booktok, brainrot, and why it’s okay to be a hater

being a huge nerd means i care SO DEEPLY. about how people read books. but more importantly, i care about having access to those books. regardless of your stance on booktok books, you should be fighting against book bans. every day is an opportunity to think critically about literature, even now. especially now. analysis rocks! love u all!

timestamps:
0:00 intro
3:00 we have lost the plot. literally.
14:45 let people hate things!
29:34 a book is a loaded gun

register to vote! research your candidates! fight fascist alt-right censorship!

book ban resources:

articles

books:
Anti-intellectualism in American Life - Richard Hofstadter
Anti-Intellectualism in American Media - Dane Claussen
Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media - Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky
Fahrenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury

speaker clips:

p.s. please ask me for book recs i have so many

[alishanotalihsha]

i think the pinned comment on this video got deleted by the commenter? which is really disheartening because there was some great discussion under there but i'm just going to say what i said in reply to that comment: i obviously should've mentioned that there is a way to read about sex that exposes young adults to that kind of content in a healthy manner! this might be tmi but that's one of the first exposures a lot of my friends and i ever had to the topic and we were able to be exposed to these topics in a safer context than say, actual porn. sex in books has been extremely important throughout history for women's sexual liberation and deriving enjoyment from reading that isn't inherently wrong!

overall, i think the line between adolescent and adult spaces online has definitely been blurred as well, leading to murky boundaries between what children and adults are seeking out in books and a lack of communication about what kind of material is portrayed in popular novels. young people do have agency over what they read and what they don't - there should be a greater description of what is in the books they're advertised online. i also think we shouldn't be fully zeroed in on sex in books (hence why it was such a miniscule section of the video) because it leads to really poorly written literature and oftentimes we just accept it and don't ask for more, which is disheartening! we deserve to read well-written books about romance and sex and love! but the current demand feels like an oversaturation of mediocre writing, which ties to my bigger issue that a lot of people don't want to broaden their literary horizons, expand their scope, read things that make them uncomfortable, and critically think about the literature they read - the problem isn't sex in books! you can still enjoy things!! you can think things are bad!! (those things can be true at the same time) yet you can also ask for better books and clearer communication! i should've said this in the actual video, but i hope this clears some things up!

and getting asked for book recommendations -
i put the social media recs document in the description, but here are a handful of my all-timers (check content warnings):
gone girl by gillian flynn
anything by ada limon but especially bright dead things
know my name by chanel miller
educated by tara westover
little women by louisa may alcott
slouching towards bethlehem by joan didion
life on mars by tracy k. smith
the anthropocene reviewed by john green
the great gatsby by f. scott fitzgerald
sweetdark by savannah brown
and then there were none by agatha christie
the stand by stephen king
american sonnets for my past and future assassin by terrence hayes
pachinko by min jin lee
american primitive by mary oliver

[_jsy_]

"youre not healing your inner child, you are regressing into ignorance"

what a great line

[alyote]

i want a booktok tiktoker whos obsessed with "spice" in books to be tricked into reading the entire 6 book Dune series

[fenneko]

Sometimes books are jusy poorly written. People need to learn to accept that some of the books they like are of poor standard, but theres nothing wrong with enjoying it. A book being bad and a book being enjoyable are not mutually exclusive things, and someone critiquing a book you like is not a personal attack??

[maybesopgia]

as an avid fanfiction reader, it feels as though its just published wattpad that a 13 year old girl wrote. literature doesn't feel like literature anymore...it feels like tumblr in 2014.

[forcetruck]

“You can’t ‘I’m just girl’ your way out of everything. You pay taxes and vote. You’re not healing your inner child. You’re regressing into ignorance”

My favorite quote !!

[elephantshell]

“Book stylist” is one of the most dystopian terms I’ve ever heard in my life.

[laindarko]

I feel so vindicated after years of being told I'm no fun or take things too seriously just because I have critical thoughts about movies and books lol

[sophiasaudacity]

people need to realise that 'dark academia' wasn't supposed to be an aesthetic of ... brown clothes and old buildings --- it was literally created as a genre of intellectualism that criticised the racism and classism so prevalent in academia

[whatareyousayinggirl]

The frustrating thing is that it's not even REALLY being a "hater", right. I just share my personal experiences with a text and yet somehow there is always a booktok girlie who will scream that I am being a hater, trying to cancel the author, or am being a bully. ACOTAR and Fourth Wing fans are some of the worst for this, and they're the loudest/largest groups within the booktok community. I hate that I can't even say "This book made me uncomfortable because xyz" without someone harassing me and dismissing my experience.

