š Hello! Weāre The Z Link, a global Gen Z-led social media agency that helps brands reach our generation. The Digital Native, written by our Trends Reporter, Shaurya, takes a deep dive into niche internet micro-trends and subcultures, and analyzes them so you donāt have to. For any feedback, questions or suggestions, just reply to this email!
Will the REAL readers and appreciators of great literature please stand up? And yes, thereās objectively good and bad literature. Iām going so incredibly inflammatory in this newsletter because I donāt want to tell people, āI want to start reading againā, and hear ā, Oh, Colleen Hoover is a great place to start again!ā Sheās not. Also, a lilā 18+ warning. I do talk about adult themes, so if youāre under 18, uh, come back when youāre 18? šĀ Iām trying to be a responsible adult here, please. Iām literally just a girl.
Booktok: The inception
Booktok is, very simply put, the book side of TikTok. What books they read IS the discussion today; I can assure you itās all pretty wild. Itās like itāsā¦ straight out of a book. Actually no. If you read good literature, what Iām about to monologue about will make you wonder why some people on booktok call themselves readers. And yes, I AM salty. Iām very self-aware like that.
Okay, so I had to go to the Guardian for this because my memory is as good as Doryās (to make Jake Peralta proud, itās veryĀ MementoĀ coded), but my social media historian self remembers living through it as a young 18-year-old in 2021. Guardian says booktok began with one glorious TikTok by Kate Wilson, where she shared her favourite quotes from her favourite books where the characters say I love you without directly saying it. I remember watching this and thinking, āWow, I should really get back into readingā, and then I proceeded to rot in my bed while scrolling through social media, but hey, at least I have a cool job now. After Wilson, we had two sisters, Mireille and Elodie, who run the account @alifeofliterature. They essentially started the trend of talking about a bookās synopsis visually to entice viewers. On my explore page and for you page, I usually see mood boards of YA novels likeĀ Haunting AdelineĀ or some shitty CoHo book likeĀ It Ends with Us. Iām sorry, but Iāve read betterā¦ fiction on Wattpad and Tumblr.
So, putting my self-proclaimed social media historian title to good use to give a little history lesson on the predecessors to booktok, which were, drumroll please, bookstagram and studyblr (also bookblr, but there was a considerable overlap on Tumblr). Now, bookstagram is still very much active; itās just been significantly influenced by TikTok in the choices of books they read now, and studyblr is dead because Tumblr is dead. More on studyblr and Tumblrās demise ahead, but as a side note, I think Tumblr is such a great resource for visual inspiration for literally anything (minus Jessica, who always seems to be 2 miles away and very lonely).
Booktok: The evolution
So I told you studyblr and bookstagram were predecessors to booktok, right? What I didnāt tell you is that there is a lot of history there, too. These two communities talked about ACTUAL books that werenāt JUST textual porn. Yes, they talked about YA novels, but the YA novels at the time ā 2013 to 2019 ā were books likeĀ The Fault in Our Stars,Ā Hunger GamesĀ andĀ Harry Potter, you know, the classics. We also had people DYING over Mr. Darcy fromĀ Pride and Prejudice. The romance was blossoming; it was all around us. And hereās the kicker: Wattpad was a thing during this era, but did I see my Instagram feed filled with the main characters fornicating (yes, I said fornicating. Iām a serious professional) in the most vile ways? No, because the book community knew how to separate those two worlds. Tumblr had all the NSFW spaces for fan art and fanfiction, and Iām very sure there was discourse about THE Wattpad books, but they were far more careful when it came to what audience it reached. It wasnāt foolproof because I obviously stumbled into that dumpster fire, but kids have more access to it now than I did back then. Itās all because of the cross-platform content-sharing strategy, and itās not bad for SFW content, but NSFW content, even with codewords like āp0rnā or ās3xā, needs to be controlled. I know I sound like a far-right religious nut, but thereās no reason for clearly 18+ books to be under the YA section. And why is there an āas seen on TikTokā section in bookstores now? š
Because covid was humanityās downfall, it only makes sense for it to have been booksā downfall as well. This whole written porn trend started in 2020, maybe even late 2019, when the movieĀ AfterĀ came out. The film was based on a Wattpad book series of the same name, and it was apparently Harry Styles fanfiction, or thatās what the news was anyway. Wattpad books are, or were, generally known for their poorly written smut because itās always some 13-year-old writing it. Yeah, see, it sounds terrible, but when you stumble across Wattpad and Harry fanfiction at the age of 11, it really piques your interest (ā¦Iām not talking about myself, NUH UH). But yes, Wattpad hype had died down for a while around 2017. It returned with the release ofĀ After,Ā which Iām guessing gave people the confidence (delusion) that maybe they could get their moment like that. Thus, it started the downfall of books and the book community on social media.
