Booktok needs to die
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- Опубліковано 23 вер 2024
- Looking forward to the comments from people who clearly didn't watch.
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booktok erotica is always so deeply unsexy, none of these writers have ever convinced me they've actually had sex the vanilla way, let alone the kinky stuff they write about. also saw some tweet that was like "young women are 100% within their rights to explore their sexuality through erotic novels, i just wish they had higher standards about it"
*O O F*
You have discovered the notion of erotic content mills
Yep, itsnot even like they tried?
I know sex scenes are probably hard to do right, but at least try?!
And for gods sake, can you focus on characters at least.
And maybe trymaking it akward,romantic,whatever.
The only woman they have been around is pokemaine through their phone screen
I have higher standards, but that’s probably because I’m a trans masc person who likes women and other non-binary people. And I barely have an representation, much less good representation.
Honestly, I don’t have a problem with girls and women having weird s*xual fantasies. Especially because a lot of those fantasies are their way of coping with trauma and fears. Bu that being said, it’s still weird to read it in public.
What bothers me is not even the erotica. Like, whatever, read about people having sex, your choice. What bothers me is that all of these books are essentially the same shit. Like the cliches are all there. I can't comprehend reading multiple book series that follow the exact same 'cake recipe' everytime. That shit would make me drop reading in a heartbeat. Reading different genres or even different types of stories within the same genres is so refreshing.
People read similar stories because they like the tropes, cliches, etc. associated therein. It's not a new phenomena (think harlequin novels). Some people just really really like specific genres (e.g. slasher movies, isekai stories, harem anime to choose ones that specifically have a lot of overlap in story beats)
I hate the mislabeling. Romantasy vs UF is so hard to tell and this is incredibly annoying if you want to see how shapeshifters would live in the modern world without having to read about how a speshal gurrl is dominated by a hot grumpy dominant guy and into it.
Honestly this seems like the book equivalent of weebs who are basically just into like softcore porn anime and hentai saying that they "just watch it for the plot" and it's really some other genre and stuff.
I mean they can have surprising good plot and characters, seriously. Japan has probably enough fiction thats very ffanservicy but also surprising deep, so i dont count out creativity in the erotica department.
I give it more to them than sarah j maas types anyways
I've read hentai reviews of anonymous people who really criticized the hentai they were reading because "bad plot", "boring writting", "cliche character development", "too slow pace", etc. Yeah, there are quite a bit of hentai enyojers that are harsh on the ero-content because of those things. The other day I found one that said, parafrasing: "The writting is so dumb I couldn't fap this shit. Great art, but the the story sucks, boring". Yeah, things like that happen. And the more veteran the more you start to despise and criticize hentai.
No it's fucking not, man. You know it's not, quit coping.
It seems the anime mind plague has finally breached containment. May God have mercy on us all
"Watch it for the plot" is a meme tho and it mocks the few weebs that actually say that shit unironically even for the worst erotic manga/anime, while sexually repressed idiots baiting people into reading porn is the norm for booktok and you'll be the one getting mocked there if you actually point it out.
Even labeling a review on such books with an "18+" would be helpful.
Or all books should come with the "General Audiences" "Teens and Up" "Mature" and "Explicit" ratings of AO3
(I'm a big fan of being able to make sure all of the stuff I'm reading definitely isn't graphic for my littol Christian eyes)
To be honest, I blame Sarah J. Maas for all of this.
I mean at least she wroites fantasy interupted by horny sex scenes, unlike her clones.
ACOTAR and its consequences have been a disaster to the human race
Who's she and what did she do?
@@kittykittybangbang9367 she’s an author, one of the early ones of this type, and relatively popular so the comment above was probably blaming her for popularizing the genre(?)
I mean you have a point but I also feel E.L. James established "Insanely popular novel that people read openly while being in denial about it being porn" in the broader conscious. And Romantasy (Porn masquerading as UF) has been around since I started reading UF (my pet peeve is how hard they are to keep apart sometimes. I want to read UF, not a thin veneer of UF hiding horny fantasies).
THANK YOU for addressing this. It’s been bothering me so much and anyone who seems to try and talk about it on tiktok gets immediately attacked for “making fun of people for what they like to read”, which is NOT what the majority of us are doing.
If you like to read smut, that’s perfectly fine, but don’t call it something it’s not and then get upset when people disagree with you about it.
I think the way books are marketed by their publishers also play a role in this. Advertisers are pretty strict with not allowing sexual content. Social media in general also punishes people who talk about sexual topics (as shown even in this video, avoiding saying "p*rn" in the first minute). As a work around, publishers try to market in more advertiser/social media-safe genres to get the most amount of eyeballs, and thus sales.
Unfortunately, it worsens the general reader experience. I was browsing the Kindle store for Mystery/Thriller/Suspense books and under the Organized Crime section, it's filled with Mafia Romance/Erotica. Erotica in general has had a problem with clogging best seller charts of genres that aren't Erotica. It's obviously popular, people are RAVENOUS for it, but it makes it harder to find other books.
Re: the kindle store, I’m not saying you’re wrong (I feel the same way you do about the state of the gothic lit section) but just so you know authors don’t decide what categories their books get sorted in, Amazon does, so messed up categories are Amazon’s fault.
@@missb.197 Sort of. When a book is published on Amazon, the publisher can select 3 categories for their books to be put in. While the Amazon algorithm CAN change what books are in what categories, these 3 categories the publisher defines their book as helps define what the category even IS at a large scale.
The Amazon algorithm doesn't know what a thriller is vs a romance novel like a real human does. It only knows data: what books are categorized as, and what other books people who bought book X have also bought.
Taking the Mafia Romance example, the publisher (not necessarily ALL publishers, but ENOUGH) has selected Mystery, Thriller, Suspense > Organized Crime as one of their categories. When people who buy Mafia Romances also buy these miscategorized Mafia Romances, the Amazon algorithm makes a connection--Mafia Romances fit into MTS>OC. And so even if a publisher categorizes their book accurately, the algorithm can still shift it to a different category--the category other publishers have chosen to list their books under. In this case, because Mafia Romances are more popular than actual Organized Crime MTS, the Mafia Romances will dominate the bestseller charts, giving each other more visibility while pushing the more accurate-to-category books into obscurity. It becomes a self-perpetuating problem.
For those interested, you can look up K-lytics or "kindlepreneur amazon categories" and see how important selecting categories is to publishers, and what goes into the choices they make.
(I'm also making a clear distinction between author and publisher--not all authors are involved in the publishing side of their books, and publishers who have made deals with Amazon have more perks than small/self-publishers (i.e. possibly have access to more than 3 categories).)
its spelt porn, not p*rn. and dont give me any bs about youtube deleting it bc it doesnt
What really gets me is that its all prn aimed toward teenagers. They can call it "Adult" all they want but lets be honest about the majority of the demographic.
