A Broken Mind, A Broken Soul is a poetry collection that I still add to sometimes. Today, I added entry 53 titled "They Said".
It speaks about how as young girls, we were ridiculed for having interests and how writing on Wattpad wasn't "real writing". That idea ignores that I found people who got me through early life here through writing and connection. It ignores the process that was my character writing growth. It ignores how this all shaped who I am becoming.
I joined Wattpad many, many years ago. I know that GenAI is trained on data from across the internet, and I 100% believe that our stories and love and work and fanfiction has been fed to this machine.
So "They Said" is about how the girls they used to ridicule grew up. How now, we are at the forefront of history as we fight for humanity over these 'tech advancements'. How we fight for people over profit and fight back against the oppression.
The process of art is what shaped us to become people who can stand up against their lies, and we fight for the people we have lost and those who will come after.
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They said our stories were silly
That our obsessions were childish
They took our souls,
Our laughter, our love
(Find the rest in "A Broken Mind, A Broken Soul: Part 53)