was an online writer.

Swinging between two platforms, known as S & M.* One was called Sado and the other one was called Masochism.

Sado depended on paid subscribers you somehow had to bamboozle into feeling sorry for your writerly ass so they could toss five bucks a month your way until they got sick of you.

Many writers used Sado like they did Instagram or Tik Tok by sending 200 different angles, variations, and painfully sympathetic pics of their cats or dogs. These weren’t so much writers as they were sentimentally moonstruck pet owners. Besides, this was a very effective to grow your following.

Masochism used to pay until they simply pulled the plug almost a year ago now (or so it seems). Writers who used to average $200 per month now were lucky to meet the $10 per month criteria to get paid in the first place.

Such was the sorry ass state of the online writing scene.

Today, when Marlo submitted a story to Masochism, he would make $One Dollar tops on it. That was on a good day.

When Masochism first pulled the plug on earnings there was no official statement on the matter. Instead there was an indirect statement by a staff member about cracking down on AI and reciprocal engagement.

Many writers protested, stating the somewhat obvious fact that they did not use AI and only read the writers they liked, as writers sometimes do.

This furore led Masochism’s Chief Trolling Officer to come out of hiding and address the writerly nation, telling one and all that it was only a very, very minuscule percentage of writers who saw a decline in their earnings and adding that Data Scientists, Better Humans, and Brave New Brothers In Tech have all seen an increase in their earnings.

The Chief Trolling Officer further stated that this minuscule little sliver of grumpy poets, parodists, prose, fiction, meta, feta, sci-fi, satire, limerick, lazy, memoir, micro-fiction, mistaken, meddling, political, allegory, haiku hacks from all over the world all lived in an insignificant little echo chamber and simply needed to wake up to the real world of Silicon Valley.

And that was the end of the discussion.

To make matters worse, Masochism decided to ban from the paywall any and all pieces that mentioned the company in an attempt to crush critical feedback and dissent.

These were Trumpy times, and the Chief Trolling Officer wasn’t about to miss out on the dictatorial, broligarchal, journalist-silencing zeitgeist.

Such was the state of the online writing scene. S & M, the last two once-great online publishing sites, made Marlo think of an old Pink Floyd ditty — 

We’re just two lost turds swimming in a toilet bowl, year after year…

Or something like that.

Maybe it was ‘two lost souls swimming in a fish bowl’? / Photo by Luis Fernando Estrada on Unsplash

© Carlo Zeno 2025

________________________

*This story wouldn’t have been written without

Nancy Santos

’s funny comment to me this morning on my recent story stating that she was getting tired of “S & M” and then referring me to her question on M regarding the payment ban on any genuine feedback about M on today’s staff pick by Zulie, which you can read below:

Medium versus Substack: Six reasons writers pick Medium
Why Medium is the best platform for most writersmedium.com

Just when I thought I was finally out and growing profoundly numb to my penny-eating existence on M, Nancy pulls me right back in.

I answered Nancy’s uncomfortable question in the thread of Zulie’s piece, so M wouldn’t have to.

If you liked this piece, give it a second read on Medium and join the conversation. Better yet, help me bring back meta both on S and on M by writing your own critique of the two platforms.

Happy reading.