I dont like translations in my language most of the times, thats why I buy english versions. I only read in my native language when books are from my country.
I also want to add how the boom in books with "corn" due to publishers seeing how well such books sell has made picking a book really hard for asexual folks. Like there's no easy way to discern if there's gonna be such content in a book I pick up, content that makes me have to put the book down and eat the money I spent on it (I know I should go to a library but I really like owning and collecting books/supporting brick and mortar book stores as the experience of going to a physical store for books is unmatched). I can handle sex in a clinical way but when it's meant to be passionate, hot, and raunchy... I just feel uncomfortable and a little sick. And it sucks I basically have to put down any book that even suggests romance being involved because modern romance novels shoehorn in such content to appeal to BookTok (and I like romance a lot).
im ace too but i love smut (erotica is one of my favourite genres), yet i have the same problem as well! i like knowing if im going to be reading half-assed mediocre smut in the middle of my book or not. and the worst part is that these books are EVERYWHERE. you cannot avoid them. i've had to put down books just because you can tell that the author snuck in 2 pages of mediocre smut for some cash grab. its really frustrating.. especially when you find a book promising :/
Same. Though I do read corn while being AroAce, I prefer to do so by purposefully seeking it out, not being surprised by it. I'll go to AO3 and look for what I'm down for with that stuff, thanks. The corn on AO3 is generally a lot better written, too, so there's that aspect as well.
This. I'm also ace and this bothers me so much. With fanfiction, there is an established culture of marking, flagging, tagging work with a heads up "this contents in here," and we desperately need that in the publishing industry at this point because the publishing industry is now basically publishing fanfiction. Just a key on the inside flap or cover page.
The blurring the lines section made me think of the reels/tik toks I’ve seen from dark romance booktok girlies going to different haunted attractions and borderline(or actually) sexually harassing actors just doing their jobs. I’m also a haunt actor so it hits home for me. Men treat me like that all the time. Your point that they forget that they’re talking to real people is absolutely felt.
There is a very big book convention in my country every year. Me and my mother used tp frequent it when I was younger. I was excited to be back there this year, I had so many good memories. To my sadness the convention was filled with YA books, which I don't read because they are not to my taste. Tve real problem really was that the YA books were everywhere! I tried to find a new realease by Tove Janson for my mother, but could not find it and it just came out! I didn't find any book for myself either. While tiktok has done wonders for books and publishing it has also dilluted what gets advertised. Leaving the book convention I felt so sad and frustrated, where were the books I enjoyed? What if I wanted to about horror? Grief? The mundane life? All I could see were tiktok recomended books.
I absolutely remember reading manga in middle school and getting bullied for reading “backwards books.” But also THANK YOU-I work in a library and it’s crazy to see how we have ACOTAR right next to Harry Potter, just like you showed.
I feel like a comparison that people have been making lately that I find quite apt is that women getting bullied for reading romance get trashed on in the same ways that men get bullied for playing dating sims. They are both very gendered experiences, with romance novels being often written for and by women and indulging in female fantasies and explorations of sexuality, where dating sims are often made for and by men with emphasis on male fantasies and sexuality, both of which leave large out groups and garner criticism on objectification, being self indulgent, and so on and so forth. While I think anime and video games have had a rennaissance in terms of popularity in recent years, dating sims still garner a lot of derision and dirty looks, like there is something gross about engaging with them. It seems as a society we have trouble with allowing people to engage in fantasy regarding romance for everybody. Not to say that there isn't a misogynistic element to it, but I think there is something extra on top of that, and also there is that element of "patriarchy hurts everyone" argument. Tell me with honesty that if you asked a guy what his favorite game was and he said Nekopara, that you wouldn't give him the dirtiest look. You certainly wouldn't call it literature or art or a real video game, I'm guessing. I think its important that people have spaces to explore indulgent media and sexuality and all that, we as a society have to figure out how we want to engage with that which is tough due to things like the strong puritan roots in the US, but also, sometimes I get annoyed when I am looking for book recommendations and its all self indulgent stuff. Its not just romance either, all these self insert isekai go to another world and get a harem and build yourself into a lvl a million god are obnoxious and it seems like its hard to find other stuff.
Absolutely. I watched two videos on an otome game (love and deepspace) and "gooning" with female litterature. The prior had (,and i'm very glad) comments about how the creator talked about SA on the otome game yet he plays very sexualised games with women. And i agree, the second video was full of men criticizing women's erotic literature. (booktok but it's mostly sex so basically erotica) How can you be criticizing what you yourself consume BECAUSE you're not the demographic? I still have problems with the rise of anti videos on booktok because corn is widely accepted? I do have problems with booktok because a lot of it has no plot except sex and, it's written like someone who's never met the same types of men she's writing about because their abusive traits are only abusive and not about love and consent. Those traits are seen in everyday men and are a really turn off for me because they're just toxic. Anyways, why is it bad that women read corn, but when men watch it and plague lesbian's content it's okay? Is it bad that women in otome games want pretty men, with a pretty good musculature but not crazy and with some sort of trauma that they work on because they're absolutely besotted with you? Doesn't this archetype sound relatable, don't a lot of us have some sort of trauma we find it hard to get out of? But men having games only focused on an unachievable body type of women with no personality is fine? I hate how men compare this situation with video games and anime because they're just not judged anymore. But women get blamed for women and mostly men for that. I wish men could stop being pretty hypocritical when it comes to women. (because it's not the only time they do that : it's mostly in the dating scene)
@@user-sg4ov7ng4h ok but a shit ton of men's media, including dating sims, do still get heavily criticized by women though. Men aren't the only hypocrites here
Fellow Bulgarian here and I relate soo hard to being put off by reading smut in my native language. I have always wondered how native English speakers can handle reading fanfics. 😁 Also, WITCH! I was obsessed!! 💜
5:40 -10:40 The bullying of male geeky stuff is a bit more complex than you described I believe. There is the whole concept of what "real men" do and what's "gay"(typicly viewed too femine to be done by a straight male). Many also call anime for example kids shows even though most of them are clearly for mature audiences. Otherwise fantastic video.
