The Wicked Whims of Wattpad
When I was 12 years old, I had a pretty standard bedtime routine like most pre-teen girls: read dirty Wattpad fan fiction on my iPod Touch until I physically couldn’t stay awake any longer. I needed to envision myself getting fucked by Harry Styles on a kitchen counter, otherwise I simply could not fall asleep.
My guilty pleasure was literally anything to do with One Direction. I used to imagine myself as Y/N, a pretty girl who wore skinny jeans and ugg boots, with an Abercrombie and Fitch sweatshirt to top it all off. Her hair would be in a messy side braid that slung over my infinity scarf. One day, she would wake up and walk down the stairs like any ordinary day, only to discover her mum had sold her to One Direction as a sex slave. Just your average wet dream, right?
Yup, young people everywhere in the early 2010s were absolutely smitten with the website that was Wattpad. You could read fan fiction from literally any fandom on the planet, with MILLIONS of stories to pick from the site. The individuals I spoke to for this article ranged over a ton of different fandoms, such as Supernatural, Twenty One Pilots, Troye Sivan, Twilight, and more. There was truly something for everyone, from the mild sexy times to the more extreme BDSM type shit.
Personally, Wattpad provided a HUGE sexual awakening I had never felt before. Suddenly, all I could think about was getting railed by Harry Styles after he’d bought me off my family (kinda fucked up now that I think about it, but we’ll get to that later). I wasn’t the only one who experienced feelings like this once being introduced to smutty fanfic. Dina says that she didn’t recall “ever having sexual desires or anything before that”, saying that “it took me so long to understand how the fanfics were making me feel”.
For some, dirty Wattpad fanfic was where they felt “most comfortable”, as Jillian put it. Being turned on is fun, especially when you’re experiencing those fanny flutters for the first time. Yazmin said they used it as a form of escapism in their “horny teenager” years, before they were sexually active themselves. They shipped Cas and Dean from Supernatural, but since the CW writers were “too pussy to make them gay”, Yazmin had to get their content elsewhere. That’s the beautiful thing about Wattpad; the FANS led the direction of the stories. They could turn their fandom favourites into anything they wanted, diverting away from overplayed scenarios and tropes that are often in popular media.
When I asked if the interviewees learnt more about sex from fanfic than real life, the general consensus was YES!!! This I can agree with from personal experience - Wattpad was the first time I ever learnt about oral sex. Many found that it opened their eyes onto what happens when you grow up, taught them to be more open and less taboo about sexual topics, and helped them to realise what they liked sexually. Yazmin put it perfectly when they said “it definitely showed me more than just your average Pornhub video”, going on to make excellent points about how well written smut is often more realistic and entertaining than porn videos, as well as porn usually having a lack of asking for consent and being purely about the guy’s pleasure.
You could even try writing some of your own smutty goodness, if you dared. Jillian said while she “didn’t know a whole lot about acting on it in real life”, writing dirty fanfic helped sexual topics to become more comfortable as she grew up. She even recalls going back onto her posted stories years later and seeing tons of comments begging for more. “I was like damn, people actually read this?”
However, like anything, there are downsides to the Wattpad phenomenon. Firstly, many of the individuals stated that reading dirty fan fiction often set “unrealistic expectations” of what sex would be like. Holly commented that the popular One Direction fanfic series ‘After’ seriously affected her love life in high school, as she “compared the guy” to her highly idealistic expectations of what a relationship should be as read on Wattpad. Nelly said sex definitely wasn’t what she thought it would be like, describing how she “expected more, because fan fiction made it sound like this amazing thing most of the time”.
Secondly, the topics of sexual, mental, and physical abuse were hugely normalised and romanticised within dirty fanfic across Wattpad. Like I said earlier, stories about being adopted as sex slaves were incredibly popular, amongst other popular storylines such as being kidnapped by a boy band, or an abusive ‘bad boy’ boyfriend who had a soft spot for the main female protagonist. Nelly describes how she was “desensitised to it a bit” after seeing the normalisation and romanticism of such heavy topics. The messages we received at such young ages were definitely not always positive, which is concerning looking back.
Overall, Wattpad played a huge role in many young people’s sexual awakening and views on sex, both in positive and negative ways. It taught many people about the fun, exciting side of sex, allowing them to learn more about the logistics and become more comfortable with the topics. However, while we can’t change the past when it comes to the unrealistic expectations set and the triggering topics that were romanticised and normalised, we can learn from our old ways and change the messages being sent out to young people of today’s generation. Regardless, Wattpad was an ICONIC part of mine and many others’ pre-teen/teenage years. I don’t think I would be the kinky bitch I am today without Wattpad, it truly raised me and shaped me into this glorious woman who exudes raw sexual energy in everything I do. Yup, I said what I said.
Fun fact to end this article off: Rumour has it that editor Caroline Moratti had a fun party trick at 17 where she would recite this really smutty Bee Movie fan fiction at parties. “It had this incredible ending of Barry killing Vanessa’s unborn child whilst inside her, it was amazing.” If that doesn’t make you froth her even more, I don’t know what will.