a couple of things I wanted to clarify: 1) it has been brought to my attention that Fight The New Drug apparently have ties to the Mormon Church, please check the description box for more info. 2) i tried to preface the entire conversation around corn and smut by acknowledging that there is no *scientifically-recognisable* basis for it, but just in case it wasn’t clear, the entire section 2 and 3 of this video essay are rather speculative and abstract. thank you all for watching and commenting! xx
don’t know if yt will let me post a link but there’s a comprehensive article from the raquet press on FTND’s religious affiliations. Just bc the mormon church itself doesn’t run it doesn’t mean the people running the organization themselves don’t have political and religious motivations
a lot of the stuff in this video I agree with and has merit but it’s just irresponsible to include references from FTND especially without disclosure or closer research
@@julesbilee thank you i updated the des box with the link. agreed this was my bad , since i can not add this info into the video itself, trying to make this info visible the best way i can
It's the same thing, though. I don't think it pays to c**p on others who are just in a different place in the same market as you. Like, ao3 authors might get their better stuff published one day, if a market still exists. This is still a trend to moralizing something that shouldn't be moralized, that I don't like, and there's something about women that makes them do this.
@@hayley179g ao3 authors do get their stuff released that hit mass media just look at ali hazelwood and her rebranded reylo works and a lot more like the harry styles ff inspire movies
Am I upset about women reading 'Spicy' literature? No. Bodice rippers have been a thing for ages. Am I upset that people call Haunting Adeline and things like it 'Romance'? Yes. They aren't romance. They romanticize dangerous behavior and excuse terrible actions because 'he's hot'.
i agree, i would prefer for dark romance to simply mean a romance that also happen to touch upon some dark difficult topics, e.g: SA, abuse, addiction not that a love interest is a literal unaliver or stalker 😅 but that’s just me
Recently I watched the 2 hour long video by ContraPoints, where she talks about twilight and moreso, well the type of smut that is associated with these books. Apparently she called 3 of the mist prestigious universities ti ask, what the difference is between erotica and romance. The answer is that erotica is for sluts and romance for good girls. There.
@@rayareadzzzzI think I would prefer it if it had more straight forward morals eg demonising a character for SAing the main character or another character and just have the dark aspect be like murder or something.
Idky we call it dark romance when there’s no romance in so many of these books. It should just be called erotica, because that what it is. I want romance.
There's also no actual romance in normal romance books these days, let alone dark romance. Normal romance books now just base the whole relationship between the main characters on sex and sexual tension. No communication, no real plot or development, no spending time together without sex, and neither of them are ever able to have a single thought about eachother outside of "wow the love interest is so hot I'm so horny right now." It feels like romance authors are just living vicariously through their characters instead of writing actual stories. The genre as a whole is a mess.
Ive been seeing so many people say "Oh dark romance is called that because the author chooses what romance is" like that makes no sense, starting to think some of these readers are diluted 🧍♂️ Im meant deluded im just stupid lol but yeah, these folks need a glass of water cause your thirst isn't the business of the internet
for the most part i agree, i can not bring myself to read any of those dark romances that are going viral on tiktok 😅 but i guess everyone considers different things “romantic” and have different standards for partners, relationships (fictional & real) and maybe they have their own reasons for it, so i don’t wanna judge anyone for their taste or choices
I mean, in my opinion, smut is the literature version of porn. Lol That’s not to say that all books that include sex scenes are porn. That’s ridiculous, just as it is ridiculous to label all movies with sex scenes as porn. But if the entire premise of the book is based on sex…. Idk, there’s obviously a market for it, so just label the book as erotica and be done with it lol
As an asexual person this obsession with “spice” is exhausting. It makes me so upset when I’m hearing about a romance book only to find out it’s actually just a bunch of smut scenes. In my opinion this takes away the conversation about asexuality and makes people believe that romance and sex are the same thing which is not true at all, I just wish there was more of a differentiation between romance books and spice books on tiktok
You spoke before me and thank you for it! ❤ I try my best to avoid these kind of books, even though i love to read since i was a teenager. I tried to dip my toe in with BookTok books with Red, White and Royal Blue, because i loved the movie and i was stunned. The movie was so heartwarming, just a little feel-good story and the sex scene(s) didn't bother me because that was not the main focus. And then, i stumbled upon the book and my oh my, the plot is just a poor excuse and only the buildup for the smut. And then, every scene is explicitly written, and sometimes painfull to read. I'm not bashful, and i don't act like a nun when a sex scene is comeing up, i'm only indifferent, and yes as you wrote, it's exhausting, and it implies that there is no romantic love without sexual attraction, and no romance without sex. So i just retract to my mothers huge book collection from the 80-90's and i'm fine with it, currently reading The Green Mile for the billionth time.
