Well, here's where Medium is being truly clueless.

At the moment I have 802 followers. So says Medium.

But in fact, I and everyone else here know that most of those "followers" do not follow. I guess about 100 read sometimes and half of those read fairly regularly. About 15 or so are faithful.

So if someone had just 50 followers who consistently read their posts, they would not qualify for payment even though Medium's dinghy drops off money for me every month? THEY"D BE GENERATING MORE ACTIVITY THAN I DO BUT THEY WOULDN'T GET PAID!

That is why Ev is wrong. Further, if I had only two people out of 802 "followers" who could stomach my babbling, I'd only earn pennies, but I'd still get paid. How stupid is that?

And then when one of my posts gets thousands of reads and many hours of reading time, the dinghy reaches my dock filled to the gunwales with silver. But when the same thing happens to the person with 50 followers, they get a one finger salute.

It is ridiculous.