Monday, September 5, 2011

Keeping Up with the Slackers

I am a writer by nature and so when I'm not looking for a paying job or signing up for Grad school; I usually am telling myself stories and writing them on my sister's laptop. I didn't have a place to put these stories until a couple of years ago when I found Wattpad. They defined it as the myspace of authors back then. Now it's apparently the youtube for authors. You get the gist. Now; unlike Myspace, Wattpad doesn't really bring much quality to its competition. Yeah, it's not objective for a writer to judge other writers but it's true.
The popular stories are not all well written and prove that the people popularising the stories don't know grammar and thus we'll have a bunch of 23 year olds in ten year's time who have no idea what good written language is. We have a bunch now but not so many that it'll be like finding a 30 year old virgin in this day and age.
The popular stories all have one thing in common; thrills. The people with the capacity of a laptop and internet connection (from here henceforth referred to as faurthors (TM)) don't have plot or growth in mind when they start. Most stories start off as one-shot thrills that turn into more-shot thrills thanks to horny teens and kids who think sub-par angst is awe-MGFRISKTGIF-some. They talk that way too.  The fauthors go so far as to ask for plot development from their readers like it's not their responsibility as a self-proclaimed author. Laziness at its height is my opinion.
My problem? Wattpad is supposed to help nurture authors like Myspace nurtures musicians. Provide a platform for them to publish their works because they are too young or too out of physical reach of publishing houses. How is a publishing house meant to take the players of the site seriously when fauthors dominate the standings? And if they happen to court the fauthors for publishing because of their popular standings, will I as an avid reader be then subjected to reading crap in my thirties? (ie in ten years) I'm seeing opening up an old books bookstore will be quite the hit at this rate with the products being touted currently as the next big thing being utter insults to the vocation of authoring fictional stories which has faced enough bashing over the centuries and only in the last hundred and fifty years become respectable in general.
The solution? Well, so far none. I am looking at other online-blog-type sites which cater to authors in hopes of finding one with a category that separates cheap-thrillers from authors.

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