If Booktok was a community of men we would be calling the police

Kallmekris booktok controversy, erotica novels and more.

I love playing devil’s advocate. In any situation, on any theme, as a reader and a lit major, I can’t imagine not covering all the basis of an argument. It’s not productive. We can’t just agree to disagree, because if my disagreement is met with “you should just be silent” that is not a fruitful conversation. You just want my silence so you don’t have to analyze the content you are consuming, so you don’t have to face the reality of what we normalized. For instance;

When the youtuber kallmekris posted a video last month on the current most popular booktok books, she received intense backlash. One of her criticisms was; Why do current booktok romance covers look like they could be sharing a shelf with Charlotte’s web if they’re filled with erotic content?

My response on instagram was pretty simple; hey everyone, she’s got a point, maybe she should talk about it, publisher’s listen to social media users.

The resounding answer from my “community” was: You are a prude, who is instigating purity culture. I have been reading erotica since I was 13 years old and I turned out just fine. Teens will come across erotica content regardless. It’s the parent’s responsibility to filter what their children consume!! If you think she was right to point this out, it just means you are ok with project 2025!!!!!! She was shaming an entire group of readers!!

First, the desperation in their argument alone lit a few red flags for me. The reason you feel so strongly attached to the cute cartoon covers as an adult and is ready to fight tooth and nails for it makes me a little uncomfortable, but regardless, let me entertain you.

Yes, you do have a point, parents are responsible for filtering what their children consume. The publisher or the author have no responsibility in how you raise your children and the content they stumble across out in the world. That doesn’t change the fact these covers feel predatory. Two things can be true at once, but a community of readers has suddenly lost the ability to see nuance.

I mentioned that Target employers were accidentally placing these books in the children’s section, bookstore owners as well. Your answer was once again a resounding: NOT MY PROBLEM. But the Target employee who is living on minimum wage does not see it as his problem either. He is just there to fill the shelves based on SKU numbers.

When I say, hey I think this is worth a discussion because I think the children of our country deserve this level of care and protection. I was a PRE-K teacher, I have seen and studied at length the damage early access to erotic content can cause to a developing brain. There is A REASON for that. Studies clearly show that children who are exposed to erotic content too early in life are more likely to be groomed, sexually abused and manipulated. Teen girls get their periods earlier as well.

I should know. I was raised the same way as most of you were. With wattpad and fanfiction erotic content at the age of 12. I got my period at 12, when most of my friends got theirs between 15-16. I lost my virginity at 14. Most of my friends lost theirs at 18. I read a lot of age gap romances and I thought it was soooooo cool when an older guy was interested in me. So I was emotionally manipulated and groomed by a 20 year old when I was 15, and by a 36 year old teacher when I was 17.

Could my parents have protected me from that? I am sure they could have. If they knew. I hid everything from them. I hid my computer, I hid my messages, I hid my entire life. Part of me knew how wrong it all was and felt, but I was a child. I had no discernment. That wasn’t my fault. But it was also not my parent’s fault either.

Our society is not focused on protecting children. Should we hold these men accountable? Yes, we should, preadators are predators and they will, sadly, always exist. But if my mind had been shielded from sexual content until I was a little bit older to have SOME kind of discernment, maybe I would have been able to protect myself a little better.

I always say I think the book My Dark Vanessa should be mandatory reading in schools for boys and girls. It is a disturbing but incredibly well written MANUAL on how to recognize signs of grooming and manipulation from an adult.

It’s ok for us to agree to disagree. I think this subject should be DISCUSSED more often, but my community’s UNWILLINGNESS to remotely acknowledge that these covers could be handled better makes me wonder which side they are on?

“You are like any other conservative!!!” I am not a conservative, far from that actually, but when you start defending a subject with the same anger a 10 year old clings to his ipad if there is minecraft on it, AS AN ADULT, I have every right to express concerns.

Sex sells, I know.

As an adult, read it, write it, don’t read it, talk about it, don’t talk about it. I couldn’t care less honestly. However, I played a game with my husband the last time we went to Barnes and Nobles, we opened multiple books in a row to a random page (both in the horror, fantasy and romance sections) and we were timing how long it took for us to land on a “You feel so good on my c*ck” scene. 27 books later, and every single time, we landed on a sex scene within a few seconds.

