The decline in reading in America is a troubling fact, so a social media trend that encourages people to frequent bookstores and read well into the night should be a welcome one, right? Yet “BookTok,” a TikTok term that refers to a community of mostly women who read dark, sexually-explicit fantasy novels, is anything but a return to literacy.

When I searched “BookTok” on TikTok today and clicked on the first video the algorithm showed me, a woman shared her top five books. Her reasons for loving them were, to say the least, highly problematic.

One book, “Graves,” by Katelyn Taylor, was recommended by this creator because “who doesn’t love twin brothers who share the same kitty cat?”

“Give Me More,” by Sara Cate, was next on the list, with the creator recommending it because “who doesn’t love a group of friends who love to share?” she said, obviously referring to polyamory.

“It’s so hot. It’s so good. You just have to read it,” the video concluded.

But it’s not just these seemingly uncouth creators who are promoting such reading selections. Barnes and Noble, the global bookstore chain, features an actual table at some of their stores labeled “Spicy #BookTok.” Apparently there is zero shame in the mostly female crowd who throngs this table to buy literary pornography.

A search for “booktok boyfriend” reveals a trend where girlfriends have their boyfriends act out the fantasies in the books, essentially using their men to pretend they are with a fictional someone else.

The problem with consuming such porn, even if literary, is so obvious that it astounds me. It bears repeating the Merriam-Webster definition of pornography: “The depiction of erotic behavior (as in pictures or writing) intended to cause sexual excitement.” [Emphasis mine.]

Perhaps such women would respond by saying that this kind of pornography is different, or that maybe it isn’t different, but it is still more morally upright to consume this type of pornography than videos on X-rated sites. Why do I doubt that any of these women would hold the same standard for their boyfriend should he hinge his attraction to her based on how well she could mimic women he viewed in an adult video?

But there’s something more sinister going on here beyond the more apparent pornography issue. My sister and I both love to read, especially the classics, so the algorithm has fed us both content from creators who brand themselves as literary individuals, yet who only read pornographic and increasingly twisted fantasy novels. Bookstores, a natural haunt for book lovers like ourselves, are filled with smut, with only perhaps a small shelf reserved for great literature. Book podcasts, a great way (or so you would think) of discovering new literature, are reduced to giving books “smut ratings” with 10, or course, being the most ideal.

Besides the fact that the disappearance of the classics is bad for our culture and our minds, the disappearance of the excellent writing found therein, replaced by poor yet “hot” syntax, is another tragedy. Take this set of paragraphs from Colleen Hoover, the goddess of BookTok. Believe it or not, this was the least raunchy sample I could find that still showed her characteristic lack of writing skill:

‘Live. If you mix the letters up in the words like and love, you get live. You can use that word.’

He laughs again, but this time it’s a laugh of relief. He wraps his arms around me and he kisses me with nothing but a h*** of a lot of relief. ‘I live you, Sky,’ he says against my lips. ‘I live you so much.’

Such sentences would never make it past a publisher except if what was being sold in the book was not excellence but titillation.

Books consumed for coarse entertainment rather than edification are not literature in any meaningful sense, but something else. They become something one does as a societal status symbol. You read books and post about them on “BookTok” to be seen as literary, as sexually explorative, as engaging and edgy. Reading a book popular on BookTok means nothing unless you can post about it because reading it does nothing for yourself beyond satisfying your carnal senses.

Books, in this case, become merely a more socially acceptable way to consume pornography. More than that, these books constitute a social elevation, allowing the consumer to publicly degrade herself, but with an aesthetic dust jacket and acceptance in an online group that pulls its members back into the pot without realizing they are boiling in depravity.

—

The republication of this article is made possible by The Fred & Rheta Skelton Center for Cultural Renewal. 

Image Credit: Pexels