In a rare moment of weakness, I decided to redownload TikTok, X (formerly known as Twitter) and Instagram in the middle of midterm season. I was looking for a distraction from my looming exams and deadlines and what better escape than immersing myself in meaningless internet discourse?
I learned one valuable thing from my doom-scrolling before I (fortunately) got my life together and returned to social media sobriety: It’s okay to just dislike things.
Let me explain.
Online, it seems impossible to escape the endless stream of think pieces and hot takes on the media we consume. Books, movies, music — nothing is spared from criticism.
But while it’s undoubtedly important to remain critical of what we’re consuming, it seems we’ve lost our ability to accept people’s varying preferences. Social media has convinced us that our general dislike for something needs to have a greater moral justification.
There’s no better example of this phenomenon than BookTok, a subcommunity on TikTok that focuses on books and literature. BookTok has gained popularity over the past few years, with certain book stores featuring their own BookTok collections for customers to grab the latest viral read.
Just like anything that skyrockets to popularity online, BookTok has been the subject of considerable social media discourse. Some readers have accused it of promoting books that are essentially repackaged fanfiction tropes with cheap, easy-to-produce writing. Others have slammed BookTok for promoting white authors over authors of color.
A growing number of readers who are familiar with BookTok have also taken to labeling certain fiction books as problematic because they include a lot of mature content, are dark fantasy books or deal with heavier emotional themes. These are certainly taboo in the book world, but the surrounding discourse begs the question: Is reading or consuming such content inherently malicious?
To some internet readers, the answer is yes. The mere portrayal of controversial topics within books and fictional media is considered detrimental because the topics themselves are emotionally challenging, triggering or even obscene by societal standards.
A notable example of such a case is that of the infamous Colleen Hoover, author of “It Ends with Us.” Upon its release, the novel — which depicts an abusive relationship — was subject to large amounts of backlash for the harm it supposedly causes young girls by romanticizing abuse.
While “It Ends with Us” is surely no literary masterpiece, the argument that its contents are actively harmful for readers resembles the ridiculous moral panic around video games and horror films.
These arguments rely on the premise that readers are unable to distinguish fiction from reality and that controversial themes in books, movies and television must be consumed at face value. They also entail the more insidious assumption that authors and creators are to be blamed for real-world harm as opposed to systemic, societal causes.
The internet has become an outlet for people to moralize their preferences — to convert their preferences into values which are then used to judge others.
If one’s preferences are not morally pure by online standards — if the media is “problematic” — then the individual consuming it is morally compromised.
On social media, taking a morally superior stance by condemning a piece of media is an easy way to garner attention and falsely affirm your opinions as fact as opposed to simply saying that a certain piece of media didn’t speak to you or didn’t click with your preferences.
I’ll be the first to admit that many of the books advertised on BookTok are trashy. But I also think that the influx of people creating controversy over harmless forms of media is unwarranted. Most of the time, the “problematic” nature of certain media only exists online among internet puritans with an inability to differentiate between real-world harms and online phenomena.
Media doesn’t have to be “problematic” to be disliked. It’s okay to just dislike something on personal grounds without grand justification.
So, in the event that you find yourself typing up a hot take to share with your avid internet audience, stop yourself and shoot for a simple Goodreads or Letterboxd rating instead. Or take a trip to a local park and touch some grass.
Anjali Suva PO ’27 is from Orange County, California. She loves watching horror films, reading fantasy books and abusing em dashes in her articles.
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