These stories that end up getting 90% non-member views are weird. This surely can't happen by chance - there seemingly must be a sub-mechanic of the distribution algo that sometimes, for some reason, chooses a particular story for 'non-member distribution'.

I can understand this happening when it's a story that goes viral externally via Twitter or some other social media platform, but that would tend to be the lowest common denominator of Tech/Sex/Silly, not poetry. Or was it a silly tech sex poem?

IF this is a deliberate strategy, and IF it tempts in new subscribers THEN distributes the earnings in future months to the writers whose work was used as (almost) free bait to lure them in, ultimately that's maybe OK.

Big IFs.