Internet Havens for the Strange of Mind.

Writers would be the first to say that they have strange minds, from people watching to collecting random facts because they could be relevant later. Writers live in two worlds, reality and the world they have in their heads and sometimes they meet adversity when they attempt to explain the universes they have created to the people surrounding them. “You won't earn money – choose something else”, “Only certain people can be writers – you should look into other things”, “It's a bit useless isn't it?” To amateur writers, these phrases can leave them feeling empty. What's the point, if no one listens?

Image 1: Tobias Wolff.

This is the experience that birthed the social network, Wattpad. A social hub for writers and readers, Wattpad is a space for stories, poems and blogs, any kind of writing that welcomes the connectivity between the author and the reader. The Huffington Post wrote a good article explaining how the use of Wattpad has shaped people’s lives but why has a website managed to affect the way writers connect? Wattpad started as a space for writers to upload their stories in a public space but, as Yi-Fu Tuan says in his essay Space and Place, a space does not become a place until you are familiar with it.

Wattpaddians, as they call themselves, create their own place. A profile, a picture, a little welcoming status, it's pretty normal to start with. However, for writers, this changes with the upload of their first story. They go from a place where their creativity is squashed, to a place where their worlds are loved by people they have never met. A super connector for writers around the world, Wattpad created a place where creativity flourishes, where it was once ridiculed in the real world. Writers made an online haven where their stories could be told.

References:

Yi-Fu Tuan. (1979) Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience. Great Britain: Edward Arnold.

Ondi Timoner (2014) The Most Literate Generation: Wattpad & the Power of Social Reading Huffington Post  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ondi-timoner/the-most-literate-generat_b_5080649.html