70 Deadly Wattpad Sins (The Book Of Evil Advice!)

Sin #18: Slam Poetry (Look. A door. Get out.)

  A thousand needles piercing my teenage heart.

  Pain. Suffering. Hate.

  Love stings like a bee, burns like gonorrhea.

  Why, Mother, why? Even Father has forsaken me.

  They tell me I'm grounded after 8pm, but I only hear the words;

  'You must suffer my iron oppression.'

  I was born free as a unicorn, but their curfews keep me reigned.

  Woah, 2deep4me.

  You've probably seen books of poetry that some authors have on Wattpad. Quick emotional chapters about what's been going on in their lives, often voiced through a typically-dramatic monologue. 

  For the most part, they seem to be dumping their weekly hormones into text form and exposing their tortured souls for ratings... and let me tell you, it's not exactly the Diary of Anne Frank.

  You, Sir, are making way too many enemies. Now you're attacking Wattpad's poets?! FASCIST!

  Woah, let's not drop any f-bombs this early on. Poetry is timeless, a constant structure throughout the history of art. Each person has a unique vantage point on how they view the world, and these musings are commonly expressed through mediums like Wattpad.

  The problem is that 99.9% of them totally suck, make absolutely no sense or are generally eye-gougingly terrible.

  B-But all art is open to interpretation! You just don't understand my genius!

  I don't doubt that you had a vision when you started your poem of unrequited love, possibly titled 'Lucile', 'Henrietta' or hundreds of other girls names that have been written about in days past. 

  The fact remains that Wattpad is a market, and like every open platform, some genres can become more saturated than others.

  What does this mean? Put simply, no one will want to read the same unoriginal lines across multiple poetry books. People use poems to inspire fresh ways of looking at the world, but the 'crying over some chick who doesn't even know you' brand has already been done to death.

  This is only the tip of the iceberg. Some people believe that the shorter their poem is, the more 'powerful' and 'edgy' it will be. This slam poetry is often a random pot of single words, and you can literally see the link between expected praise and the lack of effort.

  Stop. Turn. A door.

  It opens. A new path, a second chance.

  Think. Decide.

  Turn back. The same door. It reopens.

  Brick wall.

  Life.

  I... uh, what? Did I just have a stroke?

  Maybe you don't understand real art. That makes me a genius now, right?

  All right, you've made your point. Is every story on Wattpad this subjective?

  Honestly, yes. No one can decide what is inherently 'good', except for an overall majority. This is where we get our concepts of 'mainstream' and 'underground' from, and poetry is definitely the latter.

  Most of you won't witness the true horrors of 'pretentious art douches' until much later in life, but believe me, these folk are out there. Hipsters who are convinced that anything obscure is cool, and that every single thought they crap out of their mindholes is pure literary gold. 

  I'm... I'm not a poetic prodigy? Not even a special snowflake?

  Of course you are! Everyone is equally unique, as redundant as that sounds. The problem isn't with you, but what you're putting out there. Forgetting for a second about how important it is to separate personal rantings from your official work, let's focus on how we can stop your poems from sucking wheat grass.

  Poems don't have to rhyme. It's nice when they do, but only if it flows naturally and adds a certain impact with soft or hard syllables. If you go through with this, for the love of Batman, make sure you are consistent with the line order.

  Edginess is laziness. Like how jump scares are considered 'bad form' in real horror, trying to ramp up the drama from 0 to 100 in a single sentence just doesn't work that well. People like to be teased, given clues and have the tension grow on their backs until the big pay-off.

  Every poem is a question. If you don't have an answer, then what's the point? These people want to read your observations, and so you need to present an idea, theme or something close to heart. All stories need to lead somewhere, even if that place is 'the world is already dead and life is but an illusion'.

----

  You all probably think I hate poems now, right? To be honest, I actually love the way they used to be. Poems and scriptures have pushed boundaries and toppled monarchies throughout history, even saved countless lives with nothing but insightful words.

  These days, the top 'stories' give us a three-line slam dunk on someone getting baloney on their Subway sandwich instead of pickles. Could just be me, but the bar has certainly been lowered.

  We need to find a balance between freedom of speech and using cheap tactics for shorter reads. Just because everyone's voices should be heard, that doesn't make them worthwhile.

  You're right! Remember that one time in Germany, when they burned all of those tasteless art books? We should totally bring that back!

  Yeah, that's— Wait, what? I mean, let's not go that far...

  Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil!!

  Yep, I'm definitely gonna get a lot of flack for this one.