🤍🖤💜 Yessss, I love love romance books but all the smut is exhausting. I think it’s a huge part of why I used to read so much Amish romance lmao! Now I’m finally skilled **enough** at writing to write my own private romance stories just the way I like, but I would love it if the sPiCeY book trend would die.
Except it is the same thing for the vast number of people, or at the very least it is necessary to have one to get to the other. Romance is the path to sexual encounters.
Same!! Particularly so as it’s also being included in unrelated genres like fantasy as well (I’m also aromantic so I try to avoid romance books) It’s genuinely gotten to a point where the only books I feel I can trust are YA books that still skew to a younger demographic, such as Warriors and Wings of Fire, which ofc comes with its own set of problems as I’m 23 and want to explore more adult oriented media. I’m glad others can enjoy smut, I just wish it wasn’t at the cost of an already marginalised group getting even more ignored, yknow?
I relate to the exhaustion. As an ace myself I do like reading romance in books, but when most of them have smut scenes, searching for the right book is like finding a needle in a haystack. And sometimes I get jumpscared by smut scenes which just makes me feel even more hopeless that writers can't write a romance without s*x being the endgame (or something like that). ALSO for the love of everything can we finally get more couples that are playful with one another and not every scene is charged with sexual tension? Is that too hard to ask? Mini rant over XD
I find it pretty disturbing how people on BookTok have made it a requirement for books to have smut, to the point that they’ll rate a book 1 star for not having the amount of explicit smut they want. And I’ll admit, I enjoy well written sex scenes between two love interests I’m rooting for, but I don’t want their entire relationship to be about sex. That isn’t normal for real life so it shouldn’t be normal in fiction. Personally, I don’t think this mindset is normal, that smut must be included, or else book bad, 1 star. There’s nothing inherently wrong with smutty scenes or the enjoyment that readers get from them, but it becomes an issue when it affects how you feel about books for not having smut and sorta making reading smutty books into a personality trait and it’s especially an issue when people start harassing others, like with the hockey and bikertok situations. Although this topic does lead me into one other opinion I have that the smut requirement is the reason a lot of viral books are lower quality since people don’t seem to care so much about a good story, good writing, or good characters because they just read for the spice. Which also leads to the other separate issue of how it seems like certain authors don’t even care about the quality of their own books and just want to push them out as fast as possible (cough cough Tracy Wolff who released a 6 book series from 2020 to 2023, put out a whole ass trilogy from February 2019 to June 2019, and another 4 book series from January 2014 to September 2015. And I speak from experience with the 6 book series, Crave, that they are absolute garbage, so inconsistent and poorly written, but hey, at least there’s smut 🙃🙄)
I read _Does it hurt?_ by h d Carlton. I hated it! The smut didn’t make any sense with the story and who would be attracted to a man who tried to feed u to the sharks?! Oh not to mention get a random tattoo at a bus stop from a total stranger… yet everyone 5 stars it. It’s sucked.
giving a book a lower rating just because there is no smut in it is actually ludicrous to me 😂 if anything smut often makes me deduct points just because how cringe those scenes can sometimes get ESPECIALLY when there is 0 emotional connection between the characters 😵💫
100% agree. It also infuriates me when those readers will pick up a YA book and complain that there's no spice. It's a YA book, it's not supposed to be spicy!
Personally I don't understand vehemently opposing the idea that smut books are corn. The definition is "printed or visual material containing the explicit description or display of s- organs or activity, intended to stimulate s- excitement" and those books definitely fit it.
It's just a word people use. It wouldn't make sense to only use it in one way if people are constantly trying to use it in different ways. That being said, there's a clear difference in extremes between corn and smut.
It's the difference between a scene in film that's saying something vs straight up corn. It's not about "printed visual material containing the explicit description/display of", it's in intention. Does the material what *you,* as the audience, to feel that excitement and get off, or is the material just showing a very vulnerable aspect of our lives to say something or showcase a relationship? Because there's a *huge* difference, and a very clear one at that.
The difference here is really about if the story can stand on its own without the smut. Court of the Vampire Queen? That is corn. Straight up. It has no plot, it is just smut after smut after smut. I got 3 chapters in before I realized there was no plot, and put it down. ACOTAR, on the other hand, does have a plot that can stand on its own without the smut. Is it good? That’s up to personal opinion (I’m not a big fan personally) but the actual plot does stand on its own without needing smut to make the plot.
