Orangutangents

Be Kind, Always

I'm currently training up a batch of new Ambassadors at the moment, and it's an experience I always enjoy as I get to meet a new group of enthusiastic Wattpadders who want to give something back to the community they love. And the picture above is something I throw at them to promote discussion and remind them that the comment or story they see on the screen may not be the whole picture.

Something that always strikes me in my day to day bimbling around Wattpad is the incredible diversity of the people I work with, both in the Ambassadors and my colleagues at Wattpad. And they of course are representative of the even broader diversity of Wattpad itself. 

The main Ambassador team now has people from all over the world, who speak a myriad different languages (almost 50 now and still rising), who come from all walks of life, many of whom share their life experiences freely with the group. Some of those experiences are harrowing, some uplifting, some make you shake your head in disbelief, and some make you smile. But that to me is the joy of Wattpad. We all have so many stories to share, so many lives to lead vicariously through the experiences of others, and so many ways we can help and support each other on our journeys, both on Wattpad and in the wider world. 

It takes little effort to drop a kind word, a please, or a thank you into a conversation. But I know I forget sometimes, I'm human (or possibly simian), but I do try. Yet it's so much easier to do online than it is in the real world: the response doesn't have to be instant, and I'd suggest it probably shouldn't necessarily be so either. It's very easy to forget when you're online that there is a human on the other side of the screen you're looking at. And you have no idea what that person has been through, or is going through, and of course many use Wattpad as their escape from their daily lives. 

So before you type out that message in a glorious flurry of flying fingers and thumbs (unless you've yet to evolve your thumbs) and smack send as the final punctuation; pause for a moment, review, go and make a cuppa if necessary, edit and tweak perhaps, and then send. But be kind, always...

~

(easy to say, not always easy to do, but sometimes difficult carries greater reward. Here endeth the simian lecture for Tuesday, tomorrow Alien Emojis)