You raise a fair point! I actually know men who've been bullied for liking anime because it's "gay". While in my case, it was because I was "betraying my country" by liking something so foreign. Originally, I didn't plan on touching upon the topic of bullying because it's rather complex. But I quite often talk with my guy friends about men's issues, and it irked me that in all the BookTok-related video essays I watched, the discussion was rather one-sided. So in the end, I wanted to briefly raise the point as food for thought. Thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts!
@@booksandborders If the conversation is one-sided, specifically in relation to smutty/romance fiction, it may be because the male-dominated literary fields refused to even publish it or put it on traditional book shelves at all if/when geared toward female audiences until Harlequin and such completely changed the game by opening their own publishing routes and putting things on shelves where women traditionally shopped and bypassing traditional bookstores entirely. So, there is a pretty long-standing history of separation/distinction or whatever between lit for adult women versus lit for men or for younger persons or for general audiences that has only just in the last few decades or so truly begun to shrink and blur at all. And is it really a good thing that women are bullied less for essentially "staying in their lane"[ of enjoying girly/childish things] while men get bullied more because they're allegedly "supposed to" be more serious and above all those more girly/childish things, or whatever? Like....wanting to bully women because these guys have been bullied before in the past might be an explanation, but it isn't a justification or an excuse and it does not make it okay that there are such strong tendencies for it to happen, and both the bullying of guys and the bullying of gals all equally needs to stop. (Not saying anyone here was saying otherwise, don't get me wrong, I just felt like it was worth saying and putting out there in general. 🙂💖)
And the annoying thing is how even in anime/cartoons it was "girls don't watch cartoons" to "girls grow out of watching cartoons". Also, you have some male anime fans who look down on manga/anime catered to women/girls
On the topic of overconsumption I just don't get why people always forget about libraries. Like omg a ton of free books! You get to overconsume for free?! And depending on where you live you can also request books for them to get 🤯 Like the majority of my reading comes from library books now cause there's no way I could afford 100+ books a year otherwise. I do buy book that I've read and loved, but I don’t but unknown books anymore, because like why? If I haven't read even a bit of it then I'm not wasting my precious book budget on book I don't want over books I've read and loved. Another reason I'm able to do this though is because I mainly listen to audiobooks and don't read much, as I like to multitask. I have a hard time mentally to physically read, when then in my mind I can't do anything else, just sit and read. This crubs my book buying habits a loooot, since I know I probably won't actually read the book I buy, just listen to it, so I should only get books I loved and want displayed... for the most part, buying books is fun so I occasionally acquire free or cheap copies at places and then don't read them. Anyway, go use your library!
I never thought about the fact that children will be able to read acotar and other romatacies. That's such a good point! Thank you so much for bringing that to my attention
Nice job on the video! I agree with alot of pointe you made. There has been an unfortunate rise of thirsting over real life people on tiktok! Thirst over celebrities isnt new and is not exclusive to tiktok, but alot of people and i mean ALOT are just comfortable with saying all of these explicit things that can turn into sexual harassment. Now i dont mind having a crush on a celebrity that is in a relationship, but there is a point to where youre going too far!
I like what you said about how you do "judge" peoples' taste, but that it's for the purpose of determining if their book recommendations would align with your own taste (incidentally, love that you recommend books by Pratchett, Adams and Orwell!). I also liked the part about "tropification" - I've been baffled about that, because it's what an author DOES with a trope that matters to me, not the trope itself! May I recommend to you Slaughterhouse Five? If you haven't read it, it's about a man who is unstuck in time, and the time travel (while literally happening in the story) works almost as a metaphor for post traumatic stress disorder (the main point of the book is the character's experience in World War II).
Listened to this at work, Turning my phone upright to find a new video when it ended I expected it to be another video with hundreds of thousands of views from a channel with hundreds of thousands of followers. The size of the reach it has is a disservice to the quality imo.
Very much enjoyed this! I read a lot when I was younger, fell out of it as an older teen and now am looking forward to going back down the rabbit hole! I think I shall be avoiding booktok though XD Thanks for the great video!
same! the adult fantasy book series city of brass broke my sudden inability to read real books. I found it recommended on RUclips and in my experience "booktube" is actually so much better than booktok at finding good recs mainly i guess because they have to speak on why they like the book longer rather than giving a list of troupes like on booktok.
When you had police sirens in the background of your video I thought I was going crazy because I heard sirens coming from down the road at the SAME EXACT TIME. Yours faded out and mine kept going.😅
I pick books by going to the bookstore, looking at a few different books, skimming through a few pages and reading the synopsis Some of them end up being great, the Mask of Mirrors by M.A Carrick Some are a little more meh But it's a fun game I like to play with myself
i would never read smut in my native language because it feels like translators try to use "fancy" words instead of terms we would use in real life so it sounds like two computers having sex
you know what is insane? when people put down Danmei by saying it's gay fantasy written by women, while these mf books cover horrors of invasions, war, mob mentality, SA, torture etc. MXTX's books, especially MDZS, Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation is literally about irl mob mentality in ancient china, that facilitated and normalized the complete and utter genocide of an entire sect (not just a clan, a sect has many clans, so we're talking about tens of thousands of people). as a foreign invasion and revolution (essentially civil war) survivor, there is NOTHING romanticized in the book. it is truly the real level of horror. it always reminds me of how the US kept killing Afghan civilians over their wedding tradition of firing rifles into the air. btwn 2001-2008 every other week there was news of 100+ civilians being killed cz Americans "thought" they were the Taliban. in wedding gear, w dancing, meals and children. the normalization of dehumanization... yes, MDZS is about the love story of the two gay men, but the romance is part of the plot and the slow burn has intent behind it. as does its smut. when I read MDZS I don't think "oh, a romance novel written by a woman to cater to women's ideas of love". I think "I cant sleep tonight cz all I see is the damn genocide of the Uyghur by the Chinese government for being Muslim", because the book takes pain to show the atrocities committed against those w the surname Wen, regardless of who or what they were. Their other book (I believe MXTX is nonbinary) TGCF, Heaven Official's Blessing, has some of the most horrifying war crimes, including biological warfare so akin to the pox blanket genocide of Native Americans or using Agent Orange back in the 80s/90s.... or even 2020 w CVD. they write so brutally and so honestly that if they were more accurate to real life and not fantasy, I'd want it to be taught in class as to what humans are capable of. both of these books hinge on the romance for the plot, but they're not romance books. they're freaking documentaries, set in a fantasy setting. the rate at which critical thinking and analytical intelligence are dissipating reminds me of when the ozone layer was disintegrating at a fast pace and we really didn't know if we could stop greenhouse effects of our human made pollution.
