Great article Steven! I have had the same thoughts. When I read about writing yourself a check or other stuff from The Secret, I want to bang my head on the table. :)

This is also linked to your other article. I guess Medium used to be place where you could share any type of story, and people would read it. You would get satisfaction by getting some money in your pocket as well. However, over time it has become a place to peddle stuff that caters to the emotional brain, not the logical one. What you see is outrage politics, cheap magical self-help, and similar things. These seem to do well. Unfortunately, I came to this platform at this later time.

I have to admit, I have been experimenting a bit with the platform. The articles that seem to do best are the short ones, and unfortunately in those you can only get very high level generic stuff. It's a dilemma now for me. I would prefer writing longer, well-researched articles that take a long time to put together, but no one will read them on here. If you want people to read, you have to tailor it to the audience, which means selling out to a certain extent.

I now divide up my work into 2 streams. Stuff that I write only for myself, knowing full well no one will read it, and stuff which is more tailored towards the popular publications. The stuff for myself is longer and super-detailed. The stuff for publications is shorter, with a certain hint of pop philosophy (but I try to keep it researched and to the point).

For my own stuff, I created my own publication, with the downside being that I have very few claps on those articles:

https://medium.com/renaissance-man-world

However, writing them gives me intrinsic motivation and knowledge.

Anyways, great work as always!

PS: Just a note, while I like Carol Dweck's work, she has become a bit controversial lately, as her work can't always be replicated.