I also think that some of these teenagers need a Wattpad phase.
What would a wattpad phase entail? Read stories where you’re a protagonist named (Y/N) who’s sold to a boy band?
@@degeneratemale5386 Pretty much, yeah. Video prn is pretty cringe, so is written prn on Wattpad(or any other fanfic site). You don't talk about these things in a cafe or something. They consequently learn that there is a time and a place.
Also, just by your comment I can tell you haven't spent much time on any fanfic sites lol.
While I never went through a Wattpad phase per se, I did go through something similar, I do agree with you. There is a time and a place for smut. Maybe I sound like a prude, but I wouldn't be caught reading it on a bus or near children.
I think it might also help when it comes to differentiating between romance and porn.
That's a good description lol
These smuts are nothing more than Wattpad fic that got printed 😂😂😂
@@akshathahegde6550 you know I've never heard porn described as cringe but you're completely right
This is topic adjacent, but: I personally don't care if there's a sex scene or two in a book. People have sex. Even if the book isn't a romance, sex and relationships happen all around us and that's just life. So as a young adult, idc if the author adds it in brevity. I'm asexual but I'm not disgusted by sex or sexual topics.
That said, books targeted mainly towards teens or described as having 'some' "romance", but actually have a ton sexual context or content that do nothing for the plot that was advertised, are deceitful in my opinion
Note: I should add- YA is for a younger audience, essentially highschoolers. Sexual content can be illuded at or suggested, but after that there needs to be a 'fade to black' or a "Let's move on". If there's explicit sexual content then the book should immediately go to New Adult or Adult without exception.
yeah i dont really care if its there, as long as its advertised
shit makes me uncomfortable to read, so i'd just want to know if i should avoid a book instead of getting jumpscared
This is my big concern with this stuff. My niece is a big reader and loves fantasy books, advertising this sort of thing as "fantasy romance" pretty much guarantees that it is going to be picked up and read by people who are a good deal younger than the target audience. I don't want to be all "won't somebody think of the children" but I think honesty is important here.
@StarfishGoneToxic I agree, I think straightforward content warnings should be utilized way more as well
@rabbitpirate Yeah I strongly believe the YA category should be left alone in terms of strong sexual content. Highschoolers do not need graphic imagery or details of people having sex and its completely inappropriate to have any plot doing such in a YA novel
I worked in a bookstore and the alarming amount of just badly written p0rn in the YA section made me almost lose my mind. It's not even YA anymore and while Internet exists, there were still 12 to 14 year olds that I warned about the heavy sexual content.
If not them, then their parents because no parent gives a shit what their kid is reading and that's the problem.
I mostly blame the people who are selecting books to sell in the bookstore because I swear to god they only watch Booktok to see 'what's hip with the teens nowadays'.
I wrote an erotic book and I disclose that it’s erotic instead of spicy when I recommend it because I’d rather take a community guidelines violation than have some nine year old end up buying my book.
It didn't start with 50 shades of Grey. The Vampire Diaries, Laurel K Hamilton's Anita Blake novels, anything written by Anne Bishop, and so on. It's been a thing for a long, long time. It's just that women were recommending them exclusively to other women, rather than recommending them to a space primarily made of women but accessible to men. Having been raised as a girl, I can tell you that it's been understood that the romance genre is about sex for decades. In fact, the deceptive labeling is _intentional_. It's how they snuck the porn past the censors, past the husbands that would be upset that their wives are reading porn, past the religious folks who would boycott bookstores, past people who would pass laws to prevent the books from ever seeing the light of day. It's just that dudes are only now finding this out, when this has been a thing since the late 80s.
But with romance, its making harder to find actual romance, but i get that. i like romance as secondary but well done element anyways, or mixed.
But with other genres, why?
God at least in anime fanservice is just teasing and not long there. Mostly. And not taking over the story too much.
@marocat4749 Hell, even some outright ecchi/softcore corn or hentai is more tasteful than some of the schlock they eat up on Booktok. There's a manga+anime about a bunch of guys in a fantasy world reviewing how good various species fuck and that's somehow more tasteful than "Taken By The Mafia Werewolf 16". If I wanted to read smut, I'd go to Ao3 and get it for free in any flavour I want instead of wasting bookshelf space on mainstream pulps, smh
Danielle Steele too. Her stuff was straight smut, and women were reading that openly in public for decades, it’s just that a wider audience became more aware of smutty books in the last 10 years
1970s housewife romance is its own thing born out of a certain epoch in time. Booktok erotic YA fantasy now 50 years later is a new trend and a really annoying one at that. We're talking of the latter one.
@@jasminv8653 firstly, the Vampire Diaries, Anita Blake, and Anne Bishop are all from the 2000s, not the 1970s. And they're all fantasy erotica, and the first two in particular were very popular, hell, Vampire Diaries got an incredibly horny TV show.
The fact that the modern "romance" stories talked about on Booktok are called romance, despite being erotica, derives from the fact that romance has been the publishing code word for erotica for decades. Which is what I was trying to explain, that the use of "romance" to describe erotica is a) not new, b) standard publishing practice, and c) only coming to the fore for many people now that there are more people in that space that aren't familiar with the fact that romance is a code word for erotica.
Is booktok horny erotica a new trend? Yes, in the sense that booktok itself is new. But has it come out of nowhere? No. And did it start with 50 Shades of Grey? Very, very much no. Erotic fantasy has been popular for a long time. And it has always been called romance, and personally I find the history of that to be quite interesting. More to the point, it is also relevant to the video, explaining why the "mislabeling" that is frustrating so many people, including James, exists.
Pour one out for the people who read fifty shades of gray because they didnt know where to find better written porn for free on the internet
Or read kushiels dart i really recomand, and that apearently actually understands kinks and sm. And what abuse is. Plus for good writing and fantasy.
doubly tragic when you remember fifty shades was originally for free on the internet
as an asexual person, this is just really frustrating because I typically only checkout a book’s blurb/maybe peoples reaction to it before I read. 9/10 anything “””“spicy”””” is left out of these (vagueish) recommendations so it really is just a jumpscare. it also took me longer than it should've to realize that when tiktok recommended a book w romance in it, it went way farther than I thought. it's funny but also just annoying in general when I pick up a recommendation and it's just explicit all the way through
100%. My friend sent me a picture of one of these books, the back with the blurb, asking if id read it because it sounded interesting. I was so astonished to see such an innocent blurb for one of tiktoks most popular “dark romance” books. The books including graphic smut need a section of their own and should be required to have a warning at the start.
Asexual person here as well. I'm not scared of sex scenes and it's okay if there is sex in fiction sometimes. But it starts getting annoying when it becomes the clear focus of works and you only find out later. Happens in movies and anime as well but literature is the only media where pornography can be hidden well enough that it consumed too much of your time before you find out.