2:22 I have to agree. In 4th grade I went in with my DAD and I got after by Anna Todd😭☠️🙏the book people actually helped me find it it was INSANE. A child should be reading Harry Potter, Percy Jackson, FRICKIN DORK DIARIES
No, it's BookTok. It incentivizes slop content from people more concerned about performing the fact that they have read which, surprise, surprise, does not require them to have read anything challenging, read deeply, or even really to have read more than promotional material at all. It's a marketing platform. Nothing else. Stop trying to make it a site of a rejuvenated literate culture. Even book clubs strive towards that ideal and fall short of it.
I'm totally down with people calling me a know-it-all, pick-me, poser. I get those terms used to describe me individually as it is, so the idea of being able to pull off a triumvirate of attempts to insult me, all at the same time, just sounds like a really cool way to save time and multitask whilst annoying a bunch of people whose opinions aren't worth the web-pages they've been written on. (Might just have to get myself a mug with 'Know-It-All, Pick-Me, Poser" printed on it, so I can smile sweetly as I sip my tea whilst looking over the rim at anyone who notices what it says...or at the other women - because it's always women - who level such comments at me. 🤔) ETA: Had to laugh at the irony of using a quotation from the BBC explaining what it means to be in an echo-chamber. 🤣 P.S. Excellent video by the way; really well balanced and well sourced for quotes and external references. Subbed! P.P.S. Your cat is so adorable. 10/10 would totally bestow with head scratches and snoot boops. 🐈⬛
I will say that I disagree with the argument about children reading smut. Parent is a noun and a verb. It's something you do even more than something you are. It's on the parents to keep tabs on what their children watch, read, listen to, etc. The way I see it, if you can't do that then you have no business being a parent. Before any of you annoying shitty parents come at me about how I "don't know what it's like," yes I do. I have a 6 year old.
I read mostly non-fiction because I feel like I don’t know anything about anything, but good to know I’m actually a know-it-all! I also describe myself as a hopeless romantic, I love romance in stories. I just dislike the genre because it’s rarely is up to my impossible standard. I don’t even know what the standard is, but I’ll know it when I see it. Like corn.
FINALLY! Got to come back and finish the video after needing to pause and go adult about halfway through. Lol Just wanna say-This was a GREAT video with excellent conclusions. Thank You, with absolute sincerity, for this very important PSA😊💖💖
((P.S. = completely adored the guest-starring kitty eared little void at the end there too, it was exceptionally perfectly timed , does it make appearances here often? I may need to stick around!🤭😂💖 🙂))
@@jaginaiaelectrizs6341 The little void's name is Bagheera. She appears occasionally whenever her parents drop her off for us to babysit. Thank you for your kind words and for taking part in some of the discussions in the comments! I'm really happy you liked the video. 😊💖
@@booksandborders Aw-That's a great name! ^-^ I guess she truly was a guest star, then!😊🤭 Either way, I subscribed. 🙂 Thank You for making the video / sharing your own thoughts, to begin with. I think this was possibly the most balanced approach I've seen yet to tackling/addressing the booktok/etcetera issues-it was pretty refreshing. 💖
Буквално тази вечер сънувах как гледам видео есе от българин хахахаха :Д Не очаквах да чуя да споменаваш Уич, но някак си не се изненадвам. Българка на моята възраст (± няколко години), която много харесва фентъзи и фантастика? Ама разбира се, че е чела Уич! But seriously, thank you for being the one (1) person to talk about this without trying to instigate a moral panic about booktok rotting people's brains or making women go into abusive relationships or whatever nonsense. There's plenty to criticise about booktok culture (as with literally any online community, including the anti-booktok people) but the way everyone else does it is just so dramatic! The one about abuse especially pisses me off because it's basically saying if women just read the right books they wouldn't get abused when NO, the reason women get into and stay in abusive relationships is because of how society is set up to teeat women as lesser. These people need to read some fucking feminist non-fiction rather than getting all their ideas about how the world works from video essays about booktok, JFC. Also, I found a lot of your personal experiences relatable, tho I didn't know anyone who got bullied for liking books, video games or any other hobby, unless it was something heavily gendered. I didn't read any of the assigned literature and I still had Bs or even As in both written and verbal exams. The way literature was turned into a chore along with teachers looking down on pretty much all other media regardless of actual quality or merit, really soured me on the classics. My dad got me into reading and some of my friends showed me good fantasy books too, so it's not like I never read anything, but I associated certain books with elitism and reading for the sake of asserting your own moral superiority. I dunno, I think everyone needs to chill out and stop focusing so much on internet drama. There's way more important things in life than that. Great video! ^w^
Имах същия опит с четенето на “любовни книги” на български. Бях попаднала на българския превод на Пънк 57, след като ми бе харесала на английски, и вътрешно кринджнах на това, което съм чела. Всичко звучи просто прекалено нелепо на родния ти език.
