Cailin Riley Books

Please don’t come for me.

Because I’ll go ahead and spoil this post for you by saying that Booktok isn’t bad itself…but I do think it creates a not-so-great bandwagon effect.

Let me explain:

If you’re not familiar with the term, Booktok is the side of social media platforms, primarily Tiktok, that focuses on books, authors, and readers. It also includes book reviewers. Many who interact with Booktok create review videos or hype videos for certain book series, titles or authors.

Some of the positives of interacting with Booktok include easily finding recommendations for new books to check out and learn more about different authors. It also creates a community of people who love to read and that is 1000% a good thing, no doubts there.

But.

Booktok has a way of becoming an echo chamber and it also creates a pretty intense bandwagon effect.

Echo chamber: An effect where, in order to seem relevant and agreeable, people “parrot” the same ideas and/or opinions and dissenting ideas go unheard or unsaid

Bandwagon effect: A social process where people quickly attach to popular ideas or practices for fear of feeling left out or socially ostracized

Here’s an example of each of these social effects in the world of Booktok:

A member of a Booktok-inspired Facebook group feels pressured to agree that Colleen Hoover is a fantastic author, even though she personally feels the books are mediocre.

A Booktok user chooses to pick up a book at the store because she’s seen countless videos about the book.

Echo chambers can negatively impact readers and discussion when individuals feel pressured to conform to a certain idea or opinion. I’ve seen people on multiple Facebook groups get torn apart and bullied simply for saying they don’t enjoy a certain author or popular book.

Similarly, the bandwagon effect can narrow readers’ access to new books that might challenge them. I’m not saying that Fourth Wing is a bad book, but when everybody wants to get their hands on a single book just to see what the hype is about, it limits their time to find other books they might enjoy.

I think it’s particularly worrying for younger readers, who are naturally more susceptible to the opinion of others in attempts to fit in. I grew up before Booktok was a light in the eye of social media and so my book recommendations were limited to friends and what the librarians highlighted on the shelves. So I ended up reading a wide variety of stuff, much of which I wouldn’t have picked up otherwise. I believe that made me a better reader overall.

But if all your book recommendations boil down to mega-popular authors and books that go viral, your world shrinks a bit. And I don’t think that’s a good thing for young readers.

In sum, Booktok can be a great resource for joining a reader-focused community. But I think it’s important to challenge, if only in your head, the books and ideas you see constantly hyped on there. If you don’t like the sound of a book, you don’t have to read it, even if it seems like everybody else is. If everybody seems to love a book and you thought it was terrible, your opinion is just as valid as anyone else’s. Say your piece, even if it doesn’t seem appreciated.

The world of books gets better when people have a variety of opinions and feedback.