Chasing Wattpad

Take the Red Pill

"This is your last chance. After this, there is no turning back. You take the blue pill - the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill - you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes." Morpheus in The Matrix 

Well, no, we are not in the Matrix. And I am not Morpheus. 

But like the Matrix there are a lot things we see here that are not what they seem. This is a website. A virtual world. People do get lost in it.  Many things we see and label here do not translate into anything in the real world. That doesn't make this the Matrix, but for the people who believe these illusions it surely wastes their time and effort when they could be doing something a little more grounded. 

Let me explain what I mean by addressing some things I have heard people say while I have been on here. Here is a quote. 

"Look, I have 10,000 followers who like my stuff so you don't know what you are talking about!" I saw this in a thread I was reading. The person was saying it in response to some comment made about his writing. His writing, by the way, is pretty good. 

I didn't tell him this because I was not involved in the thread but no, he doesn't have 10,000 "followers". He probably doesn't have 200 followers. Real followers are very difficult to come by here because the website is not designed well enough for that to happen. People clicking the follow button does not mean they will ever look at your profile again. Most of them never will. And don't kid yourself, most of them never even took a look at your profile when they clicked on that follow button. They just weren't that interested. 

But that's okay because I don't have the 1000 followers my profile tells me I have. A great majority of the people that followed me were just binge following that day. They didn't stop to read my profile and say "Hey Alvarez, you must be the most interesting man in the world!".Nope, not at all. They ran down a list of recommend people based on the people they had already clicked on and they got to me. Most all of the people following me will never read anything I write. But now that I have 1k followers I will keep getting about 5 follows a day just like clockwork. It's the way the system is set up. 

Now don't get me wrong there are people that click on my follow button and have an interest in what they see. They are the ones that happen to come along and accidentally read something I wrote. And they only found it because several other people accidentally came across it and it crawled up some list somewhere and it got some visibility. And so it goes...the more they see you the more you are seen. 

I have maybe 50 people from my 1000 followers who routinely look for what I write. They read, vote, and comment. Maybe 100 or 200 more that just read without interacting. The rest are just a statistic on my follow list. And you are the same. Yes sometimes I get a thousand or more reads on this or that but those are just random people who happen to come along my stuff. And if they like it they might throw a vote at it. If they really like it they will look at my other stuff and maybe follow me also. But those are few. Most of my followers will forget me. Most of your followers will forget you too.

So when you say you have a 100,000 followers, well, you're living in The Matrix.

And reads are not that much better. Take a look at any one of your books and you will notice that a million  people read that first chapter but only half a million read the next one. And it gets less and less as you go on. So when you say that 100 people read your book well, no, most people never read the whole book. And you really can't guarantee that anybody read it. They might have just opened the page and looked at a line or two and left. The only people you know for sure read it are the ones that left a comment with enough info in it to show they read it. If you think otherwise  you are living in The Matrix. 

But most of this is not your fault so don't go all ballistic. The Wattpad system is designed this way. Things are divided into reads and votes and follows for the benefit of keeping you here. If you knew how many people actually read your books you might not stay. Or you might. Who knows? It's up to you to decide how much fantasy you want to live with it. There is nothing wrong with either way of thinking. One is real, the other is not. But they are both acceptable. 

But that doesn't mean you shouldn't stay. If you like it go ahead and stay. Write and have fun. But don't fool yourself. Don't be like that guy who says he has 10,000 followers when in all reality he doesn't. That guy is living in The Matrix. Somebody needs to unplug his butt from it. 

And before some of you start going all "Agent Smith" on me relax. I'm not a Wattpad hater. I love Wattpad. I just live in it with my eyes open. You should do the same. 

Take the red pill dammit!