I was with you until the very last minute. We as individuals definetly have power. We should be the change we want to see and yes boycott and other things work. We have to act upon what we know is right and if everyone were to do that the world would be a much better place to live in.
I didn't think this video said otherwise? It just said you're not necessarily a bad person just because you don't know literally everything happening literally everywhere literally all the time and sometimes it's okay to just live your life too. The world needs all kinds of people, doing all kinds of different things.
4:05 - I would just like to point out that there were also a lot of books with covers like that back in the day which didn't even have any "corn" in them at all, or that had "corn" which was not described nearly as explicitly as the "corn" in today's novels. And some people could argue that the covers, if they are going to be sold in public, should have G rated or general-audiences appropriate covers because anyone can see the covers even if the content itself isn't for everyone. But the content itself can't be seen unless you pick the book up and open it on purpose, either because you personally choose not to care and voluntarily play spin-the-bottle by picking things up completely metaphorically blind to whatever is/isn't contained within them OR only after first checking how the shelf it's displayed on is/isn't labeled(or how it is tagged/categorized/whatever on the internet) and then and only then proceeding to pick it up knowing exactly what you'll be getting into. Whereas, the covers, you can just accidentally see without any intention to do so simply by walking past a shelf looking for some other category and it is generally not believed that people of any age should not be exposed to shall-we-say "spicier" images without express and voluntary choice but especially it is generally believed that children should not be exposed to them at all if remotely avoidable even if they would otherwise voluntarily choose to be[ because we don't consider them wise or educated or mature or able enough to be asked to make that kind of a choice yet]. I have often wondered why text isn't age-restricted even though games/movies/etcetera are, myself, though. And I've heard decent arguments both for and against it. Like, text is information, and having access to information about a thing is different from having access to the actual thing itself and information should always be publicly available indiscriminately-whereas an actual image of the actual thing itself or access to a relatively realistically simulated image of a recreation or representation of the actual thing can be much more likely to have an effect more like being actually directly exposed to the thing itself could have(not everyone can actually visualize images in their mind just from what they read-but once you have seen an actual image of something you can't really go back and unsee it). Not to mention the fact that different kids develop mental/emotional maturity at different rates, so it is fair that some kids may be more able to handle interacting with text about certain topics responsibly than other kids their same age might, which should be the purview if the individual child and their parents to monitor and restrict or allow accordingly. (I'm sure I'm explaining these arguments super badly, but hopefully the gist of them is clear enough anyway.) I'm not sure, myself, where society should or shouldn't fall on these issues exactly or what the best solutions to people's concerns actually would/wouldn't be in practical application.
I agree with the third paragraph, i think it comes down to what you visualize, and i would say children are already making stories in their head, whoever sexual they may be, it's not as shocking as straight up corn because it comes down to your own interpretation?
There have been studies about text versus image, but think about playing a porn video versus an audio book scene (non-cinematic version.) which has the stronger emotional response? Even if you were blind I would have to think the actual moans and slaps are more explicit than a text audio description. Anyways, I do tend to agree books should not be age restricted. But as a society, we need to sort them correctly, Haunting Adeline is a rape story - a horror or crime thriller - and not a romance in any capacity. At the very least it is fully adult content. How we officially categorize books is a direct reflection on society and how we view certain actions. Indulge the fantasy sure, but in the cold light of day this book will be categorized as….whatever society believes it to be. Yes it was disturbing to see that this book was originally marketed as a young adult romance. That says something about our society.
10:30 I'd say that's mostly due to the fact that nobody is making the argument that they are literature. I play World Of Warcraft, and I don't know a single person who would call the story anything more then a justification for another loot piñata. A lot of the things you named are not trying to be considered great works of art. I also have a problem with saying "it's men bullying other men" for the same reasons i have issues with the term "Black on Black crime." When you do that you're shifting the responsibility onto the victims of bullying and making it out to be a problem with men themselves. Even though the vast majority of the evidence suggests it's only a small minority of men who bully anyone. This would be like ponting out that misogyny on Twitter is mostly a female on female thing. It is, but a majority of women are not misogynists. And saying that only distracts form the fact that a woman is dealing with misogyny. Men do not bully other men. Men low in honesty/humility bully other men. Women do not hate other women. Women high in intrasexual competitiveness hate other women.
Meh. Sadly a lot of misogyny or misandry is perpetuated by the same sex. Women are the ones victim blaming irl, men are the ones congratulating a boy for being graped by his teacher. I will say it comes down to personal experiences because women are probably pulled off from those media because of the over sexualisation (anime) and will judge you for it when men won't really care. Now in my personal experience, men bullying sucks more because they're so over the top with it, you can ignore comments made by girls because they don't say it to your face but the men will absolutely embarrass you in front of everyone. Anyway, every one of us needs to change to not perpetuate those same assumptions that hurt everyone.
The not reading smut in your native language is so real
I dont like translations in my language most of the times, thats why I buy english versions. I only read in my native language when books are from my country.
Yeah, it's just, eech, yuck.
I also want to add how the boom in books with "corn" due to publishers seeing how well such books sell has made picking a book really hard for asexual folks. Like there's no easy way to discern if there's gonna be such content in a book I pick up, content that makes me have to put the book down and eat the money I spent on it (I know I should go to a library but I really like owning and collecting books/supporting brick and mortar book stores as the experience of going to a physical store for books is unmatched).
I can handle sex in a clinical way but when it's meant to be passionate, hot, and raunchy... I just feel uncomfortable and a little sick. And it sucks I basically have to put down any book that even suggests romance being involved because modern romance novels shoehorn in such content to appeal to BookTok (and I like romance a lot).
im ace too but i love smut (erotica is one of my favourite genres), yet i have the same problem as well! i like knowing if im going to be reading half-assed mediocre smut in the middle of my book or not. and the worst part is that these books are EVERYWHERE. you cannot avoid them. i've had to put down books just because you can tell that the author snuck in 2 pages of mediocre smut for some cash grab. its really frustrating.. especially when you find a book promising :/
Same. Though I do read corn while being AroAce, I prefer to do so by purposefully seeking it out, not being surprised by it. I'll go to AO3 and look for what I'm down for with that stuff, thanks. The corn on AO3 is generally a lot better written, too, so there's that aspect as well.
