I have been an active user of Tiktok (ours is here) since it was known as Musical.ly, and I'm not going to lie, I love Tiktok and always have. I think the algorithm is one of the best ever and continues to get better and honestly, I love the people that unapologetically use Tiktok. But there are a lot of aspects of Tiktok that I don't enjoy, one of them being the Drama-of-the-week culture. From Pink Sauce, to Jojo Siwa's flavor of the week, to Womblands to the current-ish drama of the Interior Design Stealing (??? what on earth), there is a new drama every single week, with millions of Tiktok users picking sides, and oblivious news outlets misreporting the actual nuanced drama. Very rarely do I have strong feelings on these dramas but.... let's talk about the "booktok" drama of the last week or two - Hockey Booktok.
Hockey Booktok Drama - Cliffs Notes
So, a few months ago, a moderately popular booktoker was assigning characters from a popular hockey romance novel to actual real life people who currently play hockey. One of the teams that had a handful of players assigned, was the Seattle Kraken. The Kraken Social Media team, reaping the benefits of the virality of Tiktoks while enjoying well earned playoffs high, leaned into this frenzy and even encouraged it. Now, several months later and with a lot of Tiktokers going feral over real life human beings they've assigned to fictional characters, a player from the Kraken and his wife have asked for this to stop, and the Kraken has deleted all evidence of the Booktok frenzy.
Now for my thoughts --
As a woman, I'm super annoyed that this is now coming up in the way it is, and how it affects our progress as a sexual being. Ughhhh, as a reader of many romance novels, a handful of the first romance novels that I read were The Score by Elle Kennedy and the rest of The Off-Campus Series, I am so disappointed in this situation. As a Seattle Kraken fan, and resident of the Puget Sound, I'm honestly super disappointed in the Kraken (unpopular opinion, I know). As a Tiktok user, I'm frustrated in general about how media understands the app and the various subcultures/ "subtoks".
The Kraken Issue
Let's tackle the business part first. My opinion is - the Seattle Kraken should not have leaned into this as far as they did. I think a nice tongue in cheek recognition of the Booktok fandom would probably have sufficed. Once it got down to specific players being promoted, and inviting a fan who said extremely explicit things about these real-life-human-beings that was a sign that things had gone too far.
Imagine you're working at a regular office job doing I don't know, selling paper. Your boss hears that paper sales people are the new Magic Mikes or Playboy Bunnies of the world, and tells you, "Hey, we're going to use you to promote our business. Wear your sluttiest khakis and be sure to flex when you lift your 10lb boxes of paper."
Is this example ridiculous? Yes. But, the athletes on the Kraken were just doing their job and were expected to not only win playoffs games, but also be eye candy. It takes a lot of hard work and dedication to be on an NHL team. Years of practice, moving from city to city, working up the rank from minor leagues up and then to finally get to some of the most pivotal games of`their career now during the pre-game stretches overhear a fan undermining your marriage. They see thousands of comments undermining their marriage, making their partners uncomfortable, and most importantly, making them feel uncomfortable. But the social media team was pushing this, and encouraging it, because it gets them more views and more virality, and most importantly, more younger, female fans who want to come to games.
Super risky for the Kraken legally, and definitely encourages an environment for sexual harassment at the workplace. And honestly, gross of their social media team and whoever else was involved with Okay-ing this campaign.
The Sexuality, Modern Feminism and Shame Issue
I think romance booktok has really brought pride in a lot of women who can now proudly say, "Yes, I read romance novels" and the Kraken tie-in really seemed to destigmatize women's romance novels. Let's be real, the romance novel industry is $1.4B annually. This is a lot of people reading a lot of romance. I read about 1-2 romance novels a month, probably more. I think the romance booktok brought a lot of women out of their shells, and got them to say proudly, I read romance novels.
Did the Tiktoker who went too far ruin it for all women? No, but she did send us a little bit backwards in the fight.
A fair bit of women's romance is beautifully written, but passed up due to explicit content. Are men's works treated the same way? No. By the tiktoker's overstepping, it led a lot of the public to believe that the average romance novel reader only thinks of men or character in a purely sexual way.
The Tiktok Issue
Finally Tiktok in the media. Journalists, if you don't know Tiktok, don't write about it. No one benefits from your cliffnotes version of events. No one enjoys your boomer level understanding of the app and the various communities and cultures that live and thrive in the app. Just stop or educate yourself better on the topic.
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