Also an ace, I don't find sex scenes actively scary but I do find them extremely uncomfortable so having a book suddenly dedicate half its plot to it is fairly annoying, specially since I like well written romances which makes the search that much harder
Ace as well!! This sort of happened to me with SJM books: a friend recommended them to me cuz they knew I liked fantasy. There was indeed fantasy in there, but not I kind I wanted XD
In all seriousness, I do think books of these sort should have their own separate genre. Fantasy, fantasy romance, fantasy erotica. Or something like that
I’m ace too! And I know what you mean. I find it hard to find books and TV shows to enjoy. I not mind most violence and cussing doesn’t bother me at all, but sex make me uncomfortable. I love fantasy romance but I’m stuck reading clean books that just don’t have enough grit and blood for them to be truly enjoyable to me!
As a fan of erotica I agree. Clarity would aid in both navigation and not being jumpscared by Lightlark
As a smut lover I have no problem with this rant. I enjoy badly written porn. I'm not going to lie. 🙂But I'm not going to pretend the ladies who write porn can weave a story as good as Jemisin, Lawrence, Roanhorse, etc. I also don't read my porn in public and find that element of our culture weird.
i also think that the focus on smut in booktok books has led to them having skewed ideas as to what's age appropriate. like, no, it's not normal to stock books with multiple graphic sex scenes in the young adult section, and the people pointing out that it's not normal aren't making a big deal out of nothing. it's one thing if teenagers deliberately shop in the adult section before they're actually adults (that's perfectly normal, i and everyone i know did it) but its another thing entirely to specifically market and advertize very adult books (like porn!) to minors.
but also given that, if they aren't recommending porn, they're recommending ya, i think booktok also has a skewed perception as to who ya is for. and "new adult" is so stupid its unreal its just badly written adult fiction.
Agreed, i am not even against sexscenes if they were trying to be akward or trying to be not just a fantasy. Which could be very cool, and not the biggest problem with porn, that people confuse a fantasy with real expectations.
ya can have sex scenes, but is it that hard to make it more akward and maybe even real instead of adults womens badly written erotica, probably yes, but also i think ya books have a responsibility to at least try that ?! Doesnt have to be good, but try it.
Isn't "New Adult" when the protagonist is 18 or 19?
@@Mecharnie_Dobbs no, the age of the protagonist has nothing to do with the target demographic / marketing niche. it usually aligns (middle grade tends to have middle grade protagonists, ya teenage protags, et cetera) but it isn’t what makes something middle grade / ya / adult. “new adult” is a new marketing term for an “in between” ya and adult, but everything that’s been categorized as “new adult” can pretty easily fit into one or the other it’s just having this other label makes it stand out a bit more.
And of course, when you were that age, you didn't engage with sexy content at all, right? You waited to read fanfiction and watch porn until you were 21, right? Teenagers, even if americans are uncomfortable with the notion, ARE interested in sex. And they HAVE sex. Obviously no adult should be involved in that but what the hell do you care if a 16 year old picks up a smut book? It's like any porn: unrealistic. But if people raised their kids with more openness, they'd actually have the ability to go to their parents and ask about things that make them uncomfortable. Plus, most of these books come with 2 pages of content warnings anyway.
It's also funny how nobody here is whining about young boys watching anime like "return of healer" or "interspecies reviewers" or any other stupid, "basically hentai" trash show (i don't mean the animation, return of healer looks amazing). Because "that's normal" for boys and young men. Hypocrites.
Why THE FUCK are we AGAIN discussing what's "appropriate" for girls and young women to read? Haven't you people learned anything from twilight?
@@erylaria398 so, when you were reading my comment, did you just miss part where i was like “it’s one thing if teenagers deliberately shop in the adult section while still underage and end up buying smut, that is a perfectly normal thing to do and i and everyone i know did it, but to specifically advertise smut to teenagers is inappropriate” or did you purposefully ignore it?
The problem is that it's hard to find a "classical romance book" since all this started. You know, the ones where it's actually about the emotional connection and relationship between the characters... most of the new romance or "romantisy" books are just about the sexual attraction and badly written tropes. I don't mind one or two smutty scenes but without the emotional connection it's just erotica. Also, I don't get how people read this type of books in class- I personally have to be in the mood for that and being in public surrounded by strangers isn't the right "environment" . I mean you can just skip the chapter, but in some of them there isn't much going on otherwise. 😂
The thing is... there's actual porn comics that I myself have read with better plot and character, and weirdest of all better ROMANCE than many of these "romance" novels, despite the fact it's on porn sites and everyone, the author, the audience and the product itself are being 100% percent honest about the fact that this is, in fact, porn. Paradoxically, by admitting to be porn they have the chance to be more.
I get that there is an audience for these fantasy smut books (i.e. acotar, fourth wing, etc) I'm just so tired of seeing them lauded as something they aren't. Thankfully the portion of booktok I do see isn't the sort to enjoy or promote these types of books but occasionally I'm just inundated with them. Like when fourth wing came out I nearly bought it bc it was sold to me as a cool story with dragons and I fuckin love dragons! Only to find out that it was poorly written and mainly there for the smut. I know that those of us who feel this way are probably seen as stuffy puritans who disdain sex but I just want a good story y'all. I get my kicks elsewhere, reading is an escape into another world for me.
Also books like acotar being marketed as YA...yikes dude.
Writing a sci-fi novel with absolutely no romance or sex whatsoever atm, can’t wait to be absolutely groundbreaking 🤙🏻
I'd love to read it!
Personally I’m not a huge fan or romance or erotica as a main genre; I enjoy romance elements in a story but not that the focus of the story is romance. I usually find erotica pretty goofy too lol.
But all the same, I don’t think it’s wrong to have erotica on display at a book store, and I don’t think people should have to read their erotica books in private. I do however think they should be labeled for what they are.
Also 50 Shades is awful lmao I tried reading and couldn’t finish because it was so cringe; the “inner goddess” made me sick 😬
Wow, I think you hit the nail on the head. It never fully clicked for me why booktok fantasy and/or romance were so shallow and bad and made me feel gross, but now it does. P*rn isn’t meant to be deep (ha), it’s just to satisfy kinks and get people off. The reason these books made me upset, likely was because I was tricked into consuming pure p*rn when I did not want to. As an asexual with PTSD, that’s... not a fun time. If I come for romance, give me romance, not just p*rn with 0% romance 😂
So TLDR; it's basically just people with a bad case of the horn trying really hard to justify it. And the funny thing is, these probably the same people who turn around and criticize anime fans for the same thing.(And that's why I can't stand people with no self awareness.)
