By Senam Anaglate
I’ll be the first to admit, I was obsessed with Wattpad as a kid. I have traversed most of the Wattpad Literary Universe and consider myself an expert in everything related to it. Despite being a Wattpad enthusiast, I must admit Wattpad does not represent the best that writers have to offer. Therefore, as more Wattpad-esque storylines begin to leak into the mainstream, I feel the need to express my concern.
The best example of this leak is Colleen Hoover. She is a New York Times Best Seller with 24 romance novels to her name, including “It Ends With Us” and “Confess.” What most people might not know is that she began as a Wattpad writer. Though you might expect that her evolution from Wattpad to New York Times Best Seller would be mirrored in her writing, she fails to meet this expectation. Take “Maybe Not,” an enemies-to-lovers story born from an unexpected roommate pairing and featuring a bet about who would fall in love first. It has a plot eerily similar to the Wattpad classic, “The Bad Boy Isn’t My Type,” or “Ugly Love,” both of which are friends-with-benefits-to-lovers stories, a classic Wattpad trope. One might wonder why Colleen Hoover keeps being recommended by the highest authority in book recommendations, the New York Times. The answer is simple; we, as consumers, love to hate things.
Another example of the leak is the ever-expanding Wattpad-to-movie pipeline. “The Kissing Booth” was initially a Wattpad novel and in 2022 became one of the most-watched movies in Netflix history, despite having a 56 percent Rotten Tomatoes rating. Its success resulted in two sequels both with even lower audience scores than the original. Though “The Kissing Booth” was popular, the most popular Wattpad book-turned-movie is “After” which ended up having three sequels despite all the movies being objectively bad.
Wattpad stories have always read like they were written by 14-year-olds because they were. Yet something about those horrible cliches and the achingly slow set-up of the two characters falling in love had me clinging to my phone like it was a vital organ. Not only were they a guilty pleasure, but I had some of my favorite conversations with my friends ragging on how infeasible it was for the boy next door to climb through your window and steal your bra before even meeting you. This was the plot of my favorite and aptly named Wattpad book, “The Bad Boy Stole my Bra.” Or about how 90 percent of mafia stories were just glorified cases of Stockholm syndrome. Bad writing and bad media give us something to talk about, something to fill the awkward silences. At the end of the day, it allows us a chance to switch off our brains and just consume.
Many YouTubers and podcasters such as Dylan is In Trouble and Jack Edwards have built their careers off criticizing Wattpad-like media like the film “365 dni” and the Colleen Hoover novels. This kind of media keeps being produced because it garners a reaction from consumers and it sparks conversations. It is highly addictive and, regardless of how terrible it is, people are going to watch it. However, as popular media begins to look more like Wattpad, we must begin to ask ourselves: Where will all the good stories go?
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