What brilliant "rant" Julia 👏👏 I could not agree more with your view that writing should speak for itself and not depend on the pitch. That is such clear common sense as to be blinding.

That said, though, and reading that one nominator got a thumbs down within 90 seconds, it seems pretty clear that the curators DO NOT read the nominated stories, nor, is my thinking, are they afforded the time to do so.

Do we know how many curators there are? Do we know how many stories are nominated? Do we know how many reading hours it would take to read all nominated stories? Every one. Perhaps that math would show that they need to increase the curator staff by a factor of ten. I suspect there is some truth to this.

But ten-folding the curator staff would surely bring Medium back to no longer being profitable, and profitability seems to be their main goal right now (as proudly announced by Mr. Boss on Medium day); and of course it has to be profitable, or it will eventually go away, bankrupt. I don't envy Mr. Boss this conundrum...

As a writer, all I can do is write as well as I can, and keep writing for that is what I love to do. I'll continue to submit stories to editors I trust (like one Peculiar Julia) and hope that good will, in the end, win out over the not so good 😊.

Thanks again for sharing your frustrations with the current blindered system, it has shed a lot of light on the current situation for me 🙏🙏