The following is probably just going to be a big rambling mess that may or may not make sense or follow any kind of logical structure.
I don't care who you are or how old you are or what your face looks like or how you dress or what your interests are or what music you listen to – if you're nice to me, I'm nice to you.
Cliques are one of the most idiotic yet unavoidable faults of society.
Anywhere you go, cliques are present. They're formed and maintained and very rarely are they broken.
When I was younger, I moved across the country and had to settle into a new place where I didn't know anyone. Before this, I'd been a happy, outgoing kid. Sure, I got sad and angry and upset and threw fits and tantrums and wasn't always smiling. I've always been shy by default, but at least I could come out of my shell and be comfortable with most people.
Then I moved and my life changed.
No one liked me.
I'm not exaggerating.
I claimed to have some friends, but every single one of them, without fail, betrayed me, left me, and/or stabbed me in the back. My stability – and my opinion of people – was crumbling.
I got made fun of for being Hispanic, for having thick eyebrows, for wearing glasses, for my hair, for my body (in fucking fourth grade, no child should have to feel so insecure about their body – for fuck's sake), for my intelligence, for the way I talked, for the clothes I wore, for the things I said, for everything. I couldn't find a single place to fucking fit in.
Eventually, middle school came and that's when my life really became a living hell.
I was already being abused at home and dealing with stupid shit with my siblings, but the kids at school made it worse. They relentlessly bullied me and excluded me from everything and all of it drove me to cut myself. I didn't stop self-harming until maybe a year or two ago, and I still resort to it every now and then. What's worse? Because I listened to alternative music and wore goth clothes and cut myself, everyone hated me even more.
I hardly fit in with my eccentric friends, who only befriended me because they were nice as fuck and I still love them, even if we drifted apart in high school. No one would accept me. In fact, a lot of people made fun of me for cutting, bullied me for that even though it was their fucking fault in the first place.
The sad part is that cliques are inescapable everywhere. It's not always the same in every scenario. At school, it was the athletic kids, the smart kids, the stoner kids, the popular kids, the geeky kids, the 'weird' kids, the goth and punk kids, the hipster kids, and so on and so forth.
Yet even when I tried to escape to the internet and seek refuge on chatrooms and social networking sites, I still saw cliques everywhere.
The people on chatrooms with the noobish names were lumped together and the kids that had been there longer and had cooler names and profiles were apparently 'superior' to them.
The people on forums that sounded more intelligent were apparently infinitely better than the people that had just joined and didn't know fucking everything.
The people on wattpad?
Jesus. The people on Wattpad are the worst, by far.
Coming from someone who was excluded and bullied for years, Wattpad is worse than any school I've been to.
Cliques are painfully present on this site, and it's not even a fucking social networking site. It's a fucking site for amateur writers. None of us are professionals and we shouldn't be here to fucking make friends and get 'popular'; we should be here to fucking write and get constructive feedback on our works, not on our profile pictures or bios or names or backgrounds or covers or graphics because that's not the fucking point of this site. If you want to do that, move your shit to fucking twitter because you're missing the point of this site. Wattpad is meant to have a social aspect, yes, but that shouldn't be the sole focus of it. This is why I hate Wattpad so much and prefer AO3 any day. At least on AO3, there aren't any cliques and the sole focus is on the writing and how much talent someone has, not how indie or grunge their profiles are.
People with 'stupid' usernames like HazzaAndBoobear or niallerlovesnandos or things like that – they're mocked and laughed at. It's just a name. Get the fuck over it. Having some random 'deep'-sounding noun or adjective as your username doesn't make you better than someone with a name that you deem as 'carroty'.
People with long random bios (like ones that talk about their friends and their interests and such) are apparently inferior to ones that have a few angsty lyrics, all pretty and centered.
Apparently, followers makes you instantly better than other people, or even being friends with people with lots of followers somehow makes you indirectly superior.
The more hipster / indie / soft grunge your profile is, the better. Even if your stories are half-assed and have shitty grammar.
None of this makes you fucking better than anyone else.
None of it.
I don't give a fuck how many followers you have, or whether you listen to Arctic Monkeys or Nicki Minaj, or if you have Hazza in your name, or any of this.
What I care about is a fucking good personality and talent.
If you have either of those, then I like you.
If you're a bitch, then you can have as grungy of a profile as you fucking want – it won't make me like you. Having some trippy pastel background that makes me feel like I'm on acid won't distract me from the fact that your fanfiction lacks substance and proper grammar.
Y'know what?
I have over a thousand followers. I'm happy. Yet I could lose all but five of them and still be fucking content.
I make pretty covers for my stories, but I still put 100% effort into actually writing the damn things because, in my eyes, an attractive cover can't make up for shitty content.
I listen to indie bands like Arctic Monkeys, Cage the Elephant, The Civil Wars, Neutral Milk Hotel, Seabear, but I also shamelessly love Adele, Chris Brown, One Direction, Jack Johnson, Justin Bieber, Fall Out Boy, Pierce the Veil, Katy Perry, et cetera.
I don't fucking want to fit in anymore. I want to be my own person. If you genuinely like the person that I am, then that's great, I'm happy. Maybe we can be friends. But if you just like my covers and the fact that maybe a story of mine is ranked or I have a pretty profile picture, then don't bother – I appreciate the sentiment, but that's not proper foundation for a friendship. That's just shallow admiration.
I'm done wanting to fit in and be liked and all of that stupid shit.
I don't want to be part of a stupid, pointless clique.
I will repeat myself:
No matter who you are, if you're nice to me, I'm nice to you.
If I like you, then I like you.
I fucking refuse to be part of a clique and I will not be your friend if the only thing I like about you is your profile picture, or vice versa.
Have a good personality. Be nice to people. Be genuine. Work hard. Stay true to yourself. It's all cliche advice, but it's true nonetheless, so do it, do those things.
And then, if someone sincerely likes you for you – then you can feel good about yourself because that means something.
Knowing how to use photoshop isn't a talent or a good personality trait. Neither is liking an indie band. They don't make you superior or better than anyone.
Good writing is a talent.
Kindness is a good personality trait.
So start from there and see where it takes you.
Don't label me because that's not what I am. I'm not a label – I'm a human being who's trying her best to navigate the fucking mess that life is. I have interests and likes and dislikes and opinions and I am fucking unique, god dammit, so just fucking deal with it or leave.
I don't need anyone's fucking approval anymore. I don't need to fit in anywhere. I don't need – nor do I want – cliques or to be included in one.
I'm done.
See, I told you it's just a big rambling mess. But I meant every word of it, as jumbled and nonsensical as it seems, so you can just take it as it is – my honest opinion.
