A Dying Voice

I could be writing this differently. In fact, I contemplated structuring it as a letter to myself when I first joined Vocal, filling it with warnings and a list of all the ways I’d come to regret publishing here. Then, I considered the tone of such an address and saw it bursting with sarcasm and bite. I don’t want to write that.

I could be writing this in a much nicer way. Or at least, I think I could. There is a point where being direct feels like a mean attack, but I assure you, that is also not what I want to write. I don't want to be unwarranted in my criticism, but I also don't want to pussyfoot.

That being said, this essay is about the failings of Vocal.Media. It’s a system—albeit, a very small one—that is not working. In fact, it’s dying. I’m quite afraid that if big changes do not occur, Creators who have come to love it will not be able to continue on. Either it will break down and depart the internet, or stop functioning for the majority’s benefit and be abandoned. One could argue the latter is already beginning.

Simply: I believe that Vocal is in a sharp decline. I do not believe that it’s a good place for up and coming writers and authors to publish their work. It is a graveyard, and we are the walking dead.

Now, don’t assume that I am ungrateful just because I’m choosing to write a critical essay on the very site that has been the source of several of my own successes. I’ve been lucky, as have others been, and I am very grateful for my luck. Yet, the truth remains: The work that has been the most successful on Vocal, my work, is unpublishable outside of the site. This isn’t unlike other writing sites and winning contest entries; the critical difference, however, is in the failed attempts, which also become unpublishable. And therein lies my complaint.

The Problem

Before I explain what I believe could be the solution to this, let me further address the problem itself. You see, Vocal is primarily a site that hosts writing contests, or, Challenges. That is how it started, I believe. Most posts were for the Challenges, (some of which were open to non V+ members). The inter-Creator relationship was limited to hearts and sharing via social media, which I think sprang up due to a lack of comments on the site itself. As we all know, comment sections came later. Unless I’m mistaken, for I was not a Vocal pioneer, the site organically developed into a blog of sorts, a place for people to write about themselves and to share their personal writing, to even get a chance at winning some incredible cash prizes, the likes of which do not seem to be offered anymore. (We’re talking $20,000 and a Zoom meeting with Christopher Paolini-kind of prizes.)

The “chats” and the Discord server all came about because the community wanted more ways to network. The Vocal Creator Chat (VCC) and the Raise Your Voice threads (RYV) were ways of boosting new creators or unrecognized stories to the larger group. The VCC in particular allowed Creators to offer feedback on the nature of Vocal itself, a kind of shortcut to the Helpdesk. Then we got the Leaderboard, a way to award different types of engagement on the site to a variety of Creators.

Even though I have no way to prove what started Vocal’s downfall, the most fundamental and pronounced problem I see is consternation between competition and relationships. As Vocal has rollercoaster-ed their way through prioritizing the Creators and the Challenges, I’ve started to feel that the ultimate beginnings of the site have been sacrificed for a different vision altogether.

Once, we had consistent bimonthly chats. Now, the VCC is gone. Once, the Leaderboard did not exist and the competition remained within the realm of Challenges. Then, we turned natural peer-interaction into a game. Now, the Leaderboard only offers one reward. (I wonder when it’s going to be retired?) Once, we were able to get quick responses from Support. Now, critical issues like being unable to publish new stories are ignored for months, and other emails go unanswered, despite the occasional assurance that the team is working on it. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, Mike Singleton has been trying to get the team’s attention since November, I believe. He’s still unable to create a new post on Vocal and has resorted to cannibalizing his old stories. This is unacceptable.

I look at Vocal now and I see, sadly, a place where a lot of Creators are obsessed with accolades. It’s not their fault, really. Vocal has been gradually shifting our expectations to money instead of sincerity: first by taking away our public, communal way to offer critiques, and then by introducing rewards for things like commenting, liking Stories, getting the most interaction, gaining the most followers, etc. Of course, they’re walking that back now, leaving us frothing at the mouth and no satisfaction. There was one point where the numerous Leaderboard rewards were equal to or greater than the runner-up prizes for Challenges. If you’d wanted to, you could have learned to game the system and not even worried about the Challenges. In fact, some were doing this and then the hammer came down to prevent the same person winning every week, and only substantive comments counted, and so on. This smacks of a system in decline, does it not? Why has Vocal not considered reinventing itself?

We’ll get there.

