Wattpad 101: Your guide to the world of Wattpad

Ten People You've Met on Wattpad

My rants and criticisms tend to be more popular than my chapters with actual helpful advice. If I can put it in a list, it gets even more popularity. In the vein of giving the people what they want, here are ten kinds of people I've observed on Wattpad. As a word of warning, this list is the personalities. The kind of people and experiences that stick out.

Wattpad has always been as much a social website as it has been a place to put up your writing. You can't have socialization without other people, and Wattpad has a cacophony of interesting people that you'll find yourself having to interact with. Some of them you'll run into as commenters. Some you'll run into only if you visit the forum/clubs.

However, if you do want to dive deep into the personalities that make up Wattpad, here's another list of the top ten most "interesting" people you'll have to encounter. So you know what you'll be getting into, these are the kind of people you're bound to meet if you meander around Wattpad long enough. I'm not saying anyone on this list is "bad", but we'll just say they can be challenging. What kind of people am I talking about?

The Ranter

A Ranter is a person who dedicates a large chunk of their online presence into whining about things that stress them out. Many of them create "rant" books, and many of those books become impressively popular. If you check out the top 100 nonfiction books, I'm betting you a good portion of them are actually rant books.

Some of these rants are political, fighting for or against politicians, identity politics, or some hot issue like abortions, flatearth, vaccines, GMOs.... Others get far more upfront and personal, targeting types of writers on Wattpad. You have the "I hate One Direction" fanfic writers who will often receive their ire. Basically, think of an annoying thing, and you're bound to find a ranter ranting against it.

Shockingly, many ranters are fairly unforgiving about their rants. They can be the type that form hate groups. Their loyal readers who feel better listening to them cuss about the same things they hate, have been known to form mobs and fight or attack others in the name of their so-called rant. A few of the worst ranters let it get to their head and are the ones instigating these hate campaigns themselves. Freedom of speech! F*** yeah!

Of course, not every ranter makes a book. Some just rant in the message boards or rant in some poor guy's comments section. They'll write six-seven comment long essays about why the thing they just encountered pisses them off. They'll be convinced they are the first, if not one of the first, to ever say this thing, thus convincing them they are doing this for the greater good. Their words have to get out there, how else will everyone know that One Direction sucks?

The worst offender of this I found recently. This guy writes some self-help book and he put out a chapter where he singles our personality types on Wattpad (cause all people are alike, I'm sure) and then writes this entire chapter ranting about those personalities. It was truly disgusting. I certainly wouldn't give that guy and/or girl a star.

The 12-Year-Old Girl

Perhaps I shouldn't focus so much on a specific age group. That's agist! In fact, not every girl who fits in this group is necessary 12. Some of them are 13. The point is, I wrote an entire chapter on this one called 'Git Gud' which broke all of this down. That chapter lists out all the common signs of a starting writer with extreme low self-esteem desperately trying to get attention and do things "her way".

The signs are pretty clear. They pump out "books" with six chapters, 300 word long, and don't even capitalize and then spend a long time feeling sorry for themselves when they aren't getting hundreds of followers. They'll often form cliques (yes, I didn't know Wattpad had cliques, but it apparently does), and the girls will all build each other up. It's a feel-good pity party full of excuses, logical fallacy, and narcissism abundant.