Booktok turned grocery store fiction into literary discourse. This creator is so on point. And commenters like these are actually part of the literary crisis that they seem so concerned about. People reading anything is automatically good sounds nice until you realize we don't apply that logic to literally any other art form. You don't hear people saying Marvel movies are cinema on the same level as Tarkovsky because at least people are watching movies. That's literally like saying McDonald's is the equivalent of fine dining because at least people are eating. Assumption is not the same as cultivation. The problem is not that people aren't reading. The issue is in fact that modern reading culture no longer asks readers to struggle, interpret, or analyze, or sit in ambiguity, or confront difficult ideas. It has simply become another form of content consumption. That's why people in these comments sound confused. They think criticism of Booktok means reading bad. No. The critique is that the standards for what counts as literary have collapsed. A lot of what gets elevated now is emotionally immediate and hyper-accessible, morally simplified, algorithmically optimized fiction. Characters are flattened into good person versus problematic person. Themes are spelled out directly, prose is invisible, and everything is designed for speed and emotional payoff. Literature historically is not designed to comfort you in that way. Real literature demands interpretation and not passive consumption. At least they're reading. We've started treating reading as valuable in a purely mechanical sense, like the act itself is enough regardless of depth, complexity, or engagement. That is not literacy in the deeper sense. Literacy is the ability to grapple with complexity. It's to recognize subtext and contradictions and sit with them. I have so many mutuals that are frustrated with parts of Booktok right now. A lot of Booktok's discourse around books right now is not literary in any form. It really just feels like moral performance theater. The amount of times I hear the characters are problematic, I want to scream. Like that's kind of the point. And before people get mad, this doesn't mean all popular fiction is bad. Not every book needs to be Ulysses. Commercial grocery store fiction has always been around. The point that this creator is making is that we used to distinguish entertainment fiction and literary fiction more clearly. These categories are collapsing because algorithms and immediacy reward this over depth. When a culture loses its appetite for complexity and ambiguity, symbolism, interpretation, that's part of the literacy crisis. People are going to be angry in the comments for this one. Anyway, let me know your thoughts in the comments and stay spicy.