Some of these scenes were at around page 20, page 36. Yes, we have always had erotica novels. YES, we have always had sex in books. YES, EXPLICIT CONTENT HAS ALWAYS EXISTED. Here I am again, trying to teach nuance to people. lol But this doesn’t mean the current industry hasn’t changed since booktok. It has.

The quality of the writing has lowered and the books have a higher density of sex scenes. No I won’t go as far as to call it porn like most people say it is. I know it isn’t. I love romance novels. But we also can’t deny that the “potato chip” novels as we like to call them, are not really novels. They’re just wattpad fanfiction taking over the industry by a storm. The industry is just riding that money wave, they don’t care about feminine expression, sexual freedom, etc, etc. No publisher cares about those things, they just care about money.

Like I said, write it, read it, buy it, publish it, talk about it, I don’t care.

But god, I am allowed to be fucking tired of it.

I don’t recommend movies to my friends based on that “really hot sex scene” on it. Constantly consuming sexual content, (or any other content to an extreme level) has an effect on our brain. I was the most depressed when I was reading dark romance books on the daily.

Requesting books recommendations without excessive sex scenes became the ODD MAN OUT. The norm is now to have; “Good girl”, “Suck on my c8ck”, “Can’t wait to taste your p*ssy”, “I love your tight little hole”, in every single romance novel you pick up out there. I mean, people can’t even bother to actually deliver erotica with character development, they can’t bother to deliver erotica that doesn’t feel like it was written by a 14 year old who just found out what sex is like.

I can count on one hand the amount of sensual novels I have read that made me feel connected, inspired and converted to the character’s lives, wishes, wants, needs. Sex should be the cherry on top of a very well-crafted plot, world, universe and not a “tiktok girlies are going to love this one” dumbed down version of it.

I am not against these books EXISTING, again, NUANCE. I have loved my fair share of romance novels and still do, but I am insulted every single time a grown ass married woman writes an 18 year old who knows she somehow likes BDSM as a virgin. The reality is that as women, we can all do better than that. Especially if you are an author.

Give me a real woman, give me real sexual, passionate adult relationships. And not your tumblr porn teenage fantasies. I am fucking tired of reading dialogue of characters who have the mental maturity of a plant.

They were mad at kallmekris because she was telling the truth and they didn’t like it.

She picked the most popular books on tiktok, with billions of hashtags and she reviewed it fairly. She said: I am not a reader, but if I were, this is not what I’d want to be reading ALL THE TIME and I think y’all need to touch some grass.

And honestly, so do I, because what I heard from my own community over and over again was: If there is no spice, I am not touching it. I am not reading it. Oh is it in third person? I am not reading it. Don’t even start talking to me about a book before giving me how many chilli something peppers a book has.

And if that is your ONLY connection with reading, how much sex you can find in the book, I am not so sure you really like reading. I am sorry. I am just not lol

As someone who has been a reader their entire life, I can’t fucking believe that as a book reviewer, I need to confirm you will be able to masturbate to a book to convince you to read it.

Again, don’t wear the shoe if it doesn’t fit. If that’s not you, then you have nothing to take offense to.

I am going to say what everyone is thinking.

If Booktok was solely a community of men talking about their kinks in public, and telling each other to read x,y,z because they were able to “read it with one hand” while simultaneously jerking off to it, you would all be calling the police. You don’t and never have accepted this level of sexual freedom for the opposite gender.

We in fact shame men for their sexual addictions.

As for me? As a book content creator in a bookish space, I just want to meet readers who like to read because they always liked to read and not because they are looking for the next thing to get off to.

I am not asking for much. I don’t need booktok to go away, I don’t think spicetok is the bane of our society and existence. I think every adult should be able to consume whatever content they’d like, and publish about whatever they’d like as long as they are not harming anyone.

But I also want us to stop pretending that this conversation isn’t real, that these criticisms aren’t valid. Because they are, the community is just too afraid to face it.

Use this comment section if you’d like, to recommend romance novels that focus less on quotable tiktok spice quotes and more on actual character development.