Face-Palm

14. SPOILER ALERT

14. SPOILER ALERT

You know what would make the world a better place? More considerate people. That means you think about others. Like, for example, if you're walking through a door and somebody is coming in behind you, the considerate thing to do would be to hold the door for them.

Likewise, if you've already read a certain book, the considerate thing to do would be to, oh I don't know, NOT spoil the whole thing for other people who maybe haven't read it yet.

Seriously. Whenever I read stories on Wattpad now I have to make a conscious effort to avoid the comments section. I think it's pretty much common sense that authors might not exactly want their readers to spoil the stories that they spent hours coming up with and carefully crafting for other readers. Okay, we get it, you've read the book before. Does that somehow make you cooler? Does it bring you joy to brag about your having read something before somebody else has? Is it that hard to not mention anything in your comments? (Hint: it's not.)

So there's this absolutely amazing book I read a long time ago, and the author is currently editing it and rewriting it. (High five if you know which beautiful, awesome, wonderful book I'm talking about.) I think most of the readers of the new version are rereaders like myself, but SURPRISE! I bet it never occurred to you that a whole bunch are reading this for the first time! On every single chapter there are comments about characters that haven't even been introduced yet and stuff that hasn't happened yet. I mean, it's alright if you write,

"I'm so excited for the next part!"

or

"AHH MY FAVOURITE CHARACTER COMES IN THE NEXT CHAPTER I CAN'T WAIT"

or something. But nooo, I literally saw one comment that said,

"Hey, I was just wondering. Is the next chapter where [INSERT PLOT TWIST HERE] happens?"

I'm not even kidding. I read that and I was like, ASDSHHDJHSJSDNJ WHY THE HECK WOULD YOU EVEN WRITE THAT YOU WEIRDO LIKE LIKE LIKE LIKE

It's fine for me because I've read it before, but I don't think it even crossed their mind that they just spoiled the whole story for people who haven't read the original story. WHY??? JUST WHY??

Example #2: I read the VERY FIRST CHAPTER of this short story on Wattpad and I was like, "Huh, this is a good book; I really want to keep reading!" like how all normal people react to stories that they find interesting. I scroll down, ladaladalada and BAM what do I see?

"OMG THIS IS MY ABSOLUTE FAVE BOOK EVER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I STILL CAN'T BELIEVE THAT [insert main character name here] DIED!!!!"

Did I mention this was the very first chapter?

I have no words to express the amount of face-palmness I was feeling. If it's really that difficult for you to fight down the temptation to ruin books for people, at least be decent enough to write SPOILER ALERT or WARNING: DO NOT READ UNLESS YOU ENJOY SPOILERS in nice big letters at the top or something.

Yeah, I could probably rant about this for a long time, so I'll stop there. But you get the point. :)