This is the first installment of Fantasy Aisle, a monthly column from Jackie Jennings about everything related to horny dragon books. It feels like the debate over whether #BookTok is bad has been raging since the moment the term was first coined. Over the past four years, there's been a flurry of essays on the subject, and now, in my inaugural books column for Jezebel, I'd like to throw my own hat into the ring—turn these flurries into a snowstorm, if you will. Because I'm starting off with a strong stance: BookTok is indeed bad. However. The problem with BookTok is not—as you might think—one of crappy books or bogus influencers. The problem with BookTok is TikTok itself. But what, exactly, is BookTok? People will invariably tell you that BookTok is, like everything else on Al Gore’s godforsaken internet these days, a “community," but BookTok is actually just a hashtag on TikTok. (If you don’t know what TikTok is, I don’t know what to tell you.) Like all hashtags, it’s a tool used to organize posts and allow users to search for content relevant to their interests; creators may use it to signify anything from a review to a roundup of literary aesthetics. Like TikTok more broadly, BookTok’s popularity skyrocketed during covid lockdowns. It connected people, introduced them to new reading material, and gave its largely young female participants a platform to discuss the emotional experiences they had while reading a given title. The consequences were astounding. In 2021, demand for printed books rose so sharply, publishers literally couldn’t keep them on the shelves. One of the most influential drivers of demand was social media, and the popularity of books that caught the imagination of BookTok creators—especially those by Colleen Hoover (a romance and YA author), or titles like Fourth Wing (a page-turner about hot 20-somethings with dragons)—translated into impressive sales. So what is my beef? This seems objectively good; people are buying more books. They’re not highbrow literary fiction, but broadly speaking, reading is positive. As I’ve written before, no one is dumber for having read a fun book. The books are not why BookTok is bad. Now, you might think I have a problem with BookTok influencers themselves; plenty of people do. Many of them are young women with cool nails, enviable style, and flawlessly organized shelves. In short, they do not look, sound, or behave like book nerds, yet they’ve successfully commodified the identity of “bookish.” And I get why that stings: I have glasses, bangs, and had two rounds of Accutane in high school; I am a true nerd! But for all the ways profiting off an identity—even a low-stakes one like “reader”—feels uncomfortable, I don’t really care. Their shtick isn’t even that novel; they didn’t invent capitalism, after all. No, my problem is with Silicon Valley and the technocrats who run it. Because despite the people-first veneer, BookTok isn’t actually a community driven by fans, writers, influencers, or even publishers. All of those people are merely a smokescreen for what BookTok is: part of a social media corporation, and controlled by the most mysterious, fickle god of all, the algorithm. Algorithms—and, crucially, the people who control them—underpin all of what you see and when you see it on every social platform. The people responsible for these algorithms would have you think they’re merely about “user experience”; they want to assure you they’re just focused on giving you a nice time in their corner of the digital universe. Besides, algorithms are just math and math can’t be good or bad. It’s math. But every time a social media…
