The Terrible Phenomenon of the Booktok Girl

TikTok. It’s just social media, but really, it’s a universe  in and of itself. TikTok just has so much to offer with its years of relevancy today, forming an intricate web of content for all us to consume. There are so many communities and areas of TikTok, ranging from the most basic of TikTok dances, to content creator houses, to fandom spaces for the strangest of modern media. One of these many communities on TikTok is BookTok. 

On the outside, BookTok seems to be a pretty great place. A community promoting reading on a social media app primarily used by young people? Must be great, right? Unfortunately not. Instead of being a place for people to start reading in a society that seems to hate it, it seems to be a new way to promote media that could best be described as questionable. And even more unfortunately, many teenage girls actually engage (and enjoy) with BookTok, and by extension, the questionable content found there. So, let’s discuss the phenomena of the BookTok girl.

BookTok

So, to first understand the BookTok girl, we have to know about BookTok. BookTok is essentially a “sector” of TikTok dedicated to books. On BookTok, there are a number of things people do related to books. There are book hauls, book recommendation videos, and book reviews, for example. Discussion around character tropes are also quite popular as well.

BookTok was first started by user @caitsbooks in 2020, when she used the hashtag “booktok” on one of her videos. The video went viral, and a number of other videos popped up under the hashtag. Soon, BookTok went from a hashtag under one person’s video into a full-fledged community.

But of course, nothing can be too great on TikTok. Instead of popularizing books of actual meaning or artistry, a warped version of fiction has been the subject of attention— romance. Now, the romance genre in general isn’t terrible. Yes, it does tend to hold an abundance of overly sugary books that often don’t have much substance, but they aren’t necessarily harmful. However, it’s not only that part of romance that BookTok loves to praise.

The types of books on BookTok are overly sexual in nature, often known as erotica. These books don’t really have a plot, likable characters, or even just a whole bunch of fluff. They are instead filled with pages and pages of pure “smut”. There is nothing more to these books than that, hence its label of “slop”. This is not literature, or art in any sense. It is porn-adjacent slop being slapped onto pages and published under the guise of literature. This might seem like an overly offensive description, but it is the truth. But that isn’t the worst part. The worst part is the subsection within the romance genre—dark romance.

Dark Romance

The dark romance genre is just what it sounds to be—romance with an edge to it. Higher stakes, more violence, and probably werewolves and vampires here and there. However, that is not the disturbing part of dark romance. The truly disturbing part of dark romance is how it blurs the lines of consent. 

You see, many of these dark romance books indulge in heavily sexual themes. In fact, many of these books circulate specifically around this. However, it’s gotten past a place where it’s simply embarrassing to read. It’s gotten to the point that it is actually romanticizing toxic and abusive situations. 

Haunting Adeline

One of the most heavily criticized of this genre is Haunting Adeline by H.D. Carlton. This book follows a girl named Adeline Reilly after she moves into the house of her grandmother, Genevieve, or Gigi, Parsons, who had been murdered in that very house. Adeline has a stalker, Zade, and her grandmother did as well. However, Gigi married the man stalking her, and that fate was one Adeline was attempting to avoid. 

Zade, the stalker, is made out to be “morally gray” character. Even though he’s a stalker who is obsessed with Adeline, he’s also a criminal hunter who tortures wrong-doers and saves children. And of course, the number #1 most redeemable feature—he’s attractive. All of this is set up so Adeline and her stalker can engage in a questionable relationship throughout the entirety of the book.

If this short description does not already ring some alarm bells in your head, then maybe a quick analysis will.

Analysis

This book, like many dark romance books, heavily invests in graphic scenes of sexual assault or sexually questionable acts, especially between Zade and Adeline, with a clear power imbalance between the two. However, instead of being a book to discuss the dangers of such themes, it presents itself as a gross romanticization of it. 

Adeline and Zade’s relationship is toxic in the book of course, but the author does not present it as something that should be stopped. Instead, she tries to make Zade a likeable character, making him someone who actually hurts criminals, despite the fact that he is one himself. And of course, presenting him as an attractive person will already make the readers like him more. This book isn’t a warning of falling into the abusive traps that Adeline did. No, instead, it’s for people to enjoy the “toxic” trope to fulfill their own fantasies.

