THANK YOU! Magnificently Written, And Say It Louder For The People In The Back!!

THANK YOU! magnificently written, and say it louder for the people in the back!!

what is your problem with tiktok or booktok and colleen hoover lmao its not that bad surely

the fact that it actively promotes overconsumerism, the way it sells books to you by just playing into already heavily milked out tropes with very specific character niches that are seen in every book nowadays and how the reading is just seen as something aesthetic or a part of the "it girl routine" maybe? if those are enough reasons for you?

does the fact that these books are the first things you see when you walk into a bookstore not bother you? when you ask someone for a book recommendation they'll follow it up with "its a romance slow burn enemies to lovers". it's always about the aesthetic of the book, how many lines can you take out of context and post as a compilation of your super cute romantic annotations page on instagram. no analyzing the book, no theories, no symbolism or meaningfulness at all. how people stand reading those kind of books and still feel any kind of emotions over these flat as hell books with no world or character building is genuinely baffling to me

no one seems to know about actual literature anymore, which not to sound like a boomer but i think its definitely true. there's always been trend cycles, i agree such as the harry potter craze from the 1990s to the 2000s and the dystopia hunger games/maze runner/divergent blast in the early 2010s but tiktok has just.. shortened these cycles so much. as a result, people like our darling colleen hoover whose written around 46 books since 2015 (according to google) try come up with as much fresh content as they can as quickly as possible for the readers (see overconsumption). the fact that this lady outsold the bible is not outstanding to me, its fucking concerning.

and after all that, the result is badly written books with characters who're about as dimensional as a piece of paper, overuse of tropes, read like they've been written by a toddler, toxic-ass relationships being romanticised, very unnecessary sex scenes and countless other things. seriously if i wanted to read about the kind of stories hoover tells i would just open a wattpad account.

this isn't to say that all booktok books are terrible. i'm trying to highlight some of the flaws i find in authors like colleen hoover, emily henry, taylor jenkins reid, ali hazelwood, sarah j maas and elena armas. some of their works are quite decent :) six of crows, thsoeh, tsoa, circe, daisy jones, where the crawdads sing etc are some books which i think everyone has heard of if theyre active online which were actually nice reads. also i am BEGGING u to reach out of your comfort zone and read something different like non-fiction or fantasy or one of the classics for once if you only read booktok like seriously it might be hard but just do it for the love of god!!