As an ace these romance books just make me feel even more hopeless that people will never understand that there’s a difference between sexual and romantic attraction. S*x doesn't have to be the endgame! At this point I'm desperate to read about couples who are also each others best friend, are playful and not every scene is charged with sexual tension.
You'd need ace authors for ace audiences for that. There's no way for a not truly asexual person to write for an ace audience, and most people wouldn't find those types of romance books as interesting.
Go look at fanfictions. Better relationship dynamics than most published works, and yes, the best friend to lovers trope in addition to slow-burn is very prevelant there, so that's what you'll find there. More queer people writing can be found in fanfictions, so it will be more similar to your understanding of relationships than published straight smut books.
@@hayley179gwell that’s just not true tho like I am not ace but I am confident I can write a cute lil friendly romance about two people who love each other deeply. Like op said it’s understanding the DIFFERENCE between ROMANCE and just sex
@@The-Busy-Beeeee I'm not sure I could. All the fluff I know of has sexual undertones in it, even when all they're doing is building furniture or something. I don't know, either you're right, or because ace people don't understand that, they might need something more tying the characters together. I don't know what, maybe a plot, or a more intense platonic activity.
It's an addiction that will never be considered as such. The simple reason is how much power the corn industry has on the world. It's HUGE. And they'll like people to think that is harmless and good for you. No matter how many stories we hear of how much it can ruin someone's life, this industry we'll always have the power to control the its narrative
Most of these books are just terrible in general. SJM, for example, is an abysmal writer and I can’t stand her books. I love fey stories/ dark fairytales so my sister-in-law, who is a HUGE SJM fan, gave me the first two books of the ACOTAR series. I couldn’t even get past the first chapter without rolling my eyes. I have a degree in English literature and creative writing and these books are an abomination to the English language and good plot development. I sat there with a red pen and crossed out all the run on sentences and superfluous words until nearly the entire book was marked up. I obviously have some serious feelings about this genre. 😂
"these books are an abomination to the English language and good plot development": This can apply to Shadowhunter by Cassandra Claire. I tried yesterday, not even 1 chapter was possible for me😅
Sarah J Maas is one of authors who I blacklisted. After reading book 5 of Throne of Glass. I said goodbye. I don’t care if she improves. And her fanbase is just scary to me.
I recently picked started reading ACOTAR and it’s not the best book ever but so far I’ve been having fun with it. I’m 100 pages in and so far it’s a fun and easy read. I still have more than 200 pages to go so opinions could change. I can totally understand not liking her writing style, there have been a few moments that bugged me a bit. I understand not liking the bad grammar but personally for me I don’t pay much attention to the grammar. Idc too much if a book as run on sentences as long as they convey what they need to. If the grammar makes the stuff being conveyed more confusing then I do have a problem. As of right now for me I’m having fun with it and I’m mostly neutral. I went into the book knowing there were mixed opinions so maybe that helps me like it more. I think if I went into it hearing only high praise then I probably would not like it as much. I’ve heard some bits of spice in one of SJM’s books and it does sound cringe and silly. I think once I get there I’ll likely just have fun laughing at it. It might depend on how cringe it is though.
I'm not going to judge people for reading any content. Read and enjoy what you want. That said, people have to realize that if the majority of a book revolves around explicit sex, then the book is erotica. The fact that the book just might be written by a woman for a demographic of mostly women means absolutely nothing.
actually the market definition for publishers for romance is just it focuses on two characters’ relationship and they end up together, that’s it. so something can be erotica and romance by publishing definitions
I watched a really good essay about Twilight from the creator ContraPoints. Her conclusion is that women like these books bc, basically, it's a fantasy of "taming the beast" via UwU to gain power by proximity, without having to take power by force. Bc taking things by force is apparently, too masculine and unattractive to men. And with the non-con fantasy, the woman can be ravished by a hot, powerful man without feeling ashamed bc, since she didn't ask for it, she can maintain her purity. It's weird. But I get it. But also, girl, stand up! Letting a guy walk all over you isn't going to make him commit.
I saw the video and honestly like, I feel like this is coming from the POV of a middle aged conservative house wife and not a 20 something year old, and those are the people who mainly advertise and probably consume this stuff It kinda reminds me of "superhero fatigue", the whole thing is about how people are tired of superheroes but this POV is almost exclusively from people who see nothing but Marvel, Image and DC and not the general public
I saw that too, and while I understand her point and I agree that women should have the right to read what they want without men thinking that it's what they desire in real life, denying that it is corn (idk how youtube filtering works lol) is just delusional. It's also delusional to say that it has no negative effects whatsoever - I genuinely don't think it's healthy for anyone to only consume media which sexually arouses you, lol.
