Wattpad 101: Your guide to the world of Wattpad

Outrage, Backlash, and the Art of Being Offended

A few years ago, I ended up in a bit of a controversy. A local businessman / stoner had me build a website for him. It was kind of cool. It got featured in a magazine, I got to write stuff and it's arguably one of the first places where I started to learn how to do this whole writing thing. However, at some point, a group that didn't agree with some of the stuff we had on our site led to a backlash.

Overnight, we were receiving hundreds of emails, mostly death threats, with a little bit of support thrown in there as well. In the end, my boss, who was less of an interest group and more of a informist, relished in the attention, since he mostly just wanted to get the message out there. Most of the people outraged were not people that would have ever been on our side anyway, and the confrontation allowed us to at least present our case to a few people who were willing to listen.

Outrage... is a very interesting thing. The more you write, the more likely you're going to experience outrage at some point in your career. Whether it be outrage because you worded something poorly, outrage because your opinion differs from another, or outrage because you made a Ghostbusters movie will all girls that fundamentally misunderstood the essence of Ghostbusters and turned it into a piece of... cough... sorry, too soon.

The point is, outrage is its own kind of thing. It's like getting and receiving criticism, but it sits on whole different level because emotions are notably a part of it. In the internet age, we have all become increasingly familiar with this outrage. It can come at an extreme level, like what I experienced when I was emailed death threats. It can come on a personal level, with people frighteningly looking up your information and actually attempting to contact you. It can occur through massive mobs, or from single dedicated trolls.

You could provide some advice to people who get outraged. Someone who gets outraged could give people the benefit of the doubt, assuming they meant things in the best way possible. They could wait until they've calmed down a bit, until they've received more information, or just back out of a conversation entirely if their emotions run too high. However, these kinds of things, to try to convince people not to become outraged on the internet... well... let's just say there are better ways to waste your time, like by watching paint dry.

This chapter, rather, should focus on you, the Wattpad author, and what you should do if someone gets offended by your work. Now, sometimes, the work you write is going to be something that is intended to offend. You can write a satire or a parody, and someone who really likes that genre might genuinely get insulted when you implied they were childish for enjoying it. Not everyone will even 'get' your jokes, and even some of the best are misunderstood. If you're in high school, you've probably read the satire about solving world hunger by eating babies. It's a classic... and also caused quite a bit of outrage in its day.

If you're making something like South Park, you can be offensive on purpose. Outrage is almost a given then. However, I've always felt that once you've clearly established what you're making as outrageous, people tend to no longer be offended. We used to hear controversies regarding a new South Park episode every year. Now, when they show aborted baby fetuses or racist stereotypes, it almost seems to be a given. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe there are still groups writing South Park death threats (well, I'd say there most certainly are) because of it's outrageous content.

So, I think if you have steeled yourself to offend, then you are usually ready to take all the backlash you'd get from it. But what about the times you unintentionally offend?

It's never a great feeling to have someone angry at you. More often than not, their responses are far from polite. Name calling at the least, personally directed insults are likely. I mean, they're outraged! In their mind, you deserved their ire.