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A response to ‘We’re Living Through a Clap-Drought’ and how some disabilities can make Medium’s clap feature more difficult than you’d think…
Warning: this post discusses Anxiety & its affects
The talented Jacob Flanders wrote an interesting story recently, encouraging people to clap! clap! clap! on Medium:
Which — if you’ve been on Medium for more than 5 goddamn seconds, you’ve probably heard something about claps.
They’re like applause-o-meters, basically.
Everyone has their own theories of when to clap, when not to clap, how many claps appease the all-holy algorithm, etc.
And everyone, therefore, has their own expectations on the social etiquette of claps.
And people can get… a little intense about it. Sometimes.
I’m happy to say that Jacob Flanders isn’t one of those intense people.
But his post does have the assumption that clapping is easy, not a problem, something which we can just do without an internal battle.
Which… for most people I’m sure it’s something they barely even think of, let alone struggle with. But not me.
Clapping stresses me the hell out.
I know it’s important to show support and let other people know that you liked something and all of that.
But the clap feature is actually something that can be difficult to grapple with if you have various health conditions and disabilities.
I would really prefer it if it was a simple ‘like’ button — one and done.
Because it does my head in.