Yeah, I like yuri (lesbian animanga) and everyone assumes it's all porn when it's much the opposite. So it's funny to me how the people calling the books I like that are actually what they say they are with few or no sex scenes (unless it's got a big fat 18+ on the cover) "oversexualized", are the same people recommending porn as if it's an actual fantasy book. Yeah there's porn that doubles as good fiction, but booktok has no idea how that works lol. The only people who seem to actually care about the difference are people who watch porn movies from the 70s and people who learned japanese to read eroge
Plus its worse, as i thin k most anime just tease fanservice to back out. Ok sexscenes existin are fine, but if they are there to the point there is nothing butrt them, and they dont add to the plot, why?
In case of fate stay night, ther ios a sex scene that justifies as transfer of mana ceremony, because its a pretty good story, and was originally an erogame, why the waifued and genderbent characters. But it has a prettty good story and characters regardless.
Line anime is often not as intrusive with fanservice as you think if you just accept, its there. and its still a nead story, seriously, tamaki wasnt a problem, and i thought her last speech is id yoiu frame it against sex shaming is, good.
yeah fanfiction and fanfiction erotica were talked about as low due a lot women involved, but also, trying to play into that shame nstead, yeah thats my trash, isnt helping.
Its apearently way harder with the maas clones :(
That's why I like neither. You either have porn (soft core or otherwise) or actual story. This distinction is important because most of writers can't do both. I don't want to see a cool action anime only to be randomly be hit with panty shots. I don't want to watch movies with a forced romance subplot. Romance novels should have a good story - otherwise it's boring
Jujutsu Kaisen somehow managed to be a cool shonen with nice fanservice. A very sexy lady walking. A very handsome dude breathing. It's not distracting like a dude "accidently" grabing a boob. At the same it's very sensual
The best porn I've ever read were fanfics. They were actually well-written (at least better than TikTok books) and the sexual content meant something in the story
You can have both - plot and "plot" but it's difficult to achieve. Maybe writers should stop mixing those two things if they can't
i have been lied to about so many books because booktok is like “it’s romance! it’s fantasy!” and then it’s 100% just hardcore smut. like said in the video, the annoying part isn’t the smut, it’s the way they all lie about it.
As someone who works at a well known bookstore company, we have an entire area for booktok including signs that even say "Spicy"
I think it spread so much because porn (along with self help which is the remaining 5% of booktok in my experience) appeals to such a wide audience, it's cheap, easy to make and formulaic (at least on average, the good ones are difficult but let's be honest it's mostly trash). For every other genre there's a niche and specific taste. Also, as you've said, it's not clearly marked and separated in publishing so the only way to find erotica is to have it recommended to you or accidentally stumble upon it, so it makes sense for a community to form around recommending it. My biggest problem with it is that "there's an online community based around reading erotica and most people in it are women" culturally turned into "women who read only read erotica" with a bunch of memes, comments and videos being like "date a girl who reads, they're constantly horny and want to try new kinks 😉😏" so now along with being quizzed, doubted and told you only want attention when you're a woman who's into fantasy/sf you also get "yeah I bet you only read self inserts getting DPed by fairies"
Me and my friend have a theory: The reason "erotica" is so prevalent right now and targeted towards women is because most of what's out there was never written with us in mind. Now, we have female writers who are writing it for a female audience.
I don't particularly like "erotica." It ruins a book for me, and I will DNF it and give it to a friend who I think will enjoy it. My favourite examples are 50 Shades and the Song of Shattered Sands. The first one because an ex-boyfriend saw himself as Christian Grey, and you can imagine how that went. The second because every single "erotica" scene is copy-pasted just with the names changed.
We also feel that TikTok creates fast fashion trends with just about everything, including books, and because a large portion of "erotica" readers are female, we're getting an influx of fast fashion books in the genre.
I dont think the Song of the Shattered Sand is erotica. I think there are 4 sex scene in the 6 book series and romance is not a main plot point.
@@sosoadja7663 They were still off-putting and badly written enough for me to DNF book 3 and not bother with the rest of the series.
@@CSRaeburn I understand I love that book serie but the sex scene where off putting .
@@sosoadja7663 It was really disappointing. I loved the 1001 Nights vibe :(
Bad theory. Porn for women by women is not a tiktokian invention. MARKETING IT TO TEENS, under a guise of "reading" - that IS a tiktokian invention.
Books aren't written. Stories are written. Books are printed, sold, bought, marketed and advertised. Books are a business. Money is involved. And sex sells.
Meanwhile, Tiktok is a marketing/data mining tool. It mines people who are using it for data, which it sells to advertisers, so they can dump ads on people more efficiently.
Algorithms told them people will buy smut disguised as "just harmless fantasy books" - so they're selling ads for smut veneered in pulp. Cause that's where the money is.
The worst thing of all is when they recommend "Dark Romance" and you expect romance with two morally dark characters and maybe a smex scene or two and you end up with hardcore noncon 🌽, that objectifies and humiliates women. The male lead is always some abysmal modern version of Rhysand that SA's the female lead and booktok hails him as "dreamy" and a "book husband". Like, I read erotica. I also read adult romantacy. I don't want grape in my safe spaces though. I read books to escape not to be reminded of the 97%.
with a heavy heart, I gave this video the 70th like
My condolences for whoever you lost when you received that folded flag.
His father, as far as I know. He has mentioned him in a video, I believe.
Booktok is the female equivalent of that "broetry" thing that was making the rounds on Instagram at some point, idrk if any remnants of it are still around, but Ik that "bookthot" would be a more appropriately fitting name for Tiktok's book community
It is perfectly normal to do things that will demonetize this video.
murder
I gotta say, I feel like all roads lead back to Sarah j maas as the main culprit
As someone who is writing a novel, it’s kind of disappointing to see posts about readers who will refuse to read a book if it doesn’t have any spice. It’s also disappointing when they say a book was a 10/10 just because they enjoyed the erotica of it, not the actual stories. It skews accurate ratings based on quality of the book
The worst part of it, beside calling it "romantasy" or "new adult" when it's just plain erotica, is that it's not even well written.
I read my fair share of fanfictions with very hardcore sexual scenes, and some of them are actually better than whatever this genre is trying to do.
Some fanfics have characters who are well developped and morally grey, there are sometimes critics about society/gender norms, the chemistry is insane and the writing is incredible. And even when it's badly written, at least it's free.
ive been to so many bookstores that have “booktok” sections thats just filled with erotica. And because so many of these books are getting so big they’re getting pushed to the forefront of promotion. First books i see when i walk into a bookstore is 4th wing and its sequeal. An unsuspecting parent could potentially buy these for someone way to young for them.
Let me just say. I read the werewolf stuff. I read the crappy examples you see in fb adds. I love that same wolf cinderella story line. In the thousands I've read. 89% is badly written porn. There has been exactly 1werewolf story on wattpad that had the same theme. Mateless girl meets Prince they are mates, she rejects him. Gets together at the end, no sex scenes. It's pure romance. She has issues goes through fantasy version of a drug addiction. It's socially acceptable to 'force' a soulbond. Chain em to a bed and well force it. He didn't do that. He took her wants and needs into consideration and bam nice couple. Sweet story. Well written.
