So, this rant is a little different. It's not actually about fanfiction, but it is about the warriors Wattpad community. I originally published this in my smb, but I decided to revise it and post it here because I think it's something this fandom needs to see.
I want to preface this by saying it is not an attack or an indirect on any one individual. This is about certain harmful behaviours a lot of people on here. If you recognise these in yourself, please don't get upset, I promise I'm not calling you a horrible person, but I am calling out toxic behaviours. And if the shoe fits...reflect on that. With this rant, I tried to find the line between understanding and harsh, because I don't want to hurt anyone and I know the people engaging in this behaviour are vulnerable and struggling, while still explaining how serious and harmful this is and condemning the behaviour. There are no excuses for this kind of thing. But if there's anything in here that you think it out of line, could be phrased better, or anything you think I missed, please pm me or comment!
Trigger Warnings: Suicide, self-harm, and general mental illness. Please don't read this if you think it will cause you distress!
A lot of us struggle with depression, suicidal ideation, and other mental illnesses. And a lot of us come on here to vent. There's nothing wrong with venting! But there are healthy and unhealthy ways of venting and unfortunately, I've been seeing a lot of the latter.
A lot of you are logging in here, talking about how you want to/are going to hurt or kill yourself,. And you're doing this without trigger warnings through announcements or smbs or other public means. And that just isn't okay. Let your Local Mentally Ill bitch let you in on a secret: people here aren't therapists. We're not your helpline, we're no crisis team. We're a bunch of regular teens/young adults. When you vent here about how you want to hurt yourself, you're not going to help yourself. You're just going to stress people out. I'll be blunt, if you're out here typing "hey I'm about to kill/cut myself" you're being manipulative and verging into suicide baiting territory and it isn't okay. Nobody here can help you. We can't call the police, an ambulance, or your family. It creates these feelings of helplessness and fear among your friends and followers here. It's terrifying. And that's the reason why you do this. You don't reach out to your irl friends or family, not just because you feel like they won't understand, but because they'll offer you help. And you don't want that. So you traumatise an entire community of people so you can get those validating "please don't hurt yourself!!! We love you!!!" comments. It's a way to express your pain and reach out without the risk of someone intervening and providing you with actual help.
You're being attention-seeking. That's a term I don't like to use in the context of mental health. But it's the truth. You're reaching out for help in the only way you know how. You need those validating comments to make yourself feel better, to lift you out of that depressed, about to harm yourself state. It's the only way you feel that you're loved and worth something. There's nothing wrong with a cry for help. When I started self harming, that's 100% what it was. If I'm being completely honest, my first suicide attempt was a cry for help too.
The problem is that your cry for help comes at the expense of your followers and your friends and doesn't actually help you. I've had to talk internet friends out of suicide before and trust me, it's traumatic. It made me feel like I was responsible for someone's else's safety. I've spent hours trying to say the right thing while having no idea what is the right thing, trying to keep my own anxiety at bay, terrified I'm about to lose a friend. No untrained teen should have to shoulder that responsibility. And that's the kind of thing you guys are doing to your audience, and it isn't okay. Your audience cannot be held responsible for your safety or mental health. Doing so is irresponsibly using your platform. And yes, you have a platform, even if it's small. I've seen a lot of people here condemning Draikinator and other public figures all while abusing their platform just like they did. This community is full of kids and young people. We have to make our community safe.
It's worse when I see people keep on repeating this behaviour, who are old enough to know better, and have been warned about it before. That's when my sympathy runs out. At that point, you know you're hurting others and you're putting your own needs for validation before that, and that's plain fucking selfish. I know you're hurting, but that doesn't mean you can hurt other people. We aren't your crisis line, you don't get to take advantage of having followers who care about you that way. I don't care if you "want to say your goodbyes." It causes so many people pain. If you feel like you're going to kill yourself and you want to say goodbye, type up that message and leave instructions for a friend or a family member to publish it on wattpad after you're dead. It will still be painful - suicide will always cause pain - but you're not going to leave your followers in a helpless panic, wondering how they might save you. No one should ever be put under that kind of stress. If you need someone to talk you down, call a helpline with trained crisis workers who can help you. Obviously, the best thing to do is not to hurt yourself. I'm in no way encouraging or endorsing that. I don't want anyone to be hurting or killing themselves. I could give you list of resources and coping techniques, but that's not the purpose of this chapter - pm me if you want. But if you're certain you're going ahead with it, here's what to do and what not to do around announcing it on wattpad.