[ashercries]

As a fanfic reader, this discussion is so interesting to me. What I’ve really noticed is that a huge chunk of booktok people, didn’t have fanfic phases as teens or young adults. Bc it’s so clear to me that what they want, is just fanfic. The same tropes over and over again, large quantities of smut, and even sometimes questionable material are all easily found in fandom content/culture (at least the ones I’m in). And this gap has even negatively affected the fanfic community. Many booktok fans have begun to read fanfic (specifically dramione but other fandoms too) without knowing how the system runs, only for them to illegally bind and sell these fanfics. Resulting in said fanfics, all of which are insanely popular in that fandom, to be taken down off of sites like ao3. As much as I do thing that booktok can be positive in niches, as a whole, it’s causing problems for other reading communities. And don’t get me wrong, fanfic has its own problems for sure, but I think if most of the booktok people had fan fiction phases, booktok as a whole would prob look pretty different.

(edit for clarity): obvi not ALL fanfic readers are into the things i talked about but even so, there ARE plenty who are. and also, fanfic and published books can talked about/criticized differently so im not sure how much that would really change anything. its still a very interesting thing ive noticed between the two :)

another edit, really an update: some of the fics that were deleted are now back on ao3. im not sure when they were put back on, but it’s been a bit over a month since the whole situation went down. i’m glad the fics are back up, but the cause is still very much a problem within fandom communities.

final edit: thank you all so much for 1k likes!! i’m so glad others are agreeing with me on this lol. have a great day <3

[BeautifullyTragicxx]

I had to stop engaging with booktok when I got a tiktok of a girl proudly saying "Guys, if your girl says she's a bookworm ... she's just reading thousands of pages of smut." And I know it was a joke but.

Bestie ... first of all, speak for yourself. Second, while women can, should, and do enjoy erotic literature, art, and films, there's something so strange and insidious about suggesting that all women read is porn. There's a subtle anti-intellectualism embraced there, that is also highly gendered.


As someone who does enjoy reading smut, but also reads a broad range of other genres, I've never been able to quite articulate what about the joke feels so blatantly anti-feminist and unfair without just sounding like I am anti-erotica, or think that smut is anti-feminist (I do not think that to be clear). I think there is real value to be found in erotic writing, and reading smut can be a fun way to explore sexuality. But I cannot imagine someone saying "Ladies, if he tells you he's a film buff, just know he's actually just watching porn."

[TheOneAndOnlyLobster]

“Does it have spice” and the book is Watership Down

[MoriMementa]

The Pro Golfer going "Touch her and die" was hilarious. My dude, you may have a mean swing but murder is still illegal. That only works in feudalistic fantasy novels.

[quingariusgoochiii]

“We can begin the book confidently, knowing the enemies will turn into lovers and the fake dating will turn into real dating - all will be tied up with a neat bow”

YA romance books are the reinvention of Hallmark Christmas movies, safe, digestible, and easily produced

[VarricsBianca]

I think people absolutely fail to understand that two things can be true at once. You can criticise something and still enjoy it. I criticised the HELL out of Fourth Wing even though I still enjoyed it. One of my favourite YouTubers hated and criticised one of my fave series and even though I agreed with all her criticisms I still enjoyed the series!

[ciyaturnip]

“Now they have this outward behavior of intellectualism but they don’t care about what’s actually in the book in their hands” YEAH AND SPEAK ON THAT

[oddlyrealms]

as someone who read a lot of fanfiction way too early in life, I'm honestly so bored by the 'spicy' books that get hyped on tiktok. there are so many fanfiction on ao3 that a one more spicy and two have a better and more interesting plot than a lot of modern books.

[conceptualizing]

i Realized recently that the reason why i am deeply upset by the words “its Not that deep” or the attitude that it comes as a result of is because Everything Is That Deep

[jordanlewis]

Never seen a booktok video, but man its so weird looking at the barnes and nobles "BookTok" table and seeing some sadboy literary novel like No Longer Human next to like 7 different piles of enemies to lovers romances. Does not exactly paint a flattering picture of the community's well-being