All I'm saying is I'm this target demographic. I get the appeal. He'll I maybe possibly write this stuff...maybe...just better. Anyway I hated forth wing.
There too long drawn out and bore me. I read fantasy for plot and character and theme. I read my werewolf stuff for the sex scenes. You want to know the difference? The wolf stories are like 5000 words long. Maybe 10000 but that's rare. I can't stand the tripe.
Right, with werewolf stories ther you know its probably being smut, maybe some are surprising sensitive , but most, smut.
So yeah, nup being midsleading helps a lot.
Thats why people dont bash the ice something barbarians, or chuck that wrires a look shorter books about any fetish in wxistence?!. Its clear and to the point.
@marocat4749 omg the ice barbarians lol. Don't get me started on the dinosaur books. I read half a one out of curiosity, and it was weird!
Thank you for addressing this!! If people wanna read this stuff, then fine, go ahead, but don't market it as fantasy! It's not fantasy! It's not romance! If I'm looking for fantasy or romance, I'm not looking for detailed, long winded sex scenes.
I wish the publishers would market it as erotica and the ones enjoying reading it could be honest about it.
okay this video left me a bit confused. I guess I don't really see what point you were trying to make? this is not hate I'm just genuinely wondering. you seem a bit contradictive? like you start off by saying you hate tiktok so why even be on that app in the first place, just delete it then. and you say several times that these readers shouldn't be ashamed of consuming this kind of content, but throughout the video you very much come across as indeed wanting them to be ashamed and hide it away? and it's a bit of a shame cause like...why? I really don't see the big deal with this genre becoming popular. 🌽 and sex have always been catered toward men and been male gazey and women have always been depicted as objects, in pain, meant for men's pleasure. that's been the case in both 🌽 and in tv shows, movies, books, etc. but now, for the first time as far as I know, young women and teens (aka the vast majority of tiktok users) get to experience 🌽/smut/erotica/whatevs u wanna call it, that is written by female authors, through the pov of a female character, for a female audience. and it's not just about pleasuring the man and it's not even giving u a visual so you can imagine them as perfect-looking or imperfect-looking as you want. idk, I feel like that's a positive thing. for women to finally get to have something for THEM. not to mention the way women have been shamed and shunned and even killed for showing sexual desire and there's been wayyy more of a taboo about women and girls masturbating than men and boys. we haven't gotten the same chance to explore that part of ourselves as boys have, so for a genre like this to become popular should obviously speak for the high demand from the audience don't you think?
there's also the algorithm thing. it feeds you what you interact with. like sure, I get it if ur annoyed that your feed is taken over by these sorts of books, but just tailor your feed after what YOU enjoy by blocking and filtering out certain words and stuff, then? like what's the issue. there's also a reason romantasy has been added as a new category in this year's goodreads awards, it's a popular genre and this way those books don't clog up the other genres. so this seems like a bit of a you-problem and idk, I feel like maybe it would do you good to take a step back and examine WHY you feel the way you feel and whether it's a problem? anyway this comment is super long omg
He isnt the only one talking how booktalk is terrible and making everything about erotica, it would be fine if they were upfront like any beloved erotica labels do, like chuck tingle and so who are upfront.
Booktok are trying to make everything about erotica insead of the diversity of genre and maturity that is out there.
I also dont like people making all anime about naruto ok, and they try to make all anime about naruto. And pretend know evverything.
Its not like teenager cant be cringe, or people cartering, thats fine, but then be upfront and not like try take over all genre.
@@marocat4749 i'm not sure if I understand you but if the issue is just about a lack of tagging the correct genre and level of maturity in the content then sure, go for it, you can criticize the tiktokers in question for being misleading/ not being transparent enough in their recommendations, or tell them to use better and more specific hashtags or whatever since it's clogging your feed, but 1) if it's a popular genre it's gonna get pushed more, that's just how it is, I hated GOT but I saw stuff about the final season everywhere anyway and had to deal with it, and 2) I feel like james strayed away from that a bit and instead tried to make a point of how this genre itself, romantasy/erotica/smut/whatevs, is "bad/shameful" or shouldn't be talked about or read in public, which I disagree with
we’re on diff sides of tiktok cus all my booktok is about high fantasy or classics 😭😭
While I agree that tiktok is flooded with "spicy" recommendations, I would not call something like Fourth Wing erotica... A book playing into fantasies and having one scene can easily be just a romance, romance doesn't have to be "pure". And there's a ton of fantasy written by male authors that has a lot of erotic aspects and is still considered just fantasy. I actually feel like tiktok is misleading in both ways - calling trash romance a good fantasy and calling romance "so spicy" when there's barely any "spice".
I work at a library, and it's constant. At least three of my coworkers are always gushing about Fourth Wing and trying to get me to read the sequel so we can talk about it... which is totally fine! It's not my jam, but I'm glad it's theirs! It just feels weird to have it happening on the clock, in front of our patrons! I suppose it also irritates me a little because my side hustle is writing gay fantasy porn on the internet, and I know for a fact that everyone would be shocked and horrified if I alluded to that, simply because I call it what it is. 😂
BookTok books are proof that writing sex takes skills. Most of those books read as if the authors never had sex (even though they're middle-aged women) because they can't find an interesting way of describing both the act itself and its premise/consequence. They always use the same metaphores, the same gimmicks (if i see another main character bite their lips 🤬 or alternating POVs 🚩), to the point that I'm sure ChatGPT can write one of these books in 30 seconds and readers wouldn't even tell the difference (prank idea?). They are that boring and bland because their authors clearly don't care about the craft of writing, and it shows. There's nothing behind the words, no meaning, no emotion, nothing. Not even a little bit of sense. These books are the fast food of literature. They're industrial shit to eat on the go, but they have no sustenance and will end up killing you slowly. (A bit dramatic? Maybe)
But yeah, their lack of care is what gets to me. As someone who loves writing, I find it particularly offensive. If you wanna write erotica, do it. But for the love of Sade, do it well!
Who would have guessed that writing a good book takes skill?
I think a lot of the reason people do this is because the majority of the audience is women and women Are taught To hide there desires Because it’ Improper,So there’s a lot of beating around the bush because they can’t really say what they want because it will reflect poorly on them or at lest they think
Thank you so much! I hate that nobody calls stuff by its name. I love romance books, and fourth wing was recommended so much as a fantasy-romance thing with dragons (which is all stuff I like), and then only a few weeks later did anyone start mentioning spice. Why? Tell me from the start. If I buy a book I want to know this before, because I'm not the audience for this and I'd absolutely hate it!
I don't know. Reading 300+ pages to get to the first sex scene doesn't strike me as a porn novel.
It was a bad novel, with excessive thirst and eventual porn.