Why It’s Bad

Like I mentioned before, the content within these BookTok books (not just dark romance) are porn-adjacent. Why? They have no plot, not character development, nothing that could qualify it as literature or at the very least art. It is purely just adult content somehow allowed to exist peacefully in public spaces. And yes, consumption of these books can have the same effects of porn addiction. This woman discussed her own struggle with erotica addiction, and in many ways, her story aligns with that of people suffering from porn addiction.

As this study explores, porn addiction has incredibly negative effects on an individual. It irregulates their sexual development, especially during childhood and adolescence, promoting unrealistic standards in relationship dynamics and sexual experiences. The increased dopamine production caused by consumption of pornography can lead to uncontrolled hypersexuality, having especially detrimental impact on adolescents. 

Unlike what some might argue, erotica can have these same impacts, it just has not been studied nearly as much. To reference the individual discussing her experience above, she described her obsession with consuming to her, something that she could not go without for long periods of time. That is not normal. That is an addiction, and addiction of any sort is dangerous. Unfortunately, many BookTok girls are very quick to deny this.

“But it’s just fiction!”

This is an argument that comes up a lot with BookTok girls when discussing the dangers of erotica and BookTok. And on the surface, it is correct. Unlike other forms of pornography, erotica doesn’t use real people to create its content, and hence, real people aren’t hurt during the process.. It is something that simply exists in a fictional realm. But that does not take the effects it has on the individual who consumes the content.

You see, erotica promotes extremely dangerous and negative character and relationship tropes. It romanticizes “non-con” (non-consensual) relationships, rebranding sexual assault as “dark romance”. It’s not “just fiction” if it rearranges your perception of a normal relationship. It’s not “just fiction” desensitizes you to violence of all kinds by putting a cute little rose on it. Nothing is “just fiction” if it makes you think stalkers are cool and rape is okay as long as you’re attracted to the perpetrator.

The Argument of Misogyny

One of the more complicated arguments in support of use for dark romance and erotica is misogyny. Many supporters believe that discourse against BookTok and erotica is rooted in a misogynistic views. They see this kind of media as an outlet for women to express their sexuality and any harsh criticism against said media is something they see as regressive. To them, the BookTok girl is simply a girl exploring her own sexuality.

The problem with this argument is that it completely disregards the heavily oppressive and misogynistic tropes perpetuated by erotica and likewise media. Let’s go back to Haunting Adeline, for example. In this book, Adeline is incredibly submissive to Zade. Even if she might push back a little, the power scale is clearly tipped on Zade’s side. This is no isolated story either. All the “non-con” tropes used throughout dark romance and erotica are produced from extremely sexist standpoints. To consume this kind of media is far more sexist than it is to criticize it.

 The BookTok Girl

There’s a reason this article is specifically about the BookTok girl. Unfortunately, the terrible content on BookTok isn’t limited to adults, as it most definitely should be. Many young girls make up this group of people, all indulging in the same dangerous media that BookTok consistently praises. And yes, it is way worse that you think it is.

As I’ve mentioned before, pornography has its worst effects on adolescents and children, and much of this audience are young adolescent girls. Reading erotica completely changes the healthy way an adolescent mind and body should go about sexual maturity, and completely rewires their views on relationships of any sort.

Remember, us teenagers are very impressionable. It doesn’t matter how aware you think you are, how much you know, how set and confident you are in your ideals. Our minds are still growing and we are still learning, and we will always be easy to question ourselves. This is what makes young girls such victims to the dangers of BookTok and its books. They start thinking it is normal to romanticize the questionable tropes perpetuated by books like Haunting Adeline and start fantasizing them themselves. Instead of being aware of the dangers of sexual violence and stalkers, they think of it as some cute little “dark romance trope”. The BookTok girl isn’t necessarily responsible for her own consumption of media. Rather, she is a victim to the overloy normalized content that is erotica and dark romance.

Final Note

The problem is, the affects on the youth, the BookTok girl, is what BookTok and erotica supporters fail to consider. They fail to consider the fact that their content is always going to reach the laps of the youth. Or the fact that in a society that already disregards sexual violence, it should not be used to create content for sexual fantasy. They fail to consider the fact that the youth will consume their content in this very society and play right along, allowing violence to more and more normalized and disregarded as time progresses. It doesn’t matter that “their parents should be looking after that” or that “they’re old enough to know better”. If the content has the potential to ruin so many young minds, should it really exist?