The ironic thing is, if you always clap 50 claps, then your 50 claps are worth the same as always clapping 1 clap to the Medium Partner Program.

The puzzling thing is, being insulted by a 1 clap. If a newbie subscriber only reads your story and only claps 1 clap, you will probably get $4.50 from that 1 clap. Not exactly an insult, in my opinion.

The laughable thing is, I recently read an article that said you should always give 1 clap even if you don’t like a story to encourage the writer. They view 1 clap as encouraging. There is no hard-and-fast interpretation of 1 clap.

The (not so) secret thing is, the 50 clappers do it out of either fear or loathing of having to rate stories, a cruel task unwillingly forced on us by Medium when they added the social media aspects of Medium (clapping, responses.)

The genius is, you can’t get mad at 50 claps, can you? The 50 clappers are the smart ones. The rest of us are fools trying to crack Medium’s endless supply of enigmas.

The reality is, every reader has their own system of clapping, so long ago I decided that any claps are good claps. And responses are worth 1000 claps.

I gave you 50 claps, just to make you wonder what I meant. 🧐😜😘🙄😀

Chop suey!