“Booktok”. Is it a curse or a blessing? BookTok is a community on the popular social media app TikTok that has bonded over the common love of books and reading. But it’s not just a community; it’s a full-blown internet obsession. More than that, it’s a well-oiled machine cranking out money for creators. This community of book lovers can be an amazing outlet for people to express their love for books and connect with others, but there is a dark side. A dark side that has almost completely overshadowed the innocent and harmless community it started out as. So, what changed, and what is this “dark side” people are overlooking?
The main idea of BookTok is to review books and get book recommendations as well as create other forms of book content that include reading vlogs, and “day in the life’s”. However innocently this started out as, there is a dark side that is quickly overtaking the platform and community that is skyrocketing publishing revenues, reducing quality of books, and exposing children to explicit content.
In recent years, the promotion of explicit books has spread like wildfire. What used to be a niche genre is now all you can find in books. Explicit content in books has been normalized and promoted, so these kinds of books have become so popular. Publishers are realizing that books with explicit content sell more than books without explicit content.
As a result, explicit content is seeping through cracks and crawling around barriers in Young Adult fiction. Now, children are getting their hands on adult material because if an explicit book is labeled as Young Adult, it is more likely to reach a wider audience than if it is labeled as adult, which means more profit for the publishers.
Along with an increase in graphic and explicit content, the overall quality of books has significantly declined. Modern Literature does not exist; books are now all about what will sell the most copies. What once was a cherished art form has now become a victim to the internet and social media. Now authors are cranking out books at an unprecedented rate, but ever book is a near copy of each other. Books lack creativity because publishers and authors have mastered the formula of what will gain the most revenue. Storytelling as an art itself is dying, and social media is to blame.
TikTok and other social media platforms promote overconsumption, explicit content, and overall poor writing. The TikTok famous author Coleen Hoover is notorious for ridiculous and outrageous lines in her books that are so popular they have been made into movies. This of course is not a new thing; poorly written books are hardly a new phenomenon, but these lazily written books are becoming more and more common on the book market.
So, are we really going to let social media destroy literature?
