Wattpad Pet Peeves

Wattpad's biggest mystery solved.

I was bored, so since I had virtually nothing to do I spent all of i think it was yesterday on Quora answering questions.

One such: 

**dry laugh** 

Me: so you're new to the community are you?

Well, sort of. 

Did you come here looking for good books to read? 

Well, a friend recommended it but—

Yeah, your friend's been reading smut.

**worried face** What? No, she isn't . . . I don't think she is?

What have you noticed since joining?

Huh? There are tons of "bad boy" and "1D" books, I guess. It's actually a bit startling—

Your age?

Um, I'm 12?

**dry laugh again** Nice. Well, you're just one year short of this community's target audience. Welcome to the mass romanticization of abusive bastards! 

Person's expression: 

And rightfully so.

Many new users to Wattpad may begin to realize that so many bad books have millions of reads. Many books which have basically the same plot, just a different asshole male lead with blue eyes instead of green or brown shit instead of black. 

The thing is, Wattpad is just a fanfiction.net with cleverly disguised covers. Do you want books with sex but with just a smattering of plot? You've come to the right place.

By chance were you hoping for another Lord of the Rings or other quality literature? Godspeed! You'll have to dig through quite the pile to find that. 

 If you're like others, you'll stop looking for better and try your best to find the worst. I'm not talking crackfic. I'm talking genuine, downright painful writing.

Anyway, a majority of the readership on this site is not looking for good stories. They can go to a bookstore for that (maybe). 

My answer the this site's age-old question (and the one from Quora) was this:

Some of the popular books on Wattpad are terrible because there is something we should understand. Some of the readers on Wattpad are not looking for "quality literature". They're looking for a mind-numbing book with sex, a phantom plot and an empty shell of a female mc that they can astrally project themselves into. This is escapism at its best.

That is how it is.

This, of course, does not exclude the fact that there are great authors on the site and original and well thought out literature in the featured or Hot/Popular section [rarely]. I only mean to indicate that the ratio of those books to the ratio of mind-numbing Italian mafia bosses will overlap.

And there's nothing wrong with wanting there to be a sexy mafia billionaire bad boy man with grey/green/purple eyes and an alpha alpha seme personality. Nothing at all. If it exists in literature, it can help keep some people in check when they return to the banal proceedings of everyday life. 

.

Well, there you have it. 

People are horny, and this site is the best disguise for relieving that. 

There are a few good books that I liked on this site, but they're in the minority. And if there exist more, I've yet to find them.

It's too much to hope that Wattpad will carefully curate all the content published and ensure it's decent. That comes in the form of The Wattys (for the most part). The whole point of this site is zero exclusivity, anyone can write and publish. 

And that's superb. 

It helped me develop my writing, and it'll help many others. 

Unfortunately, it's also encouraging the huge influx of garbage male leads who abuse the mc, make-up with sex and start unhealthy relationships. Plus the overall glorifying of dickheads with zero human decency. 

So there's that too.