I don't know how you guys rationalise this. A lack of self-awareness, maybe? I have friends who have had to talk others out of suicide, and how scary that situation was for them, and then put me through the same thing. I forget trigger warnings and overstep boundaries at times without realising it and talking to friends. But that's different from intentionally terrifying hundreds of your followers. You want to keep your followers updated on your life and your mental health? Make sure it's in a healthy and appropriate way. I talk about my struggles with my eating disorder, depression, suicide, and self-harm on Wattpad a lot, but I make sure it isn't in a way that could cause people harm. I didn't tell my followers I was going to off myself before I tried it. I had a note and instructions for a friend to post it, but after I didn't die, I let my friends on wp know what happened and that I was now in therapy. You "just wanted to vent?" I don't care, it's still not appropriate. Go and vent on a vent server designed for this purpose, or to a hotline. Privately pm a friend if you need to, as long as you're respecting that friend's boundaries. You don't need your hundreds of followers to hear your struggles in deep detail. Say that you're struggling, but don't go into triggering detail. Just stop hurting others for your own gains, it's not that hard. When it's someone younger, around 11-13, I'm more sympathetic. Going through mental illness at that age is tough and in my own experience, you haven't developed the maturity needed to deal with it in a healthy way. But if you're younger, or haven't realised how harmful this behaviour is, here's your formal warning. Now you know. If you keep acting like that, that's a real shitty thing to do.
The worst is when people threaten suicide or self-harm on their announcements without even a trigger warning. You followers didn't consent to that, you didn't give them the choice to click away. There are so many obvious ways this is harmful and easy fixes to reduce that harm, so if you're doing this shit, there's no fucking excuse. None. If you desperately have to vent on wattpad (which you literally don't - vent servers and helplines exist for this kind of thing, and you can vent without hurting your friends) do it in your fucking smb with trigger warnings where people have the option to click away; you're not just bombarding people's notifications with your unsolitcited suicidal vent.
So how should you vent? I think it's best to vent directly to friends on here in pms, on discord or whatever, and have set boundaries with those friends. I have a friend who I vent to, and what we do is always give trigger warnings and check that the other is okay with venting before we go into it so we don't trigger each other or cause each other harm. Venting directly to friends wit their permission means that you can express your emotions without harming anyone or bringing wider groups of people into your problems so that they're not scared for you. That way it's much less public . Nothing wrong with letting your followers know if you're in a bad place, but you should avoid going into the specifics (unless you're talking about self harm or suicide or any danger that you've caused yourself in the past)
If you want to vent through your smb, give SPECIFIC trigger warnings so your audience knows and can click away if they feel they're going to get hurt. That way everyone is consenting, but again I urge you to avoid saying you're going to hurt yourself to a wide audience.
You have to consider the impact of your actions on others, and distressing your audience helps no one. It makes you selfish. Just because you're mentally ill, doesn't mean you can't or shouldn't be held accountable for your actions. Your mental illness may drive your behaviours but it isn't an excuse. I know this sounds harsh, but I'm not gonna baby y'all because you're mentally ill. There are many mentally ill people on this site who manage to deal with their crises without traumatising their audience. I know seeking help and validation can be a symptom of mental illness, but you still have control to get that validation in a healthy way. A hard truth about dealing with mental illness is that you still have to take accountability for your actions, and you have to fight the illness to get better. For example, I use self-harm to cope as a symptom of my depression, but I'm not a slave to my illness. I can make the conscious choice to do everything I can to keep myself safe. You can too. Maybe your brain is begging you to kill yourself and tell your followers about it so that their "no, please don't do it!! We love you!!!" comments can get you through another day. But you have to fight against those impulses and find a way to help yourself without hurting others, and if you won't do that, that's a choice that you made, and you deserve all the criticism that you get.
I don't want people to come away from this chapter upset at themselves or at me. This is coming from a place of concern and a want to keep our community to be safe. If you've participated in this kind of toxic behaviour in the past, don't blame yourself. I've done it. When I was 13, I wrote a friend a letter after an argument telling her about my self harm so that she'd understand I'd only been a bitch to her because I was depressed. And I signed it with blood. So trust me, I know what it's like. I've been there. Everyone messes up. Take accountability, correct your behaviour, and move on. You can't change the past but you can grow and strive to be better in the future. If you're currently doing this sort of thing, don't feel like I hate you or that you're a horrible person. You're not. You're hurting, you're misguided, and I'm sorry you're struggling right now. Once again, take accountability and grow. Get the help you need, whether you want it or not. Reach out to irl people who can actually help you in a crisis or help you recover from your mental illness. From someone currently recovering, it's so worth it. "It gets better" sounds cheesy and stupid when you're struggling because you feel so awful, you can't imagine how it could ever get better. You've been so sad for so long, and nothing's improved. And even if things do get better in the future, you can't get through the present to get there. But I promise it's true. I spent my entire teens mentally ill, but now I'm 19, and I'm so glad I held on to get to where I am. But if you're someone who has repeatedly done this behaviour and have multiple people tell them how hurtful it is...fuck you. You're being selfish and it hurts this entire community. I'm begging you to please fucking stop, for the people you're hurting, for your future self who's going to look back full of regret. For yourself, because if you're mentally ill, you really don't want to fall into another pattern of negative behaviour patterns that you'll have to unlearn.