Starting to Get the Hang of This

When I joined this platform in July to enter challenges, I was completely oblivious to the fact that that’s not the only way my work can generate income here. What a pleasant surprise it was to learn that I get paid per read.

So I sent my students to my page(didn’t tell them it’s me, and yes, they’re adults, university students) to generate some reads and hopefully become more visible. I think that got me flagged as potentially a robot, as I didn’t require my students to open accounts (too close to the black side of the ethical grey area I live in). I suppose it got me noticed—I got my first top story during that time. I think the volume of work I’ve produced in the short time I’ve been here has also raised some red flags, but I’ve been writing for a long time, and I had a lot of pieces just sitting in journals doing nothing. I am 100% transparent about ai. I use it to create images for my work (sometimes it’s excruciatingly frustrating to get past the misogynistic tropes it tries to spit at me), to do critical readings of my work, and to write essays explaining itself to me. I’ve posted two ai-generated stories here, a critical reading of what I consider the best thing I’ve ever written, and an essay explaining the misogyny of ai, both labeled as ai-generated.

So I came in blind, but I started reading more and more contributors’ work. Noticed what top contributors, like Caitlin Charlton were doing in their posts and comments. By the way, Caitlin is amazing. I think of her as my unofficial mentor, and I’m following her lead, commenting thoughtfully on the stories that resonate with me, quoting especially poignant phrasing to the authors. Who doesn’t love hearing themselves quoted?

Another thing Caitlin does is tag people whose work speaks to her in her own posts, with links (with thumbnails) to the posts. In this world that lately looks like a contest to see who can destroy whom most efficiently and completely, it’s refreshing and uplifting to find a community of support with strangers who genuinely care about each other’s well being. I think I’m here to stay.