Before we do, though, I need to mention favoritism. I admit—I used to be frustrated by comments from others about favoritism in Challenge judging and Top Story awards. It was obviously just sour grapes, right? That’s what I thought. After my bout of success, though, I’ve decided that favoritism must exist. Vocal needs it.

From the latter months of 2024 to the early months of 2025, I took a break from Vocal. This was primarily to focus on external submissions and contests and possibly finish a draft of a poetry collection. It was also to deprogram my brain from the constant validation that Vocal provided. The dopamine rush from email alerts and notifications, new Challenge drops, and Top Story alerts was distracting me from my ultimate goals. Worse, it was convincing me to compromise my belief that I shouldn’t be publishing new work on the site. Just because I was proud of something and knew I might be able to get a few bucks here or even just a few cents from reads didn’t mean it was worth killing its publication value. Yet, I did. Time and time again.

When I returned to Vocal due to the new list of Challenges that seemed worth the attempt, I got Top Story for the piece that explained my absence. And about once or twice a month after that, I’d get a Top Story. There didn’t seem to be much rhyme or reason to it, aside from the fact that I’d left and come back and this was the reward, or possibly just a carrot on a stick. When I won my first challenge in September 2025, I really thought that was it. One and done. But then I’d get runner up or honorable mention. Then another win. Then Top Story again. It would repeat. The money was finally coming in. Good thing, right? $200 here, $15 there, a fiver every once in a while, and badges, badges, badges. Would you believe me I said I only had 5 badges before September 2025? Honestly, it all feels too good to be true. Yet, it is...So, what’s up?

I believe that Vocal incentivizes Creators to stay. Specifically, to stay Vocal plus. That’s how they make money. If you can prove that you’ll stick around, be a supportive part of the community, generate great content, then you’re someone they want to invest in. So, they’ll give you six wins in four months. They’ll make sure you get Top Story twice a month or more. If they can’t justify you winning two challenges in a row, you’ll get runner up in between instead. They gotta keep ya hooked. And if you leave the site? No worries…Unless you don’t come back. Then they’ll pick someone else. Well. They’re always picking someone else, it’s just a matter of how much better do they like that person than you?

I genuinely believe Vocal chose me for that period of time between September and December ‘25, and now, it’s someone else’s turn. You know, I used to see this joke in the VCC before it was retired: When will it be my turn to win? or, more commonly, Next time, it’ll be your turn. I didn’t think it was actually true. But now? I do.

Don’t think I’m not grateful that my turn finally came around. I am. That money has been super helpful for me and my husband. I don’t pretend that I’ll win another challenge here, and certainly not this one, but I will throw my cap in just ‘cause. It’s too good to resist, if only to shock a few of your socks off. ;)

My Proposal

Here, though, is my ultimate point of writing this: The Solution. Because there has to be a solution to this, right? Unless you’re not convinced of Vocal’s death, in which case, I don’t know why you’re still hanging out, haha.

Now, I’ve mentioned this to others before, and will continue to mention it until something changes or I end up deleting my account:

Vocal needs to separate the Challenges from the Blog by creating two different websites. This will do two things.

The first is it will allow Challenge entries to be private until each is over and judged. This site will only show completed Winners’ Lists and allow current challenges to be entered anonymously by paying Creators. This will prevent bias from the judges and ensure that entrants cannot read other entries until the challenge is completed, and only then, read those that won.

Moreover, because the challenge entries will be anonymous, any that fail to place will still be unpublished and can be submitted to external contests and publications. Those who want to enter challenges will no longer have to live with the reality that their work is unpublishable anywhere else if they lose a single contest. This is a critical benefit that I believe would have a positive effect on Vocal’s profit margin. Once word spreads, the number of legitimate entrants, and by extension, entries, will increase. Can you imagine a Vocal challenge site that’s as accessible and lucrative as other big writing contests? The notion of it is so exciting!

As a benefit to the Vocal team, this structure would necessarily (help) root out AI, bots, spam, and otherwise unserious entries, as it will require payment to use. Either a paid subscription, like the current system, or a challenge-by-challenge fee could be instituted here to fund both websites. I believe this will make judging easier by reducing the number of fake entries and allow the parameters to rise to meet the standard of literary contests. Entrants will not wish their money to be wasted, which will put more of a demand on quality winning out and consistent judging being applied across challenges and entries. Factoring in the anonymity of each entrant, I believe this would be easy to expect. How can bias be relied upon if any identifying information has been stripped from the entries? Honestly, the infrastructure is already made, if we remember the Vocal Writing Awards from 2023. Those entries stripped identifying information, allowing blind judging from the community. (That is, assuming you didn’t have a very good memory or search for the title to see who wrote it, lol.)

