Glitches From The Early Days of Medium

Back then, Medium’s writing software was pretty buggy, and the glitches were gorgeous

See that screenshot above?

It’s a curious, uncanny glitch from the early days of Medium!

Back in early 2014, I was involved in an early publishing experiment on the platform — a group blog called “The Message”. Medium hired a group of writers who focused on technology’s impact on society, and tasked us with cranking out a bunch of essays every month.

Back in those early days (Medium was just over a year old) the writing/editing software was still a work in progress. Medium’s developers had added a bunch of very cool design tools: You could have a huge splash image up top, or run a wall-to-wall picture as background with your text on top of it. It allowed for some truly gorgeous layouts, such that I still weep hot and bitter tears that most of those options no longer exist, but le sigh.

The thing is, back then those tools were still pretty buggy. I’d be writing an essay when suddenly the browser would seize up, and the keyboard would stop responding.

Then, poof: My essay would transform into something that looked like this …