This.
I'm also ace and this bothers me so much. With fanfiction, there is an established culture of marking, flagging, tagging work with a heads up "this contents in here," and we desperately need that in the publishing industry at this point because the publishing industry is now basically publishing fanfiction.
Just a key on the inside flap or cover page.
The blurring the lines section made me think of the reels/tik toks I’ve seen from dark romance booktok girlies going to different haunted attractions and borderline(or actually) sexually harassing actors just doing their jobs. I’m also a haunt actor so it hits home for me. Men treat me like that all the time. Your point that they forget that they’re talking to real people is absolutely felt.
There is a very big book convention in my country every year. Me and my mother used tp frequent it when I was younger. I was excited to be back there this year, I had so many good memories. To my sadness the convention was filled with YA books, which I don't read because they are not to my taste. Tve real problem really was that the YA books were everywhere! I tried to find a new realease by Tove Janson for my mother, but could not find it and it just came out! I didn't find any book for myself either. While tiktok has done wonders for books and publishing it has also dilluted what gets advertised. Leaving the book convention I felt so sad and frustrated, where were the books I enjoyed? What if I wanted to about horror? Grief? The mundane life? All I could see were tiktok recomended books.
I absolutely remember reading manga in middle school and getting bullied for reading “backwards books.” But also THANK YOU-I work in a library and it’s crazy to see how we have ACOTAR right next to Harry Potter, just like you showed.
Why? Could you explain what is your point?
Should be over with the naughty romance books... Good lord
I feel like a comparison that people have been making lately that I find quite apt is that women getting bullied for reading romance get trashed on in the same ways that men get bullied for playing dating sims. They are both very gendered experiences, with romance novels being often written for and by women and indulging in female fantasies and explorations of sexuality, where dating sims are often made for and by men with emphasis on male fantasies and sexuality, both of which leave large out groups and garner criticism on objectification, being self indulgent, and so on and so forth. While I think anime and video games have had a rennaissance in terms of popularity in recent years, dating sims still garner a lot of derision and dirty looks, like there is something gross about engaging with them. It seems as a society we have trouble with allowing people to engage in fantasy regarding romance for everybody. Not to say that there isn't a misogynistic element to it, but I think there is something extra on top of that, and also there is that element of "patriarchy hurts everyone" argument. Tell me with honesty that if you asked a guy what his favorite game was and he said Nekopara, that you wouldn't give him the dirtiest look. You certainly wouldn't call it literature or art or a real video game, I'm guessing.
I think its important that people have spaces to explore indulgent media and sexuality and all that, we as a society have to figure out how we want to engage with that which is tough due to things like the strong puritan roots in the US, but also, sometimes I get annoyed when I am looking for book recommendations and its all self indulgent stuff. Its not just romance either, all these self insert isekai go to another world and get a harem and build yourself into a lvl a million god are obnoxious and it seems like its hard to find other stuff.
Absolutely. I watched two videos on an otome game (love and deepspace) and "gooning" with female litterature. The prior had (,and i'm very glad) comments about how the creator talked about SA on the otome game yet he plays very sexualised games with women. And i agree, the second video was full of men criticizing women's erotic literature. (booktok but it's mostly sex so basically erotica)
How can you be criticizing what you yourself consume BECAUSE you're not the demographic?
I still have problems with the rise of anti videos on booktok because corn is widely accepted? I do have problems with booktok because a lot of it has no plot except sex and, it's written like someone who's never met the same types of men she's writing about because their abusive traits are only abusive and not about love and consent. Those traits are seen in everyday men and are a really turn off for me because they're just toxic. Anyways, why is it bad that women read corn, but when men watch it and plague lesbian's content it's okay?
Is it bad that women in otome games want pretty men, with a pretty good musculature but not crazy and with some sort of trauma that they work on because they're absolutely besotted with you? Doesn't this archetype sound relatable, don't a lot of us have some sort of trauma we find it hard to get out of?
But men having games only focused on an unachievable body type of women with no personality is fine?
I hate how men compare this situation with video games and anime because they're just not judged anymore. But women get blamed for women and mostly men for that.
I wish men could stop being pretty hypocritical when it comes to women. (because it's not the only time they do that : it's mostly in the dating scene)
@@user-sg4ov7ng4h ok but a shit ton of men's media, including dating sims, do still get heavily criticized by women though. Men aren't the only hypocrites here
5:16
Gosh, this is so true! It's somehow so much worse to read this funfic-ish smut when it is not in English
Fellow Bulgarian here and I relate soo hard to being put off by reading smut in my native language.
I have always wondered how native English speakers can handle reading fanfics. 😁
Also, WITCH! I was obsessed!! 💜
5:40 -10:40
The bullying of male geeky stuff is a bit more complex than you described I believe. There is the whole concept of what "real men" do and what's "gay"(typicly viewed too femine to be done by a straight male). Many also call anime for example kids shows even though most of them are clearly for mature audiences.
Otherwise fantastic video.
You raise a fair point! I actually know men who've been bullied for liking anime because it's "gay". While in my case, it was because I was "betraying my country" by liking something so foreign.
Originally, I didn't plan on touching upon the topic of bullying because it's rather complex. But I quite often talk with my guy friends about men's issues, and it irked me that in all the BookTok-related video essays I watched, the discussion was rather one-sided. So in the end, I wanted to briefly raise the point as food for thought.
Thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts!
