I've decided that for my mental health I need to step away from wattpad far more then I have been. I honestly would like to say I'm permanently leaving wattpad because it's toxic for my mental health (even when nothing is going on), but I also deeply love wattpad as a website/app so I know I will come back eventually. It's just this double edge sword that the harmful edge is sharper then the positive side.
This is going to be a rambling, disjointed mess, but that's who I am and I wanted to talk about why I'm leaving wattpad for the time being and how it became this toxic place for me.
None of the things I say people have done are directed at anyone in particular, it's just become a mountain out of mole hills and I've been finding I've been logging onto wattpad as a form of self harm now.
I joined wattpad originally around 12 years ago, when I was in middle school. I made this account and started writing my spideypool fanfic to deal with the lost of a loved one, and to parse through figuring out my romantic orientation. Wattpad brought me so much joy back then but slowly I started getting comments 'correcting' my spelling and it caused me to have panic attacks. I would wake up just feeling intense dread of the fear of looking at my tablet knowing that there could be traumatic ablist comments. Eventually I had to turn my notifications off for wattpad. And things where fine for a while, and I was getting joy again from wattpad.
I learnt when I was 16 that allosexuality was a real thing, and wasn't just something made up by Hollywood for laughs. I decided that I wanted to in my spideypool squeal (which I removed) to make Peter asexual because it made so much sense to me, and I do see the character of Peter Parker being ace or Demi. When I posted the chapter where Peter 'outed' him self as ace I rember getting to be frank aphobic comments about it. People saying wade would never date anyone ace, people mad that it meant there would never be a sex scene. Just people blantly disregarding the spectrum that asexuality is and giving me the impression that some reader viewed ace people as worthless basically. I didn't want to deal with that bullshit so I just removed the fic.
I started getting into writing short horror stories because that's always been a love of mine to write, I've always tried to add horror elements into my fics when appropriate. My short horror stories never did good and as someone who is extremely self conscious about their writing and takes strangers lack of reading it as I was a shitty writer. I removed all of them, and eventually reposted them onto a separate tumblr.
At this point my love for wattpad was dwindling and I thought to rekindle it I would try writing a gender bent, lesbian, body horror, spideypool fanfic. I ran out of time writing it because of university, but again I received a rude comment about me not writing gay, allo, men. I received a comment from some one saying that only read MLM fanfics, and wouldn't read anything WLW. That's when I learnt about the heavy fetishization of gay men in fandoms, and how lesbians 'don't sell'. It fucking broke my heart as I was really pashinote about that story and was excited to share it with you guys. But after that comment I had no drive to continue writing something I was basically told only I would enjoy.
After that I stepped away from writing until this summer, where I posted some one shots which once again didn't do well, and again my brain told me I am a shitty writer, and I just haven't written for fun since.
Over this time as well the comments and fanbase of spideypool had changed over the eight years I've had this account. Comments would come in treating the characters as real people which makes me it extremely uncomfortable, comments about sex, innudoes, asking about sex, and all that starting coming in and I as a writer felt sexualized and fetished which makes me feel disgusting, and every time I see those comment I feel the need to take a shower because they physically make me feel gross being ace and on the neutral with close friends, and repulsed end of the ace spectrum on just talking about sex.
On top of that I've found the fandom keeps getting younger, and younger, and younger, and being 24 myself it makes me extremely uncomfortable with ~13 year old reading my works, 13 years sexualizing these characters. It felt like it was up to me to suprovise the kids reading my works, since wattpad changed their age settings. I never set up my account to be a complete safe space for 13 year olds, the audience I wrote for is 16+ and that's how I tried to managed my account. I felt uncomfortable when literal children where confused about allusions to suicide in my spideypool fanfic, because I didn't want to be the one explains those things to a child.
The straw that broke the camels back was one comment I got recently, after dealing with bullshit in other fandoms I'm in that I was just done with I got a comment saying 'superfamily and spideypool :( ' and that fucking hurt. If you don't like something some one did creatively you don't have to say anything about it, just move on and find something else that suits your interests better. It's made me realize as some who who had considered the self a writer that people don't actually care that writers write what they want, people just want things fine tuned to only their interests.
All of this rambling is my way of trying to explain how wattpad has become this toxic place for it, it puts me in a horrible mindset, and I keep opening the app hoping in a sick way for these comments now. I used to check wattpad multiple times a day because I loved it, then I went to once a day because it was toxic but I still love it, then I tried once a week, now I'm noticing that when I'm going into a bad, anxiety ridden headspace I check wattpad multiple times a day to make my self feel like shit, and the only way I can think of is putting the app in a random folder on my tablet. I'd delete the app, but I don't have the heart for it, I still deeply care and love wattpad and the community dispite the changes and the harm that's occurred.
I've updated my profile's link to be a link tree with my tumblr as well as where I made my profile pic. I wanted to add my tumblr because I don't check it often so I thought I would be an ok place for if a reader noticed bigoted comments they can let me know through there and I can deal with it then leave again.
Eventually I'll come back to fanfic writing, it's something I love and enjoy. If I decided to move websites I'll update my linktree to include it. But I think for my mental health I need to leave wattpad. Unless I post on my community thing that I'm back please assume I'm not using wattpad even if I do check in every so often.
I love you guys,
I hope you have a good day/night
Bye for now
