The Clap Back

The possible reasons why some only give one clap

Photo by Daniel Lincoln on Unsplash

Have you ever wondered why some readers give only one clap on your writings or possibly none at all? After seeing this, you may question your writing, the title, or find yourself in an F-bomb rant cussing the ether and those who dare to only give you a brief meeting of hands. You may yell, “clap back with a round of applause not like you’re killing a fly”! Yea, I know, ew! LOL

Possible reasons

Outside of the multitude of articles on “how to write”, “gain 100 followers overnight”, and “ways to make money with writing”, I see a lot of writers talking about the lack of claps.

While I am not at the thousand mark of followers yet, I, like so many of us would love to see the comments and claps begin to pour in. However, I had to first think back to when I first started on Medium.

#1 The Assumption

I too fell into the one clap category. Believe me, this was not intentional but more of an assumption. Like that on Instagram and Facebook, you click once to give a heart or thumbs up. This assumption led me to believe Medium’s platform worked the same way until I read an article that basically screamed at us fly-clapping clappers.