Updates from LOFIAF

Human Nature.

I've always wondered how other people can bond with each other so easily.

I've been on this site two and a half, almost three years and I've only made one friend.  Granted, that friendship has lasted since June of last year, and she's now one of the best friends I've ever had. But what I've never understood, being the excessively reticent person I am, is how people gain followers so quickly.

The thought doesn't bother me at all, mind you. I'm perfectly happy with my current status on this site. It's just that my hiatus has spawned a unique opportunity to speculate on the thoughts of other human beings, which I love doing. Please, include your thoughts on this intriguing topic below. I'd love to hear your opinion and correspond with you.

I started off as a naive (can't figure out how to do two tittles on the i) 12-year-old on here in August of 2014 when an old friend introduced me to Wattpad. I was hugely into Pokemon then and still am now, so I started to read Pokemon Fanfiction that others posted here. I even posted my own story, The Cavern's Messengers, for those of you that remember it. In the time that I was mainly active, from August 2014 to about the summer of 2015, I saw much change to the Pokemon community. Users rose, users fell, even the GottaReadEmAll club started. But what I'm interested in is the "Users rose" part. I saw many Pokefic readers rise to fame on Wattpad, acquiring hundreds of followers in mere months of being on the site. Yet my follower count remained still, at about 15 - 20, even with being active on the site for a consistent 1.5 years. "Why?" I asked myself, as I still do so now.

Is it because I refrained from entering into the Pokemon Watty Awards, or auditioning for the GottaReadEmAll Club? Is it because I seemed too inapproachable? I commented and voted on people's random books and stories like everyone else did; why didn't I gain any friends or readers of my stories (I acknowledge that I conversed with Lostie-P and RiverIvy, but overall we didn't talk that much)?

I know it sounds like it, but I'm not jealous. It's incredibly hard for me to be actually offended by something, or even care about it negatively at all. Then again, perhaps my need to include this paragraph in this chapter is an attempt to keep me in denial of my jealousy. Oh, well. The fragility of the human mind, am I right?

If you've been a long-time reader of my stories (which I highly doubt, no offense), or even if you haven't been, please include your input on this. If there's anything I love, it's a good intellectual discussion. So long as we remain civil, I'm sure it'll be enjoyable to talk about this.

Or, I don't know. Maybe I'm just a nerd who likes to think about things like this.

- PA

Song: White Host, Green Room (Joren "Tensei" de Bruin, "Homestuck Volume 7")