Chasing Wattpad

Wattpad Love (hurts)

"Ah Wattpad, thou is a heartless bitch." - William Shakespeare

Yep, he said it. Pulled out my "complete works" of this guy the other day and there it was smack in the middle of page 1,327. I was as surprised as you are now. This thing was published in 1938 and Shakespeare wrote considerably earlier than that so I can only guess that this Wattpad thingy is a bit older than they say they it is, or mayhaps, this Shakespeare guy was a prophet. I'm betting on the prophet thingy.

Whatever the case, I believe it. Wattpad can be heartless bitch. It can tear you up and spit you out if you are not careful. Sure there are some cool things about it that you cannot find anywhere else, but they come at a price to you. It is up to you if want to pay that price. Or is it?

Sometime back I wrote about the Wattpad addiction phenomena. Many people, kids and adults alike, are addicted to Wattpad. This isn't an accident. It is clearly by design.

Wattpad may have originally been "a place for readers and writers". It is that still, but not nearly as benign as it once was. We are not alone on Wattpad anymore. The hundreds of advertisers stalking us are with us every day. You can't read or write a word without countless videos and other advertisements popping up trying to keep you from it. Imagine for a second reading a real book and having a video or advertisement pop up. You would throw that thing away in a heart beat.

Yes, yes don't cry at me. I understand the need for advertising. But when once is was secondary it is now primary. It is now the main purpose of Wattpad. It is a money making machine more than anything else.

Recently I read an article about Wattpad in which a writer wrote "Wattpad families are just as important, if not more important, than the ones we sit at the table with". Now I am sure this was just perhaps hyperbole. It was meant just to show one's affection for Wattpad and not really a truly honest statement (God I hope not). But even it was or wasn't true for the writer, it is true for many of you out there. That is a common theme in social media. People do often relate to people who they don't really know on the internet more than those they have sitting right next to them. That is an ugly fact.

I enjoyed the article and I would recommend people to read it. It is titled "Why Wattpad Works" and makes many fine points to that end.

But, sadly, it doesn't really work that well. It is a computer program and those things have glitches. But even glitchless (say it 3 times loud) it is not what you probably think it is.

The readers have it good. They can usually read and get what they want out of Wattpad. Most of the writers never will. Ninety nine percent of the writers on Wattpad that want their writing to leave Wattpad some day never will. Wattpad does not want you to leave and it will do everything in its power to hold on to you. That is the only way it can survive.

Wattpad will entice you with all kinds of things so you can stay and they can keep their numbers and sell their advertising space (between your words usually, lol, not cool). They will use you and you will let them, in exchange for this writing fairy tale that they cannot possibly deliver on.

A million kids come on here with this dream of writing the next big trilogy whatever without the slightest chance of ever being successful and waste a good chunk of their life absorbed in this because Wattpad needs you to stay. They will make you stay.

It's even worse on the fewer adults here. Most of you (me included) do not at all need Wattpad to write the things we want or be the writer we want to be. It's an illusion. This is a safe place where writers take care of each other. That is nice, but that is not the writing world. The writing world is scary. If you're not scared enough about your words then you probably still haven't put them out there.

It is the design of Wattpad to make you addicted to it. It needs you to survive and not the other way around. If you think about it every day it has you trapped in its web. It was designed to do that with all the positive reinforcement it throws at you.

Don't for a moment think Wattpad was designed by lovers of the written word. It was designed by social media experts whose only real job was to make something that keeps you coming back at whatever the cost. Something they could sell to the advertisers. If you think differently you are just fooling yourself.

There is nothing free about Wattpad. It costs you. It costs you time, family, friends, and so on. Mostly time though. You can't get those hundreds of hours you've spent away from the things that should really be important to you. They are gone forever. Or, as my 3 year old grand daughter says, "fo'eva pop pops".

Now before you slam me with "Oh you hate Wattpad!" and "Oh why don't you get off of it if you hate it so much!", I call bullshit on that. I don't hate it. I kind of like it. But Wattpad is like my favorite chocolate chunk gourmet cookies. It's probably not as good for me as I would like to believe it is. It is, probably, kind of bad for me. But you see, I know that. I am not blind to that. So I don't eat, sleep, and dream those cookies every day. That's just stupid.

Wattpad does not own your words. They didn't create them. You did not create those words because of Wattpad. Wattpad did not make you a writer. I know many of you think you can only write because of Wattpad but that is not true. You write because of you. If Wattpad were gone tomorrow you could still write.

In the end you guys will do what you want and that is the way it should be. It's your choice and no one can take that from you. Take care of yourselves Wattpadders. Remember, Wattpadding  is like driving, it works infinitely better for you if you do it with your eyes open. Open your eyes!

Gotta go. Grandkids are calling. See what I did there? lol.

Check out these writers because I said so. They make it worth staying on Wattpad.

eliseanton

seechelle

bmacke01

rosaimee