@@booksandborders If the conversation is one-sided, specifically in relation to smutty/romance fiction, it may be because the male-dominated literary fields refused to even publish it or put it on traditional book shelves at all if/when geared toward female audiences until Harlequin and such completely changed the game by opening their own publishing routes and putting things on shelves where women traditionally shopped and bypassing traditional bookstores entirely. So, there is a pretty long-standing history of separation/distinction or whatever between lit for adult women versus lit for men or for younger persons or for general audiences that has only just in the last few decades or so truly begun to shrink and blur at all.
And is it really a good thing that women are bullied less for essentially "staying in their lane"[ of enjoying girly/childish things] while men get bullied more because they're allegedly "supposed to" be more serious and above all those more girly/childish things, or whatever? Like....wanting to bully women because these guys have been bullied before in the past might be an explanation, but it isn't a justification or an excuse and it does not make it okay that there are such strong tendencies for it to happen, and both the bullying of guys and the bullying of gals all equally needs to stop.
(Not saying anyone here was saying otherwise, don't get me wrong, I just felt like it was worth saying and putting out there in general. 🙂💖)
And the annoying thing is how even in anime/cartoons it was "girls don't watch cartoons" to "girls grow out of watching cartoons". Also, you have some male anime fans who look down on manga/anime catered to women/girls
On the topic of overconsumption I just don't get why people always forget about libraries. Like omg a ton of free books! You get to overconsume for free?! And depending on where you live you can also request books for them to get 🤯 Like the majority of my reading comes from library books now cause there's no way I could afford 100+ books a year otherwise. I do buy book that I've read and loved, but I don’t but unknown books anymore, because like why? If I haven't read even a bit of it then I'm not wasting my precious book budget on book I don't want over books I've read and loved. Another reason I'm able to do this though is because I mainly listen to audiobooks and don't read much, as I like to multitask. I have a hard time mentally to physically read, when then in my mind I can't do anything else, just sit and read. This crubs my book buying habits a loooot, since I know I probably won't actually read the book I buy, just listen to it, so I should only get books I loved and want displayed... for the most part, buying books is fun so I occasionally acquire free or cheap copies at places and then don't read them. Anyway, go use your library!
I have never related more to a video in my life tbh
Success!!
I never thought about the fact that children will be able to read acotar and other romatacies. That's such a good point! Thank you so much for bringing that to my attention
Nice job on the video! I agree with alot of pointe you made. There has been an unfortunate rise of thirsting over real life people on tiktok! Thirst over celebrities isnt new and is not exclusive to tiktok, but alot of people and i mean ALOT are just comfortable with saying all of these explicit things that can turn into sexual harassment. Now i dont mind having a crush on a celebrity that is in a relationship, but there is a point to where youre going too far!
I like what you said about how you do "judge" peoples' taste, but that it's for the purpose of determining if their book recommendations would align with your own taste (incidentally, love that you recommend books by Pratchett, Adams and Orwell!). I also liked the part about "tropification" - I've been baffled about that, because it's what an author DOES with a trope that matters to me, not the trope itself!
May I recommend to you Slaughterhouse Five? If you haven't read it, it's about a man who is unstuck in time, and the time travel (while literally happening in the story) works almost as a metaphor for post traumatic stress disorder (the main point of the book is the character's experience in World War II).
Thank you for the recommendation, I've added it to my TBR!
Man, I sure wish Booktok would find out about MY book.
I am not on tiktok but may i know more about your book?
@@vel5785 It's two books actually. It's called "Chasms of Chaos".
@@vel5785 It's about an alien world where ethereal fantasy beings battle animal amalgamatios for control.
the "we are all gonna die" part at 30:10 caught me off guard but also I think my own mortality was quietly warming on the back burner
Listened to this at work, Turning my phone upright to find a new video when it ended I expected it to be another video with hundreds of thousands of views from a channel with hundreds of thousands of followers. The size of the reach it has is a disservice to the quality imo.
Thank you, that's very kind of you! ❤
Very much enjoyed this! I read a lot when I was younger, fell out of it as an older teen and now am looking forward to going back down the rabbit hole! I think I shall be avoiding booktok though XD Thanks for the great video!
same! the adult fantasy book series city of brass broke my sudden inability to read real books. I found it recommended on RUclips and in my experience "booktube" is actually so much better than booktok at finding good recs mainly i guess because they have to speak on why they like the book longer rather than giving a list of troupes like on booktok.
When you had police sirens in the background of your video I thought I was going crazy because I heard sirens coming from down the road at the SAME EXACT TIME. Yours faded out and mine kept going.😅
This is a great video. Leaving a comment in hopes the algorithm recommends it to more people 🤞
Thank you!! ❤
I pick books by going to the bookstore, looking at a few different books, skimming through a few pages and reading the synopsis
Some of them end up being great, the Mask of Mirrors by M.A Carrick
Some are a little more meh
But it's a fun game I like to play with myself
I do that at the library! It's a fun way to try out books I might not ever pick up if I only go by recommendations!
i would never read smut in my native language because it feels like translators try to use "fancy" words instead of terms we would use in real life so it sounds like two computers having sex
you know what is insane? when people put down Danmei by saying it's gay fantasy written by women, while these mf books cover horrors of invasions, war, mob mentality, SA, torture etc. MXTX's books, especially MDZS, Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation is literally about irl mob mentality in ancient china, that facilitated and normalized the complete and utter genocide of an entire sect (not just a clan, a sect has many clans, so we're talking about tens of thousands of people). as a foreign invasion and revolution (essentially civil war) survivor, there is NOTHING romanticized in the book. it is truly the real level of horror. it always reminds me of how the US kept killing Afghan civilians over their wedding tradition of firing rifles into the air. btwn 2001-2008 every other week there was news of 100+ civilians being killed cz Americans "thought" they were the Taliban. in wedding gear, w dancing, meals and children. the normalization of dehumanization...
yes, MDZS is about the love story of the two gay men, but the romance is part of the plot and the slow burn has intent behind it. as does its smut.
when I read MDZS I don't think "oh, a romance novel written by a woman to cater to women's ideas of love". I think "I cant sleep tonight cz all I see is the damn genocide of the Uyghur by the Chinese government for being Muslim", because the book takes pain to show the atrocities committed against those w the surname Wen, regardless of who or what they were.
