2014. I’ve watched Austin and Ally for the gazillionth time, and now I need something more to feed my obsession with them, or maybe just my obsession with Austin’s actor, Ross Lynch. From reading Austin and Ally ‘imagines’ (fictional scenarios with self-insert characters) on Pinterest, I’ve somehow stumbled across another universe: Wattpad. An orange and white realm where I scroll and scroll and scroll and my feed fills with thousands of Ross Lynch fanfictions. It is glorious.
I can’t really remember what happened after that; all I know is that my life truly changed that day. I signed away my teenage years the minute I signed up to Wattpad. Entering my email, choosing a password, and deciding on my first username: @RamlaSwag. Iconic or cringe? My Wattpad era was the most fun time ever, and now, looking back, it was probably the most formative. I actually came to realise how important it was when I saw a TikTok of someone sobbing over a very ‘2014 Tumblr’ quote. It was a classic; the ones that are poorly written, moody, and trying too hard to be deep. One of the comments read “this is why we needed to be on Wattpad in 2013, so shit like this doesn’t happen”. I couldn’t agree more.
Wattpad, Tumblr, or A03 weren’t helpful for teenagers just because they got them into reading and improved their writing skills. The fanfic world was important because it allowed a space for all the teenage cringe to have an outlet. Teenage life is all messy and ugly with hormones, first relationships, and first heartbreaks. Your best friend probably talked shit behind your back, your parents don’t understand you, you have developing ideologies of yourself, of the world, of love, and of relationships. During this time, you’re also getting properly into different media and discovering sad quotes, poetry, and melodramatic breakups on TV. You’re gushing over some character on TV. There’s so much newness and emotion.
Websites like Wattpad, with their inventory of extensive fanfiction and original work in various genres, languages, and writing styles, were the outlet for all this exploration. Writing and reading based on your complicated parasocial relationships with celebrities was a perfect way to explore your attraction, romantic preferences, and emotional attachment. Using Harry Styles allowed readers to delve into more than just physical attraction. They were able to try out different partner personalities and roles, sexualities, and sexual orientations in a space that felt both anonymous and supportive.
What made Wattpad such a formative space wasn’t just the creative freedom it offered, it was the fact that it allowed just enough public scrutiny to keep things in check. It wasn’t like writing in a private diary, where every melodramatic thought and over-the-top fantasy could live unrestrained. On Wattpad, people saw what you wrote. They commented on it. They reacted in real time. For every gushing comment from a reader who was equally unhinged, another person pointed out the overuse of ellipses, the questionable relationship dynamics, or the fact that your main character was clearly just a self-insert. Wattpad wasn’t exactly a harsh critique space, but it had just enough collective awareness to make sure that, eventually, you’d look back and cringe. And that cringe was key.
Additionally, the books allowed physical examples of sex education and of possible problematic habits or patterns to look for in relationships. In some cases, it romanticized toxic relationships; but, through exposure and experience, many users learned to distinguish between fiction and reality. It was a safe space to indulge in fantasies while also developing an awareness of what should, and should not, be romanticized. Yes, books like ‘After’ by Anna Todd did attempt to romanticise toxic relationships under the guise of the throbbing ‘bad boy’ male character, but often readers went through the ups and down of the stories, learned the bizarreness of the behaviour through comments and even experience their own emotional exhaustion over the toxicity of the relationships. Eventually they came out the other end – reflecting and realising the danger and lack of appeal in the trope.
Often, fanfic websites like Wattpad or AO3 are discredited or shamed for their overwhelming ‘obsession’ with celebrities and popular fiction characters. Although I think there is an element of validity in the disapproval, these platforms allowed teenagers (and teenage girls especially) to love deeply, feel deeply, and obsess deeply. There is a danger eventually for this obsessiveness, which external disapproval, to an extent, helps tamper. But the ability to feel big should not be discouraged. There is life and kindness in these big emotions, and in an adulthood of nihilism, there is a purity and need for these obsessions.
This balance of obsessive freedom and embarrassment was crucial. It let young people explore their identities and interests in a way that was both liberating and self-correcting. Over time, many users would look back on their old stories and cringe — but that cringe was a sign of growth. It meant they had developed as writers, thinkers, and individuals. Because if you don’t have a space like Wattpad as a teenager, where do all those thoughts go? They don’t just disappear. They risk showing up in real life in ways that actually matter. Wattpad allowed us to work through our most unrealistic, naive, or downright delusional ideas about love, relationships, and identity, in a way that was low stakes.
Ultimately, cringe is just self-awareness catching up to past versions of yourself. It’s uncomfortable, but it’s a sign of growth. Wattpad, in all its weird, overly dramatic, and occasionally mortifying glory, provided a generation of teenagers with the perfect environment to cringe and then, crucially, to move on.
Wattpad was the cringe we needed; to write bad dialogue, to make every character have ‘orbs’ instead of eyes, to fall for emotionally unavailable fictional men who would be nightmares in real life. Teenagers deserve a place to be weird, horny, emotional disasters. A place that is equal parts welcoming, strange, slightly terrifying, and undeniably formative. Wattpad was exactly that: a fever dream of a community, a pipeline from cringe to self-awareness, and ultimately, the chaotic literary playground we all needed.
