Why does TikTok hype extreme violence? |
Everybody’s worried that nobody reads and that the people who do are reading smut. In great quantities, it should be said, but still smut. Since the advent of the novel, our arbiters of morality have made it known that if a book has even a hint of sex in it – especially if that sex is suspected of inflaming the erotic imaginations of featherbrained young women – then it “doesn’t count” as reading. It’s just masturbation.
Earlier this year, a young woman went viral after bragging about reading 100 books or something like it. She was treated like, well, that six-year-old who went viral after reading 100 books. The response to this woman was like the response to the little boy: “Uh, does it count if the books are Curious George?” “Does it count if everything she read was ‘romantasy,’ BookTok’s latest euphemism for PORNOGRAPHY?” And so the wheel turns. Once again, people are criticizing romance novels – see the last 200 years of literary history.
If BookTok is to be believed, you purposely read splatterpunk to traumatize yourself
If BookTok is to be believed, you purposely read splatterpunk to traumatize yourself
Romantasy, and indeed, most contemporary romance books, are the backbone of BookTok, the TikTok subculture where they are marketed and sold. Some are leather-bound; some come in elaborate special edition boxes; sometimes their authors are influencers themselves. It’s plausible that this is the future of publishing: sensational, easily digestible books delivered to us via short-form video. Text-based pornography is not the most objectionable genre that BookTok has popularized, though. Another popular genre has somehow evaded scrutiny.........