Their other book (I believe MXTX is nonbinary) TGCF, Heaven Official's Blessing, has some of the most horrifying war crimes, including biological warfare so akin to the pox blanket genocide of Native Americans or using Agent Orange back in the 80s/90s.... or even 2020 w CVD.
they write so brutally and so honestly that if they were more accurate to real life and not fantasy, I'd want it to be taught in class as to what humans are capable of.
both of these books hinge on the romance for the plot, but they're not romance books. they're freaking documentaries, set in a fantasy setting.
the rate at which critical thinking and analytical intelligence are dissipating reminds me of when the ozone layer was disintegrating at a fast pace and we really didn't know if we could stop greenhouse effects of our human made pollution.
YES.
But, also, so what if they were just Romance books anyhow?
(And so what if they were written by women and/or to cater to women's ideas of love.?)
GIRL I LOVE THIS
2:22 I have to agree. In 4th grade I went in with my DAD and I got after by Anna Todd😭☠️🙏the book people actually helped me find it it was INSANE. A child should be reading Harry Potter, Percy Jackson, FRICKIN DORK DIARIES
No, it's BookTok. It incentivizes slop content from people more concerned about performing the fact that they have read which, surprise, surprise, does not require them to have read anything challenging, read deeply, or even really to have read more than promotional material at all. It's a marketing platform. Nothing else. Stop trying to make it a site of a rejuvenated literate culture. Even book clubs strive towards that ideal and fall short of it.
5:24 - this is unexpectedly relitable. I can read explicit stuff in a book and kinda brush it off in English, but in Ukrainian? Spare me.
Great video! makes me think about a lot of things
Thank you! I'm happy to hear that! 😊
I'm totally down with people calling me a know-it-all, pick-me, poser. I get those terms used to describe me individually as it is, so the idea of being able to pull off a triumvirate of attempts to insult me, all at the same time, just sounds like a really cool way to save time and multitask whilst annoying a bunch of people whose opinions aren't worth the web-pages they've been written on. (Might just have to get myself a mug with 'Know-It-All, Pick-Me, Poser" printed on it, so I can smile sweetly as I sip my tea whilst looking over the rim at anyone who notices what it says...or at the other women - because it's always women - who level such comments at me. 🤔)
ETA: Had to laugh at the irony of using a quotation from the BBC explaining what it means to be in an echo-chamber. 🤣
P.S. Excellent video by the way; really well balanced and well sourced for quotes and external references. Subbed!
P.P.S. Your cat is so adorable. 10/10 would totally bestow with head scratches and snoot boops. 🐈⬛
Live, laugh, love Marta ❤
I will say that I disagree with the argument about children reading smut. Parent is a noun and a verb. It's something you do even more than something you are. It's on the parents to keep tabs on what their children watch, read, listen to, etc. The way I see it, if you can't do that then you have no business being a parent.
Before any of you annoying shitty parents come at me about how I "don't know what it's like," yes I do. I have a 6 year old.
Man, I didn't know that I was a "pick me, know it all, poser" but I do like romances sometimes too. I do agree that disdaining feminine stuff stuff.
I read mostly non-fiction because I feel like I don’t know anything about anything, but good to know I’m actually a know-it-all! I also describe myself as a hopeless romantic, I love romance in stories. I just dislike the genre because it’s rarely is up to my impossible standard. I don’t even know what the standard is, but I’ll know it when I see it. Like corn.
FINALLY! Got to come back and finish the video after needing to pause and go adult about halfway through. Lol
Just wanna say-This was a GREAT video with excellent conclusions. Thank You, with absolute sincerity, for this very important PSA😊💖💖
((P.S. = completely adored the guest-starring kitty eared little void at the end there too, it was exceptionally perfectly timed , does it make appearances here often? I may need to stick around!🤭😂💖 🙂))
@@jaginaiaelectrizs6341 The little void's name is Bagheera. She appears occasionally whenever her parents drop her off for us to babysit.
Thank you for your kind words and for taking part in some of the discussions in the comments! I'm really happy you liked the video. 😊💖
@@booksandborders Aw-That's a great name! ^-^ I guess she truly was a guest star, then!😊🤭 Either way, I subscribed. 🙂
Thank You for making the video / sharing your own thoughts, to begin with. I think this was possibly the most balanced approach I've seen yet to tackling/addressing the booktok/etcetera issues-it was pretty refreshing. 💖
Tumblr is still out there. I literally checked mine earlier today lol.
Буквално тази вечер сънувах как гледам видео есе от българин хахахаха :Д Не очаквах да чуя да споменаваш Уич, но някак си не се изненадвам. Българка на моята възраст (± няколко години), която много харесва фентъзи и фантастика? Ама разбира се, че е чела Уич!
But seriously, thank you for being the one (1) person to talk about this without trying to instigate a moral panic about booktok rotting people's brains or making women go into abusive relationships or whatever nonsense. There's plenty to criticise about booktok culture (as with literally any online community, including the anti-booktok people) but the way everyone else does it is just so dramatic! The one about abuse especially pisses me off because it's basically saying if women just read the right books they wouldn't get abused when NO, the reason women get into and stay in abusive relationships is because of how society is set up to teeat women as lesser. These people need to read some fucking feminist non-fiction rather than getting all their ideas about how the world works from video essays about booktok, JFC.
Also, I found a lot of your personal experiences relatable, tho I didn't know anyone who got bullied for liking books, video games or any other hobby, unless it was something heavily gendered. I didn't read any of the assigned literature and I still had Bs or even As in both written and verbal exams. The way literature was turned into a chore along with teachers looking down on pretty much all other media regardless of actual quality or merit, really soured me on the classics. My dad got me into reading and some of my friends showed me good fantasy books too, so it's not like I never read anything, but I associated certain books with elitism and reading for the sake of asserting your own moral superiority.