@@arkkon2740 Ye admittedly Nat wasn't saying anything new there - but the shift in demographics definitely should invite some re-evaluation of our ideas about the average reader of smut. The way I see it... it just happens that most straight women (in today's English-speaking world) are subs, and also the general public isn't too well read. So, you get badly written porn (as most porn is) aimed at straight women presenting a submissive fantasy. But because it's badly written, often by people who don't really understand BDSM or dark fetishes, it's kinda awkwardly straddling the lines between "oooh it's dark and taboo and scary" and just plain juvenile. Like... none of these "romance" authors are writing Histoire d'O, no matter what TH-cam critics may say. They're just writing conventional bodice rippers with protagonists who are kinda trashy assholes and maybe some of them are *thinking* it's dark taboo romance instead of crappy porn.
I've gotten to the point where I just don't read romance books that have come out in the last ten years. It's just really hard to find books with a serious plot with romance as a subgenre without gratuitous sex.
try Abby Jimenez if you still want to read a romance of course 😅 i’ve been soo soo impressed with her books - truly romantic & almost no smut, although for her characters and books i wouldn’t even mind if she had pages of spicy scenes
I'm so picky now after seeing how much the market has been saturated by smut in so many subgenres... I mean, I've found an awesome looking supernatural series only to find from the description of the reviews that it's mostly just smut.. so now I read the description thoroughly and check reviews on just about all books, especially romances 😭 I really look for the words "clean romance" a lot 😆 it doesn't have to be no sex for me to enjoy a book, but that seems safest. Though then I also have to make sure it isn't clean because it's full of religion cuz I don't much enjoy that from a book either usually lol
@@melaniemitchell9419 I totally get that! It doesn't have to have no sex necessarily, but I find a lot of books with smut in it seem to care more about the sex than the actual plot. Like, hey there's people dying rn, should our characters really be doing the devil's tango?? Priorities please! 😂
@@julianasohmer6176 exactly!!! I also get frustrated when it seems like the super popular ones aren't even well written. Which I'm sure sounds judgy, and it's not meant to be...I don't think less of people for enjoying them.. it's frustrating because I want more good recommendations 😆 in general. Like hey people, recommend me some good books, and if there is sex in it that comes naturally, then fine lol
Humans are, for the most part, sexual beings. Women are also not generally as visually stimulated as men. I feel it only becomes an addiction when it bleeds into and starts affecting other areas of their life. Reading a spicy book in bed after a long day at work? Not problematic. Your job performance suffering because you are continually either thinking about or reading said spicy book during work hours? Problem.
I think the worst issue is that this trend makes people equate ‘romance’ and ‘sex’ to be the same thing, when they don’t have to be. Really, why not just call it porn?
Or they can just call it what it really is. Erotic books. The biggest problem, in my opinion, is that people call those books romance novels when it's very clearly erotica.
The problem I have with these books is that they lack passion and eroticism. They have sex but it feels very mechanical. I feel people forget what erotic can be, beyond making beautiful people put their genitals together.
Exactly! It's probably connected to the fact that these books are usually very sparse on an engaging plot and proper character development; so a sex scene feels less like a satisfying payoff to a story arc, but the sex scenes are the entirety of the book and everything else sort of takes place in the background.
9:51 this is crazy bc corn addiction is 100% real and 100% affects brain chemistry and functionality in life and is NOT religion’s fault. If it gives people a dopamine rush it can cause addiction, as well as how it affects hormones, relationships, and interests. Over consumption can even lead to other problems which is a whole other horrifying rabbit hole 😭 Edit: glad this was addressed with hyper frontally and the elevation of chasing that high
I mean, experts attribute the addictive aspect to a cause, not the activation of dopamine specifically which is why it's been recognized as something else. People can become addicted to anything, but there seems to be more evidence between people of specific attitudes and upbringings as opposed to, say, the substance itself in the case of consuming explicit material.
Actually, it is religion's fault. See how the most well-known religions use sexuality as a weapon to shame people for something natural, which transforms "corn" in a secret, forbidden pleasure, which only makes matters worse.
