I totally agree, I was waiting for someone to say that :))

on the subject, I was looking for some themes that put the focus on the content. A lot of the themes take this concept of content-first and either use big pictures (that most of the times don't mean anything) or try to look like some Hemingway-wannabe blog. Svbtle and Medium are both examples of PLATFORMS that distinguish themselves with a clean design so they should be flattered that people appreciate them to such extent that they would code a WP theme.

Nevertheless, in the case of Medium I think it's ok. Medium allows me to publish to a wide network, but I'm more of an introvert-blogger so I try to stay away for shouting my opinion (which might be dumb) in a crowded plaza.

Svbtl is a bit of a special case because it's an invite-only space. First of all, I don't care if people think I'm part of svbtl or not, I can just put a tag line saying that ("Kudos for Svbtl for being such a great inspiration, but I'm not part of it... yet"). Solved. But then you have that Kudos thing that is specific to their product, so I would change it to something else. Orman Clark did something with a heart, that would work ok (don't have time to look for it again, it's a clickable hearth somewhere on premiumpixels.com).

In my case I will use a medium-inspired theme, because I wanted that before seeing Medium, I just didn't know how to call it.