What you wrote here reminded me of a part in Milan Kundera’s A Book of Laughter and Forgetting, where he talks about the mania for writing, how it “inevitably takes on epidemic proportions when a society develops to the point of creating 3 basic conditions:
1) an elevated level of general well-being, which allows people to devote themselves to useless activities;
2) a high degree of social atomization and, as a consequence, a general isolation of individuals;
3) the absence of dramatic social changes in the nation’s internal life.”

I found this interesting and while it’s not 100% relevant to what you wrote and to writing on Medium in particular, it’s relevant enough and serves as good food for thought.