300+ pages of foreplay, teasing and fluffing the audience up to the inevitable "climax". When reading it it is pretty clear it's just unapologetic pornography
Most of the time it's not 300+ pages, it's more like 30-50 (which is erotica territory).
In the scenario you described it is typically accompanied by too much sexual tension. That's ok for a basic romance, but not for novels aimed at actual adults.
If it has mostly going fotr it a way too long thirsty 300 pages, followed by that, its still porn, its just bad porn.
Look, I'm aroace. I can handle reading a sex scene or two and sappy romantic writing because those are inevitable parts of the human condition and will always be popular. But goddammit, write it well! Write it like an alien will read it in the distant future and you respect its intelligence and feelings.
I wonder if the target audience has something to do with it. Would these erotica books on TikTok receive as much mainstream marketing if they were targeted at a male instead of a female audience? They'd still have a lot of fans, mind you, but marketing them in public may not be seen as socially acceptable to the same degree due to our prejudices about male versus female sexuality.
(TBF, some fantasy and sci-fi books targeted at male readers have sexual themes in them as well, but they aren't usually the advertised main attractions.)
...have u ever been in a comic book or manga store or seen an anime poster advertisement.....all of it is naked women on all the covers
@@wtfisthisthingdude That's the cover not the content of the books. Most of those manga contain an actual story with sexual themes that, at best, only cross into softcore content.
The books he is taking about here advertise themselves in a similar fashion, but are not shy about writing hardcore scenes that can only be described as smut.
Even it it were copying, its a pretty good story if there werent all that fanservice, (that usually does not go intu actual sexscenes, but anyways)
copying that straight up is just doing said problem.
Also in case of sarah maas clones its straight up copying tropes like the unironic darkling or rysand. and not like what maas actually did too, write a fantasy world. She isnt the best but shhe does actual fantasy.
@@Drago5899 Dude most of those stories sexualize children and you're sitting here trying to tell me how it's better than some book with a shitty plot targeted towards girls. Like stfu for real and at least admit that the issue at hand isn't the "unmarked" porn boys are allowed to have and enjoy but that it's girls this time and everything that's aimed towards girls has to be shamed over and over again...
@@Drago5899 so male targeted things advertise with sexuality publicly, but don't actually contain it
and female targeted things hide hardcore porn behind fluffy advertising
that's kinda funny
As a person who reads some very graphic horror books in public I have to disagree with your take of reading "50 Shades" in public.
So I'm going to hard disagree with this on a few different areas. If it takes you 350 pages to get to a sex scene its not erotica much in the same way game of thrones isn't porn. There's a whole lot of nuance between having a sex scene and being written with the explicit reason of sex. You could classify GoT, LoTR, The Witcher, chronicles of Narnia all by their "spice level". Moreover, I think we've just got to realize that sociologically speaking we just set visual porn in a different light than we do erotica.
Thank you. It’s not even close to the same. Visual pornography is so much more immediately communicative of sex in a much deeper way than imaginative reading is. The equivocation here is just dishonest
yeahh this video comes off as deeply anti-sex to me even beyond that oversimplification of that spectrum. It is okay for erotica to be popular. It is normal to be turned on by things. Sex is involved in our spectrum of emotion. Sexual material in media does not just exist for getting off to; there are storytelling reasons, artistic reasons, thematic reasons, reflective reasons, all sorts of stuff. We don't view erotica the same way we do visual porn.
And that hypothetical, too; "if someone was watching porn across the bus from you but you couldn't see or hear it, wouldn't you still feel weird?" No! Who cares! If they're not actively jacking off on the bus who am I to police what thoughts they're allowed to have? How am I to even know if they are getting off to it? If someone doing something that literally doesn't affect you makes you uncomfortable to the point of anger, consider reexamining yourself.
Also, just the tone with which "porn" is said in this video feels...very much not neutral.
Trust me the specific book he is speaking about IS porn. The non-sexual builtup is still written as foreplay and just reads like pure sleaze. It just has a huge buildup before paying off.
@@zapkido2830I agree with you
I think the difference between something like got and fourth wing is that sex scenes do happen in got but they aren't what the story is built around/building up to. With fourth wing it's like...the sex is the big plot device that you build up to for ages and the rest of the story is shoddy and not well thought out. Really I just wish that the marketing on some things was clearer bc its annoying when you're told a story is an awesome fantasy adventure only to find its more like a sexy fanfic with some fantasy elements tossed in as an afterthought
The other day I posted a short for The Five Book Challenge and someone commented on my post that they'd never heard of any of those books. Those books were Lolita, The Night Circus, Dune, The Orphan Master's Son, and Fahrenheit 451. I feel like if you read you should probably have heard of at least 3 of those books. That just really sent my gears a grindin'. I feel like the cult of Booktok has really narrowed the scope so far for books and bookish content that unless you're reading what everyone else is reading, you're pretty much cast out into obscurity.
i actually love booktok because i’ve read some amazing books that weren’t erotica
except colleen hoover she sucks
Hammer video James. Tiktok hat die Art und Weise, wie Bücher vermarktet werden, völlig ruiniert. Die Genesung wird JAHRE dauern.
I absolutely hate booktok and the books they recommend. There is an argument to be made for how a majority of these books have portrayals that are sexist and/or racist. I agree with you mostly but I disagree with the part about reading these books in public is as bad as watching porn in public. Both are weird to do but one is markedly worse than the other. Reading does not really violate anybody's space in the same way a video of porn would. You can easily look the other way and ignore someone reading a book and forget about it. Its not really in your face like watching a video amongst people would be. Just my two cents.
I disagree with a lot of the statements and got a few thoughts:
1. S*x sells has always been a thing. Dramatic, emotional or sensual content gets the most viewers in general. Thats nothing new.
2. TikTok functions with an algorithm, there is plenty of other book genres that are trending as well (Dark Academia Stuff like The Secret History, A Little Life etc.). TheBookLeo made a great video about the different BookTok algorithms a while ago :)
3. The whole criticism on the societal perception of erotica and romance is problematic from a feministic viewpoint, especially since topics that interest women and girls are often laughed at by society (boy groups, kpop, make up arts etc.).
4. The way you differenciate between romance and erotica seems a bit outdated. A protagonist talking about beeing horny and having s*x doesnt make it erotica. I quote sth that explains it well imo: "So an erotica, regardless of its length, focuses on sexual discovery, and romance focuses on the love story. Can both these elements exist within the same novel? Yes, of course. But one is going to be the whole ‘point’ of the story, so to speak, and that’s going to be the primary genre". Its especially noticable in the (kind of newish in terms of popularity) New Adult genre.
from a feminist pov, the vast majority of these books eroticise female sexual subordination and millions of young girls reading it will inevitably cause them to internalise it. so, while there’s something to be said for the devaluation of the hobbies and media young girls/women enjoy, i think this topic is more nuanced than that, and there are very real concerns i have about the trajectory of the books being popularised on tiktok.
