The Art of Glorifying Garbage

| The Algorithm Ate Our Plots! |

Where Did the Plot Go?
A literary crisis brought to you by trauma tropes, Instagram thirst traps, and the collective death of nuance.

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Okay so it's been way too long since I wrote for this book, but whatever, we're here now—and guess what? I'm annoyed. Again. Which, frankly, at this point should count as a personality trait.

Let's talk about the absolute, tragic, slow-motion car crash of what we once used to call... writing. No, seriously—where did it go?

I'm not even being dramatic (okay, maybe a little), but writing isn't about writing anymore. It's about reel-ability. About whether your scene can be slapped onto a 9:16 frame, overlaid with glitter text that says "he looked at her like she was the moon" while a melancholic Weeknd song hums in the background. Since when did storytelling become a thirst trap for algorithms?

And before anyone attacks me—no, I'm not saying aesthetics are evil. I like a good vibe. But here's the problem: somewhere between chasing likes and being "bookstagrammable," we lost the plot. Literally.

Honestly, it's like we're not writing stories anymore. We're writing trailers. Three-second clips for reels. Punchlines for captions. Things that look good in quotes on blurry Pinterest backgrounds. It's less about making readers feel something, and more about making them obsessively repost something. It's not storytelling anymore—it's thirst marketing with a plot-shaped outline loosely taped to the back.

Stories are being engineered for virality, not vulnerability.

And tropes? God. I used to love them. Still do—when they're done with some actual goddamn care. But these days, it feels like stories are nothing but tropes. I swear to god, more than half the books I see now—especially on Wattpad—feel like recycled versions of a daily soap. Same tropes. Same covers. Same dialogue. Same guy who says "You're mine" in italics like that's supposed to be hot and not mildly concerning. Every story is either a mafia boss marrying someone against their will or the billionaire's wife being kidnapped or "I fell for my brother's best friend" for the 13478th time.

If I had a rupee for every mafia/CEO/billionaire/stepbrother/bully book with the title "His Ruthless Touch" and a cover featuring a faceless man in a tux gripping someone's waist like it's a plot point—I could fund a therapy scholarship for every girl who thought that was romance.

And don't even get me started on the "forced marriage" trend in desi stories. Like babe. If I wanted to read about women being legally bound to men they barely know and emotionally manipulated for character development, I'd just... watch Indian TV serials from 2006 and cry.

You know what's even wilder? Half of these books are just smut dressed up as "dark romance" when really, it's just emotional manipulation, abuse, and control being glamorized with a black-and-white Pinterest edit and some quote like "he broke me so he could put me back together." Um. Therapy exists, woman. He doesn't have to.

Half the plotlines read like the writing equivalent of expired chewing gum—chewed up, spat out, and somehow recycled into another vaguely spicy Wattpad novel with 3M reads. No shade to the writers (okay, maybe a little), but come on. Are we seriously out here calling smut with zero emotional stakes "angsty slow burn" now? You gave him daddy issues and a six-pack and called it character depth. Stop it. Get help.

What bugs me more is how morality has just left the chat. So many stories are just... well. Porn with plot. And I'm not anti-smut, okay? Write what you want. But at least make it make sense. Give it soul. Give it meaning, anything other than "can this make it to 3 million reads by next Thursday?" Don't wrap up toxicity, abuse, and actual war crimes in velvet ribbons and call it "romantic tension." Some of these male leads need a court hearing, not a redemption arc.