Furthermore, I would want the Challenge site to include judge credentials and photos, as well as the judging criteria. These would have to be included in the Challenge descriptions, so every entrant can see them.

I almost forgot to share my idea for non-V+ Challenges, which would be an additional feature on this site. Vocal seems to have retired this, rather silently, and if they brought it back, it could entice more people to become Vocal Plus members. It would also be a great way for Vocal Blog Creators to have the chance to participate in some monetary challenges, even if there were only a handful per year. If Vocal did not want to do this they could consider an alternative: the community-run “unofficial challenges.” These could become a permanent fixture on the Challenges site, possibly a subpage. Here, those Creators who can’t afford Vocal Plus or who may not like the current challenges, can create their own and advertise them on the Challenges site, which would redirect back to the Blog site, and the Creator’s post itself. I’ve always wanted to see a main page for all the open unofficial challenges, as they don’t always get the publicity they need.

Because these would redirect back to the Blog, they wouldn’t need to be judged by the team. The community would handle everything after the initial advertisement, and thereby bolster itself through engagement and generosity. Without the official-dom infiltrating the fun of the Blog, I believe the separate sites would only allow the community to grow. I know I’m not the first person over the years who has noticed the complaints about losing challenges, judging bias, inconsistent or inaccurate judging criteria, and so on. If my solution were to be implemented, I believe this kind of conversation would be greatly reduced, if not eliminated.

In order to see how, let me explain. The current model Vocal uses is a blog-like platform where Creators make a free account and can publish any kind of story they wish for public viewing. In my solution, this model would still exist, only there would be no secondary, paid access to contests. It would only be the free, blog-like structure where Creators can write about their lives, the real world, make-believe worlds, poetry, or articles for community engagement. This is where we would continue hosting unofficial challenges, contributing to Raise Your Voice, and reinstating the Vocal Creator Chat. We could even streamline the Communities to better reflect broad genres of writing and sub-groups with shared interests.

By building a site like this, challenges won’t need to factor into our motivations to publish. We could actually focus on the community and making friends again, and spreading encouragement and advice, even workshopping drafts if we wanted to. The beauty of this is that we won’t have to see challenge entries mixed in with these kinds of posts. The pressure that goes hand in hand with seeing last-minute entries flood our front page would dissolve.

I picture this Vocal as a casual place, a unique social media site for writers to meet and support each other without needing to feel competitive. However, it’s not a trashy, addictive social media site. No—that would be a distraction. Instead, Vocal becomes a gathering place for people with different and shared interests. Because the format can be short and long, we can actually get to know each other. We can gain trust and get help if we need it. We don’t have to economize what we read, how much we read, because the act of it will be depressurized. We can read for joy, for relationships, for advice, for experimentation. And yes, the reads will still get the Creator some change, but the point isn’t money anymore. And most importantly, the Leaderboard won’t need to exist.

I picture the Blog site working in tandem with the Challenge site, like two sides of the same coin. The team would post links to the winners and even announce new Challenge lists when they drop (or use banner announcements at the top of the homepage). The blog will drive those of us who want to pay to play to the Challenges site, but those of us who want to just write for pleasure can stay here.

This Vocal is alive. It thrives. It knows what it is and what it’s for and, most importantly, it doesn’t have to rely on challenges to keep its people.

What Do You Think?

I’m not entirely sure how to wrap this up. I honestly wish I could create a mock-up of the two sites I have in mind so everyone could see it in action. Alas, that is beyond my skillset. But I want your feedback anyway.

• Do you think this is a good idea to preserve the good parts about Vocal?
• Do you see more ways that the site is breaking that I didn’t mention?
• Do you have a different take on what would make it better?

I’d be interested to read your opinions in the comments.

I know my observations are not new, nor are they a minority. Several creators have left Vocal permanently because of them. I’ve considered joining their number, and it’s possible I still might. A clean break is often best for dopamine rushes, after all. But I wanted to go out with the greatest chance of leaving a legacy behind me. If this essay plants just a tiny seed in the minds of the Vocal team, I will have done that. I know they won’t take my idea in its entirety. Or quite possibly, they won’t take it at all. We may just have to bear witness to its silent downfall. Either way, the site as it is today is not going to withstand the test of time.

It’s time to pivot.