@---ul9eq This is not a feminist take. You're saying women are too dumb to differentiate fiction from reality so they will internalize toxic behaviors. Literally, the oldest critic against women reading.
I don't have TikTok, but I have been "jumpscared" by sci-fi and fantasy novels. They lure me in with a seemingly interesting plot, only to be more invested in their romantic/erotic aspects than delivering anything I came for. I enjoy romance when the relationship has depth and is believable, but rarely do I pick up any story looking for "spice."
Yet, as other comments have pointed out, this is less of a TikTok problem and more of a societal one. Women especially are pressured to hide their sexuality behind false labels. In terms of books, they have been for a long time. This doesn't excuse the deception of readers, of course, but I think it explains a lot.
That being said, the one aspect of this video I disagree with is people reading erotica in public. Even if I know what they're reading is erotic, if I can't hear or see anything, I mind my own business. If it's not infringing on my own life, who cares?
This argument veers a little too close to current push by conservatives in the US to remove any books containing inappropriate content from libraries because ‘children could find them.’ I really hate this take.
This comment is an offering for the mighty UA-cam algorithm, but also, even though I don't have TikTok, wholly agree with the unease "romantic" reviews and publicity "romatinc" novels get. It's disingenuous, and like finding a hair in your soup
I've said it before but a lot of these fantasy romances are actually trying to blend romance + fantasy + erotica and it turns out bad (writing issues aside) bc even properly balancing 2 full genres is hard enough without adding a third.
I am ruthless w my Tiktok algorithm and I've weeded out most of the "spicy" recommendations but even so, I've never read a book suggested on there that I liked so :/
"Complaints with James" could be a series on your channel.
Interesting that there's one movement (booktok) that essentially ignores everything that doesn't have a sexual component and then another (I've mostly seen this regarding film/tv) that wants everything to become absolutely sexless and sterile. And the age demos in these conversations are relatively close together as well.
I remember the good old days when people got their p*rn from fanfiction and just didnt talk about it with anyone else
At my book store, they were discussing whether erotica and romance should be combined. lol
I'm now ashamed that I bought Fourth Wing and Iron Flame as impulse buys because the the plots sounded interesting. The whole thing with dragons made me think about Eragon...and now I hear this and I haven't read them yet. Great.
If you haven’t, read the Dragonriders of Pern, it’s way better
@@leeseiberg2408 I've been wanting to read it; just a bit tapped for funds to get a copy.
What weirds me out is the cartoony covers designed to appeal to teenagers. If a kid picks up an erotica novel on their own, that’s not my business but it deeply upsets me that a group of executives is peddling porn to teenage girls and calling it empowerment.
I think it is kind of sexist to say that women arent thinking about sex, especially women that are in relationships. I know that is not what you are doing, but i feel it needs to be said. Do women think only about having sex with us? That would also be wrong. They have their own lives. And their SOs are only a piece if that. How about we just avoid extremes?
I don't think I will ever end up getting my fiction off the ground, but having said that when I write a woman protagonist I try to write just a normal person who happens to be female. I just write from her perspective.
Petition for books to have an obligatiory label in the cover's corner that tells the age rating to who's buying it, like video games do all the time.
I have to disagree a bit here, though I'm not too familiar with the Tiktok scene: As you're saying yourself, most people are probably ashamed for reading smut and having sexual thoughts and desires. But that shame likely didn't just grow within them. It was taught to them.
Reading smut and covering it as "innocent romance" could be considered a defence mechanism these young girls have adapted over years of being shamed for their wants. Women - especially online - who talk positively about sex can have many uncomfortable encounters... not only the perverted idiots but also a bunch of people coming for their throats as if they weren't allowed to enjoy sex as a woman.
These are just two thoughts I'd consider as well regarding this topic. ^^
personally i think publicly consuming visual and text-based porn are a little different. if you catch just one frame of a porn video you know what's up. unless you know what a book is about and the cover isn't subtle, you have to look over a person's shoulder for a while before you get the same effect. i mean, as long as they're not getting hot and bothered... but yeah... i agree people should just be honest about being freaks.
14:39! hey thats my name! (i love being a patron)
Did you really just say with a straight face that a book that takes 375 pages to get to a sex scene was erotica? This entire rant is double standards. Is Game of Thrones porn? Tons of very popular series have lots of detailed sexual content and don't get called porn but all of a sudden series like ACOTAR and Fourth Wing get popular and "they're just porn"? The first three books of ACOTAR have less sex scenes than the series I'm reading right now, Prince of Nothing, and I've never heard anyone call Prince of Nothing porn.
When man do it, it's LITERATURE. When women do it, it's "porn" and must be hidden away from public view
100% fine with erotica existing, but it's not really for me, so the publisher and author claiming something is a romance or fantasy and then there are fleshed out, explicit sex scenes in it, that would make me pretty angry since it isn't what I was looking for or what I wanted. Should fall under false advertisement if you ask me...
This just only confirms my belief that the majority of Booktok have a unchecked p0rn addiction.
I don’t have the app itself but from what I've seen it's alarming how aggressive people get when there's no spice in a book.
"If there’s no spice I won't read it."
Honey are you hearing yourself right now? Not one book? Not even a novella? Seriously?
I only trust Booktube to give me good book recommendations and I've already found people who I can trust.
As an ace as well I hate it when there’s a sex scene jumpscare because it makes me uncomfortable and its not even written good anyways.
They're not addicted - they're horny teens (or people who never grew up, probably because of sexual repression)
I remember being a very horny and confused teen. Sex ed taught me nothing about what are those urges and how to deal with them. Now I'm older and no longer sex obsessed
+porn is often used as a coping mechanism. Teens and young adults are depressed because they're very much aware how messed up world they will inherit. Why not dive deeply into sexual fantasies? At least before it's banned
Bro, i am 33 years old, I've read "real books" all my life, and i didn't lose the ability to do so even after reading like 10 booktok books this year. Big shocker. I have a fulltime job and i want easy entertainment, just like anyone else. Booktok caters exactly to what i want, so what? I've read Kafka and Brecht and Tolkien - but I'm not in the mood for that right now. I want fcking easy escapism. And that includes sexy content. Just because someone regularly enjoys erotica and porn doesn't mean they have an "addiction". Grow up.
@@erylaria398 if you read these books because you like them I think that's great. I'm pretty sure the observation is about people who are sex obsessed to the point that they cannot even consume media without it
i was about to leave a comment saying i hadnt noticed any p*rn on what little i see of booktok but after you pointed out steamy --> spicy.... yeah lmao
Maybe its because other genres have other hashtags? Like the horror genre on Booktok is usually tagged as #horrorbooktok, #horrorbooks or #horrortok, not so much booktok as romance and fantasy fill that hashtag. 😅
In the same way, these people would benefit so much from just reading erotica or watching porn. But they think they are above that. Newsflash reading erotica in a fantasy world is no different than reading just erotica.
