Hi all! Welcome back! Last week, I started a little rant about BookTok, the bookish subculture on TikTok. Last week, I talked a bit about the marketing of romance books, the normalisation of adult content in YA novels, and what they label as “must-reads.”

This week, I wanted to tackle some other issues like the overconsumption of books, trope-marketing, and the blurring lines between reality and fiction.

As you can tell by this blog, I’m all for reading. However, I think there is a line to be drawn with how many books you read a year. I’ve seen people on the internet brag for reading hundreds of books a year, which is a huge feat. But at some point, I feel like reading becomes less a thing of enjoyment, and more of a competition. This can lead to having to justify that you’re a “true” reader, even if you only read 10 books a year. But the only thing that should qualify you being a reader is your enjoyment for reading stories.

Additionally, with the ease of individual publishing, anyone can be an author. Barriers were removed that previously made it hard to publish your own work. While this is a wonderful thing, I feel as if this has led to marketing through tropes. I love specific tropes, and I won’t deny picking up a book because I heard that it had tropes that I like – but it feels like some books are just a collection of tropes, with little actual story or character building. We see this with TikTok songs too. Songs are teased by releasing a few lines, but when the actual entire song comes out, people are disappointed because it lacked the same energy that made the snippet so viral. With books, I’ll often see videos pushing a specific scenario or a couple lines of dialogue that make the comments go wild. But when I read the entire book itself … it just feels like it’s missing that oomph.  

My last point, and possibly the most concerning, is that a small number of people on BookTok seem to struggle with reconciling books with reality. Anytime there’s a video with someone vaguely resembling a character, the comments are flooded with references to the book and people claiming real people as the book characters. And this is all fun and games — until it’s not. Back in 2023, there was a controversy surrounding a hockey player and BookTok. Hockey-based romances were thriving on BookTok, and people starting recording hockey players at games and posting those videos with references to book characters. One hockey player, Alex Wennberg, was especially targeted. He was captured in numerous videos, edited in a way that objectified him, then was posted without consent. This led to concerning comments that his wife referred to as “predatory and exploitative.” It eventually got to a point where his wife had to step in and ask people to stop, which only led people to harass Wennberg’s wife and young child. Wennberg then came out to ask BookTokers and his team’s PR to stop posting them in relation to BookTok. As mentioned earlier, this is only a small portion of BookTok, but my concern is rooted in how this might affect younger users. If this borderline obsessive behaviour continues within other facets of BookTok and is unchecked, it may be seen as normal and perpetuate unhealthy behaviours.

There is no denying what BookTok has done for the book community, but there is something to be said about how it’s impacted the integrity, safety, and respect for those involved.

Until next time!