Wattpad Rants

27. Commenting 101

" "cr&p book"
"Wtf your writing is so bad"
"THIS BOOK IS SH!T YOU
DESERVE TO DIE IN A
HOLE YOU ?!$!# &#$!@"
"I came here for a funny
     read, wtf is this?" "

Warning!: This chapter contains... well, as much swearing as you'd expect to see in the Wattpad comment section. If that's not your thing, feel free to skip this one.

Ah, yes, the dreaded, despised, and downright debilitating land of the comment section. Let me tell you, I have seen MANY... irksome books, but not a single one deserves that sort of reaction.

THIS is where you learn how to comment without sounding like a disconnected, nine-year-old, ipad kid who is high on lollipops. A perfect medley of the words most loathed, and the comments most underrated.

(By the way, I'm going to break this chapter up into sections because I have a whole heck of a lot to cover.)

CYBERBULLYING:

Now, listen, I myself have been lucky enough to have never received a hate comment straight to my face. That doesn't mean that my writing is perfect though, far from it. It means that I've been writing for such a short period of time that I haven't yet encountered an unsavory remark. Now, that doesn't mean I will never see one. I'm sure my sub-par skills will one day be pointed out as done for others countless times.

But that doesn't mean I don't know what it feels like.

These sorts of comments are officially known as a form of "cyberbullying". The term refers to bullying that is done—more often than not anonymously—online. Calling people names, degrading others, ruining a person's day, and making them rethink all of their life choices for no particular reason.

I have been bullied in person. I've been called ugly, weird, crazy, a nerd, and even fat. People have called me names no matter what I looked like or how old I was. When I was younger, people would avoid me because of my acne. People would make fun of me while I was still in earshot. I would cry after school some days because it got so bad.

If someone spoke that way about my writing, I would've probably been pushed to the brink of depression. Being bullied is not fun. It's not quirky or relatable—and in the cases that it is the latter, it shouldn't be.

Calling someone's book "crap", "shitty", or even just "awful" without any good reason, fits into this category. Now, that doesn't mean it isn't true, but phrasing it that way without any other insights only makes the problem worse.

Adding to that, the LAST thing you should ever do is blame the author for their bad writing. Calling someone else arbitrary things that have nothing to do with their book is downright disgusting. How do you know if they're fat, of a certain ethnicity, or follow a different religion? How do you know if they're a part of the LGBTQ+ community? How do you know if they're living in good conditions if they're depressed, if they're suicidal? You don't. So, don't push your luck trying to shame someone for "being gay" just because one of their characters is. One, that's not a proven fact, and two, of you're reading this and would say such a thing, I need you to go to the timeout corner for the rest of your life, capiche?

GRAMMAR:

Alright, let's take a random comment... how about "yours is a bad book". Yeah, that seems about as nuanced as comment sections tend to get.

First off, rewrite that whole thing. I'm sorry, the only way to fix such a statement is by burning it in a fire and rearranging the ashes. Sure, you don't have to speel ever word write in the comment section, but it does have to make sense.