I dunno, I think everyone needs to chill out and stop focusing so much on internet drama. There's way more important things in life than that. Great video! ^w^
Благодаря ти за хубавия коментар!
Имах същия опит с четенето на “любовни книги” на български. Бях попаднала на българския превод на Пънк 57, след като ми бе харесала на английски, и вътрешно кринджнах на това, което съм чела. Всичко звучи просто прекалено нелепо на родния ти език.
I was with you until the very last minute. We as individuals definetly have power. We should be the change we want to see and yes boycott and other things work. We have to act upon what we know is right and if everyone were to do that the world would be a much better place to live in.
I didn't think this video said otherwise? It just said you're not necessarily a bad person just because you don't know literally everything happening literally everywhere literally all the time and sometimes it's okay to just live your life too. The world needs all kinds of people, doing all kinds of different things.
I was here for a nuanced essay but you straight up started from a 'protect the children' scare fest 😂 all right.
4:05 - I would just like to point out that there were also a lot of books with covers like that back in the day which didn't even have any "corn" in them at all, or that had "corn" which was not described nearly as explicitly as the "corn" in today's novels.
And some people could argue that the covers, if they are going to be sold in public, should have G rated or general-audiences appropriate covers because anyone can see the covers even if the content itself isn't for everyone. But the content itself can't be seen unless you pick the book up and open it on purpose, either because you personally choose not to care and voluntarily play spin-the-bottle by picking things up completely metaphorically blind to whatever is/isn't contained within them OR only after first checking how the shelf it's displayed on is/isn't labeled(or how it is tagged/categorized/whatever on the internet) and then and only then proceeding to pick it up knowing exactly what you'll be getting into. Whereas, the covers, you can just accidentally see without any intention to do so simply by walking past a shelf looking for some other category and it is generally not believed that people of any age should not be exposed to shall-we-say "spicier" images without express and voluntary choice but especially it is generally believed that children should not be exposed to them at all if remotely avoidable even if they would otherwise voluntarily choose to be[ because we don't consider them wise or educated or mature or able enough to be asked to make that kind of a choice yet].
I have often wondered why text isn't age-restricted even though games/movies/etcetera are, myself, though. And I've heard decent arguments both for and against it. Like, text is information, and having access to information about a thing is different from having access to the actual thing itself and information should always be publicly available indiscriminately-whereas an actual image of the actual thing itself or access to a relatively realistically simulated image of a recreation or representation of the actual thing can be much more likely to have an effect more like being actually directly exposed to the thing itself could have(not everyone can actually visualize images in their mind just from what they read-but once you have seen an actual image of something you can't really go back and unsee it). Not to mention the fact that different kids develop mental/emotional maturity at different rates, so it is fair that some kids may be more able to handle interacting with text about certain topics responsibly than other kids their same age might, which should be the purview if the individual child and their parents to monitor and restrict or allow accordingly. (I'm sure I'm explaining these arguments super badly, but hopefully the gist of them is clear enough anyway.) I'm not sure, myself, where society should or shouldn't fall on these issues exactly or what the best solutions to people's concerns actually would/wouldn't be in practical application.
I agree with the third paragraph, i think it comes down to what you visualize, and i would say children are already making stories in their head, whoever sexual they may be, it's not as shocking as straight up corn because it comes down to your own interpretation?
There have been studies about text versus image, but think about playing a porn video versus an audio book scene (non-cinematic version.) which has the stronger emotional response? Even if you were blind I would have to think the actual moans and slaps are more explicit than a text audio description.
Anyways, I do tend to agree books should not be age restricted. But as a society, we need to sort them correctly, Haunting Adeline is a rape story - a horror or crime thriller - and not a romance in any capacity. At the very least it is fully adult content. How we officially categorize books is a direct reflection on society and how we view certain actions. Indulge the fantasy sure, but in the cold light of day this book will be categorized as….whatever society believes it to be. Yes it was disturbing to see that this book was originally marketed as a young adult romance. That says something about our society.
10:30 I'd say that's mostly due to the fact that nobody is making the argument that they are literature. I play World Of Warcraft, and I don't know a single person who would call the story anything more then a justification for another loot piñata. A lot of the things you named are not trying to be considered great works of art.
I also have a problem with saying "it's men bullying other men" for the same reasons i have issues with the term "Black on Black crime." When you do that you're shifting the responsibility onto the victims of bullying and making it out to be a problem with men themselves. Even though the vast majority of the evidence suggests it's only a small minority of men who bully anyone. This would be like ponting out that misogyny on Twitter is mostly a female on female thing. It is, but a majority of women are not misogynists. And saying that only distracts form the fact that a woman is dealing with misogyny.
Men do not bully other men. Men low in honesty/humility bully other men. Women do not hate other women. Women high in intrasexual competitiveness hate other women.
Meh. Sadly a lot of misogyny or misandry is perpetuated by the same sex. Women are the ones victim blaming irl, men are the ones congratulating a boy for being graped by his teacher. I will say it comes down to personal experiences because women are probably pulled off from those media because of the over sexualisation (anime) and will judge you for it when men won't really care. Now in my personal experience, men bullying sucks more because they're so over the top with it, you can ignore comments made by girls because they don't say it to your face but the men will absolutely embarrass you in front of everyone.
Anyway, every one of us needs to change to not perpetuate those same assumptions that hurt everyone.
WTF!?! NEW ADULT IS NOT YOUNG ADULT! GET THAT SHIT OVER WITH THE ROMANCE NOVELS WHERE THEY BELONG! OMFG!
okay, this has absolutely nothing to do with the video, and I am so sorry if this is weird, but you look JUST like Isabelle Adjani
No worries, my friends agree with you. 😅