Why Your Story SUCKS | Writer's rants & discussions

Please Read Books Are Dumb

This goes along with my Wattpad Petitions Are Dumb rant since I'll be saying similar things. I've just procrastinated so it's getting published very late.

A couple times a week I see a "PLEASE READ" or "IMPORTANT" titled book pop up either in my feed or shared by different people I follow. Or I'm tagged in comments of them. They're usually someone writing an urgent message about something bad going on in the world (i.e something happens like a racially charged incident, rape, whatever, and nothing has happened to the persecutors. or they talk about vile people on wattpad doing shit). You've probably seen a few yourself.

The premise of spreading the word about these things sounds good, it sounds like the right thing to do to create some sort of change. So you're probably wondering, why do I have an issue with them?

I don't necessarily have an issue with writing about unjust things to let people know, my issue comes from the lack of research, not clarifying updates on cases, white-knight behavior/unrealistic hope, and the way people just believe whatever they've been told. I'm not speaking about all urgent books obviously, just a good amount I see.

I have come across several of these books where the cases they're getting people riled up over are months old and have already been dealt with legally. They hear about a story and rush to get it out there before researching it/asking further questions and figuring out if what they heard was actually true (which I have seen people hear stories from other users with zero evidence to back it up), if that's only apart of it, or if, again, the incident is old.

I shouldn't have to fucking say if you're going to report something serious to the public, you need to research first no matter how bad or quickly you wanna get the word out there. If you're gonna be a journalist, put in the minimal effort of googling it or asking for confirmation.

Questioning the validity of somebody's claim doesn't make you an asshole who's trying to invalidate a poor victim. If that person is telling a story, you have every right to question it until they provide solid, 100% true evidence. I hate how people believe anyone who questions a tragedy and wants proof that isn't just someone's words is always deemed insensitive.

Do people always owe proof? No, I'm not saying people need to prove every little detail of their life stories to people, but they should provide solid proof if they're publicly claiming very heavy accusations against other people. How many times have people lied about shit and gotten away with it and scammed everyone cause nobody pressed them with questions?

And if you're someone who reads these books and starts pounding the alarms without confirming the information being given to you. I'm sorry mate but you're quite dense, people get shit wrong or manipulate narratives, the news gets shit wrong and manipulates narratives. If you wanna know about a story look it up yourself and look at more than one source. Reading one article and a few Twitter comments from random accounts does not make you an expert on a situation.

Secondly, I'm also sorry but people who panic when hearing about something bad happening in the world will just cause unnecessary drama and more panic. Not saying you shouldn't care or be aloof, but must you panic? Bad shit happens every day and night, it's nothing new and if it's new to you, then you're probably too young to be reading about it anyway. Sure, thinking about all the bad shit in the world can make you outraged at how this stuff happens, that's fair, but that doesn't mean you should tag everyone you know and write a post with unconfirmed information or start creating change.org petitions. Learn to think with logic, not impulsivity and emotion.

Even when corrected, I'll see some people put the update in a separate part of the book instead of at the beginning of the original post or just deleting the entire thing when most reading these aren't going to add the book to their library, they either found it, were tagged it in, or saw someone else share it and decided to read. Which to me is shitty to do cause again, you're getting people riled up and what do riled up people do? Tell others and outrage before they realize, oh this is old, never mind. If the information you are putting out is no longer of concern, make that clear in that post.

White-knighting. I see this a lot more often, and it's when people writing urgent books act as if we rally together we can solve the issue, or if they get all of us to tag our friends in the comments and share the book and sign this petition, etc, something will happen.

I just saw a petition on Wattpad to end bullying. End bullying. Not end bullying on wattpad by adding better community policing and such. End bullying period. End the phenomenon of humans disliking each other for deep-rooted psychological issues because our brains are royally fucked that has been happening since the beginning of sin. A petition, a change.org petition, has the power to do that folks.

I'm sorry, who the fuck are you? God? No? Oh, you're a 15-year-old on Wattpad? Sit the fuck down you have a savior complex bigger than The Hulk's asscheeks, you can't sit at this lunch table babygorl. Ha, just bullied you, go home and make a petition about it to post on your Wattpad.

If you expect a bunch of random wattpad users signing a petition to do anything, you really need to slap yourself awake. A simple google search about internet petitions will tell you, they don't work for serious things. When was the last time you saw a change.org petition end rape, racially charged crime, or bullying?

You are not the brave internet heroes that will save the girls in third world countries being gang-raped as gay conversion therapy by writing a wattpad 'please read' book, linking a change.org petition, and getting people to tag each other in the comments. You are not saving anyone. You are contributing jack shit as far as actually helping. Yes, you're spreading the word, but again, a bunch of wattpad users who are mostly underage and have no authority whatsoever will help how? As I said above, there's nothing wrong with spreading information but don't act like you're helping greatly and deserve ass pats for your amazing charity work.

Just do your research, don't be afraid to ask questions, and love of Jesus stop making change.org petitions.