Remember when sex in a book was meant to convey something? I miss that now it’s just about how crazy you can get (which whatever I enjoy smut on the regular) but when it’s every fricken book I think it really cheapens an act that should be used to convey more meaning than “he made my folds wet” 🙄
The repurposing of the word spicy, and it’s consequences, have been a disaster for the human race.
This is why we need to make everything use the AO3 tags system.
Isn't a large part of TikTok about unlabeled porn anyway? Like, are all those dance videos really that popular for no sexual related reasons?
Its strange hearing someone who runs a book channel not grasp the difference between the mediums of video and literature.
If someone told me there was a bank robbery in the third installment of a p*rn series, I'd start watching.
Ok wait tho genuine question, if there’s reviews of good romance novels on this channel could someone recommend the vid? Because I would fuckin love to find something cute and well written to read
It's so refreshing to hear someone call this stuff out.
am i the only one who doesn’t think this is a problem
No, you are not.
Nope. I don't either. There's a reason why the phrase " sex sells" exists.
What exactly?
@@giasharie274 the over abundance of ‘spiciness’ in books. although my opinions have changed since 5 months ago and i’m starting to see it more as an issue now
I find the most worrisome thing about erotica being sold as YA “romantasy” is the absence of any acknowledgment these books are just p*rn, as it prevents any discourse about the real rise in female p*rn addiction. The booktok community and the behaviours/reading habits they’ve been normalising (like reading only p*rn or reading it in public, at school, etc) would all be classified as symptoms of p*rn addiction if the genders were reversed, people are very justified in critiquing this double standard, and are doing so from a place of genuine concern.
I’m not anti p*rn consumption at all, as total sexual repression isn’t healthy either, but the crippling impacts of when p*rn consumption escalates to p*rn addiction are well established in medical research and academia. Concerns about p*rn addiction shouldn’t be misconstrued as a moral puritanical talking point, as it’s a genuine mental health problem.
I’ve seen young men having a lot more open, honest online discourse about the subject of healthy consumption vs addiction, normalising getting help, etc, so it’s a shame to see the total inverse for teenage girls and young women, as they don’t just omit the topic of addiction, but have created an obscenely toxic community of flat-out denial regarding the fact the content they obsessively consuming is even p*tn to begin with.
Sadly, the core of this problem originates with the ethical negligence of mainstream publishers and their deliberate decisions to publish and market (inclusive of direct-to-Booktok marketing) books with explicit content/hardcore p*rn for a YA readership (often involving characters who are teenagers). I’ve seen several posts online by querying first-time-authors who know their book is Adult fiction due to explicit content, yet they’re being told by industry reps their books are actually YA, sometimes even told to lower the age of their characters (which is making the adult content even more inappropriate) and resulting in a moral dilemma for these authors who don’t want to expose minors to triggering content, yet they’ll risk never being published if they refuse.
So this is a top-down industry problem, they’re deliberately choosing to make explicit books YA. Likewise, publishers are the sole reason genre fiction shelves in bookstores are now full of smut and it’s become impossible to browse without having to filter through garbage erotica.
How much of the lack of clarity about the content of the book is due to prudishness/being defensive and how much is due to fear of censorship by the platform? Tiktok is the platform that coined the term unalive after all and god knows how may other cutesy euphemisms for rape and assault.
Must also suck when you're actually looking for written porn and aren't up to date on the lingo, not that I would know./s
i've been thinking about this for ages but i would love to see you read and review a book with withcindy, if only because the very insightful roasts would set fire to the pages
I want my original english light novel to be hated on booktok. I want people on booktok to rant about it in the same way james does to stuff on booktok.
Free advertising!
Glad I wasnt the only one thinking wtf when Fifty Shades was just all over. It was so weird to me because its not even like other romances where it pretends to be about the "love story". Fifty shades was just about sex. That was it. And then it was plastered all over and people were reading it right out in the open like any other book.
THough I was still more disgusted by the--I dont know the word to use--but that the author is basically a hack just ripping off another author, who isnt that great either. But its just the shittiest writing--I've never read it to this day, but watched a ton of content on it and caught blurbs. And then how it was just selling because of the bdsm part of the sex. Still just pisses me off as a writer.
The same kind of self-censoring mentality is responsible for having Colleen Hoover's problematic books about toxic and abusive relationships labeled as "romance"
It's an interesting phenomena. Somehow books work better for the female sexual phantasies than almost any other media. Maybe it's related to sexual repression, maybe it's just the "mechanism" of the written phantasy...
Generally speaking, men are more keyed to visuals and women to emotions. So visual porn is more popular with men and erotica, where the relationship is at least somewhat built up before hand, is more popular with the ladies.
@@missallisnow I wonder how much of that is due to sex differences in brain wiring and how much of that is due to gendered socialization?
@@BrandonPilcherwould be interesting to see a study, but I can definitely see it having evolutionary origins.
@@BrandonPilcher According to anecdotal evidence from trans people, there is a big difference in how the genders experience sexuality. Seems to have to do with hormones.
However, I think there is a cultural component in it too. A lot of men are basically emotion-illiterate, because many boys are not encouraged to explore and express their emotions.
i def agree with all of your criticisms on booktok erotica or as they call it “spicy romance”. but i kind of want to weigh in and say that while (to my own chagrin) it is very popular and gets pushed a lot by the algorithm, it shouldn’t be seen as representative of bootook as a whole. I genuinely enjoy using tiktok as a part of my interest in literature and have gotten some good recommendations from there. you just gotta find your niche. I really like gothic literature & dark fantasy and that’s what I think of when I think of booktok.
My gf reads some of this stuff (i havent seen any of the stuff, but she's alluded to it based on how she's said that she'll deflect any question about what the books she reads are about). Currently i have no issue, but sometimes I wish she wouldn't
Do you miss the good old days when the authors made it clear that you would read some dirty stuff? Yep, back in the 90's with Hot Blood.
This kind of reminds me of watching some shonen anime. You know, like dr.stone, witch has a lot of pandering to young straight guy. I remember for some time it was pretty hard finding a shonen anime that didn't show the female lead panty in the first 3 episodes. This is kind of the same but with young woman, with any luck they might grow out of it. Isekai still has this problem, but after learning about how it's written it's kind of inevitable.
YES omg. completely relate
I think the biggest crime is the awful cover style lot of the booktok books have. Like that really bland cartoon style?? I just hate it so much I'm sorry lmao
3:17
That is *NOT* what that means.
The man spits out truth
Imo im just not into UNNECESSARY sex and nudity in books/movies/tv. Some sex and stuff is fine, who cares? but if it's every chapter or episode like🤔
of course. sex needs to feel organic in media and that's sadly hard to pull off for a lot of people.