This is truly the meat of it, I believe. As a writer myself, I get it. We are all tender little creatures, and we just want to feel seen and heard. It's painful feeling unchosen, and it's difficult not to make a story about how we're being purposely excluded.

But I know how the curation team is trained (it's public knowledge: https://medium-teamspace.notion.site/Medium-Curation-Manual-How-to-Assess-Story-Quality-01277bfcb0d94894b80f4aa1be76ade9) and I've looked at the data (not public knowledge, but I'm sharing little nuggets were I can), and I can see that the issue when stories aren't Boosted is quality... not topic.