Making like Moses and parting the sea (of booktok)
Iām very proud of this sub-heading, and Iād like everyone to take a second to appreciate it and praise me and my brain; thank you. Youāve heard of the holy trinity; get ready for the cursed trinity, which are the sub-communities of booktok ā the horndogs, the mean girls and the people who actually care about books and want to chill. I couldnāt think of a cute name for them. Iām so sorry, but moving on and starting with the horndogsā¦ These guys only care about the romance tropes in their books and how āspicyā a book is, which is to say how graphic the coitus is (again, Iām a very serious professional trying to write here). Theyāre the kind to read a CoHo book if it means they can get their fix of dark romance. See, they call it dark romance; I call it mental illness, and thatās coming from ME. If you know me, you know itās got to be bad if Iām the one saying it. Moving on from them, weāve got the mean girls. Not all of them are pretentious, but the ones Iāve come across, at least on social media, are. They do look down on the rest of booktok, and I think they have a personal beef with people who read self-help books by self-proclaimed gurus, and I donāt blame them. But to be fair, theyāve got beef with everyone, so. On Wednesdays, they read Dostoevsky, and theyāll let you sit with them if you say your favourite book is The Great Gatsby. Theyāll be disgusted, but they put up with it since itās a classic. Theyāll be shocked if you bring up Machiavelli or Marcus Aurelius because how dareth a peasant knoweth the greats? I also think they drink red wine for the sake of it and donāt actually like it and secretly LOVE romance. The last of the trinity are the people reading it for the plot. Thereās not much to them because theyāre just straight-up chilling, and I love that for them. Keep doing what youāre doing; donāt let the horndogs and the plastics get you down. And although I donāt read anymore because Iāve devolved since 7th grade, if I had to put myself in one of the three categories, Iād want to be the mean girls because I like being pretentious and arguing, thank you, I will not be taking any further questions.
A critique of the current booktok landscape
I miss the old bookstagram, the always-talking-about-the-storyline bookstagram, and the never-spoiled-anything-about-the-main charactersā-relationship bookstagram. I hate the new booktok, the always-talking-about-smut booktok and the only-cares-about-aesthetic booktok. Now I know that Iāve only talked absolute trash about booktok, so it isnāt a fair critique, but have yāall seen how they act? I did say nice things about bookstagram and studyblr though and I think everyone should take that win. But going into some of the more severe problems that Booktok suffers from, Iām going to add another bit of warning for sensitive content. Very controversial take here (or maybe not) but readers that read smut exclusively or based on the āspiceā level of a book, are NOT readers. You just have a more acceptable form of porn addiction. So much of the sex is based around hard kinks, and while itās portrayed as something thatās geared towards women, itās not. Most female MCs are usually coerced into it, and people let it slide because itās a dark romance. Again, this is such a problem because these books are sometimes put under the YA section. Not only that but because of how Booktok functions, thereās a massive problem of overconsumption and high standards for books. Like, yāall donāt have high standards for men, but books need to be a specific trope with a certain number of kinks? Itās always the same tropes, just repackaged, and thereās never any storyline beyond the male MC being a mafia man obsessed with a girl he stalks until theyāre together. Authors also have to keep producing more and more books, which is again leading to a decline in their art. Booktok needs to grow up and start reading beyond just smut. Itās not healthy. And of course, itās not everyone that reads, or even every one thatās on booktok, but itās a trend and a very concerning one at that. Booktok and social media apps need to do better in what theyāre promoting.
Conclusion
So now that Iāve metaphorically annotated booktok as if it were a book, here are my closing thoughts. Booktokās predecessors need to make a comeback, as does fluff instead of smut. Let them take 20 chapters to just hold hands instead of having sex in the first chapter. Like, listen, I get it; dark romance is fun to read. I used to read it at some point, but also, please acknowledge how problematic reading ONLY dark romance is. Call your account a smut account if thatās the only thing on your account. Add age restrictions on your account because Instagram has a feature for it. Use it. And to other book accounts that talk about everything from dark romance to Fitzgerald, I love you, save me.
Any questions/suggestions as to what we should cover next? Reach out to us and weāre always here to chat!
ā Written by Shaurya, Trends Reporter at The Z Link
Connect with Shaurya on Instagram where she shares great content and lives her best influencer life as a fashion student in London. And she writes all of these great issues too. What canāt she do??? š§ Thank you for reading!