@@XZeroDragoonXthere’s tons of studies about this all with different conclusions and i know I was generalizing for the sake of the TH-cam comment about dopamine but people who are more religious are typically more likely to say they’re addicted even if they aren’t because they treat the topic with more scrutiny, sure, though I’ve never seen anything about how there’s any broad truth that backs your claim that there’s a correlation between religion and adult content abuse. I can see how upbringing can affect what things people become addicted to as adults tho, but I don’t think that would apply to adult content unless there was a push of it in the home from a young age which I’ve heard happen before which is truly disturbing so it’s definitely not like that in the vast majority of religious homes
You started at 2012, but I think it's much earlier than that. Once I took my grandmother's Harlequin book to read and I didn't expect the amount of spice that was in it, which makes me think about the amount of Harlequin books published in the world before we even had the internet. And Harlequins in Poland were the books you could buy with all the 'women's magazines' and they sold it as a subscription with new books delivered to your door every month. You can still find these books in any local shop that sells magazines/newspapers, and old ladies have bookshelves with series of these books. And in the end it's no different to what we have now, but with the internet people can talk about it all over the world, not just with their closest friends. And now men are commenting this is P, and before they probably were thinking girls are only reading about falling in love with some guy in 1880. Fun fact: I was curious enough to go to my local church library and even there I could find series of Harlequins.
true true, just to clarify: i didn’t mean that smut/erotica in literature didn’t exist before 2012, just that 50 shades of grey and the explosion of booktok led to normalization of this content erotica as a genre existed and thrived for years, but now it feels like it has leaked into almost every genre out there, and that a book has to have smut in it to be ‘viral’
@@zapisanekartki3845I still think your comment still stands, because of how harlequins were normalized. However, the popularity of that now isn't the same as saying a book is good, there is still nonsexual literature out there, it's just not featured on smuttok.
Eh, dark romance books nowadays are still very much in the vein of fifty shades: rich fuckboy who acts like any other douche in a club being sold to you as if he's Marquis de Sade.
I agree with most of what you have said. I have read a lot of these "spicy" books and here's what I think as an avid reader since I was like 5: - the writing is just, excuse my harsh remarks, SHIT. I mean, a LOT of these books lack basic editing, it is SHOCKING. As others have said, I have read better fanfic online, with better editing and language and flow. I understand English is not everyone's first language (it is not mine!) but if you are in the mainstream publishing space, it is appalling that you don't have a good editor. (Im looking esp at you ACOTAR series) - Most Dark romance is not romance. It is either alarming erotica or straight up horror/psychohorror. I am fine with the trigger and content warnings, my problem is it being sold as romance. Why are we romanticising a rapis t as a hot man and as couple goals? Why is the whole narrative around this? That does not sound like a romance that sounds like saying the netflix series "YOU" is a romance series. Which I still have a problem with. I understand while some of these books are purely made for their audience to jerk it off to, labelling horrifying, egregious crimes being committed as "ROMANCE" is and always will be AWFUL and is an instant negative review for me. (I'm looking at you Haunting and Hunting Adeline) - I don't care what women are jerking off to based on books, if you think a guy stalking you, killing your family and impregnating you by force is hot- you need therapy but I wont force you to not enjoy it. That is your choice. But I can not for the life of me defend these books or authors. It does not seem right and it feels violating to defend them and romanticise them as a survivor of grape. - Romance as a genre DESERVES better. 'ROMANTASY' as a genre deserves better, even if it is not for me at all. I understand that the romance aspect of the romantasy will always take precedent before fantasy but having read TOG, Fourth Wing, ACOTAR and so many "booktok" reccs- I am so sad to know the worldbuilding, magic systems, lore and etc are so backseat. Furthermore, you can be a woman and have complete agency without a man having to tell you your choice matters. And don't get me started on the icky age gaps. We as readers, deserve better and safer erotica, smut and romance.
Honestly my problem with all this is how some people think it's okay to go into other generas and expect dark romance or smut to be there. I was at B&N not long ago and there was a group of grown women in the YA section talking very loudly about how they read this one book and there was no smut. They were just hovering in the YA section and they expected those books to have smut. Of course they don't because they are ment for teens and young adult. I just think that some people need to be more aware when they read different generas or are in public spaces. There are kids around you shouldn't be talking about smut and how the book you read have men who beat women up in them. I was very grossed out when I was at the B&N and it was very uncomfortable. I wish people would keep that stuff to themselves or at home, no need to bring it out in public loudly.
We I can answer that as I’m entering the publishing industry, the reason why they confuse that too much is because of sexism in the writing industry when it comes to publishers and women writers who write Romancetasy and fantasy they always put them in the YA section no matter the age like Rebecca Yarrows and SJM books they are clearly not for kids or young adults but the industry demands that they are in that category. However, when you look at Grrm and his work on his A song of ice and fire books all of the characters are just about underage as young as 13 and 14 yet that isn’t classified YA personally it shouldn’t b/c Grrm pairs these kids with grown men and women but you see the issue here. Unfortunately female writers work is always classified as YA and the stores market as such especially if it strays outside Romance genre that’s why you heard that conversation. It’s an unfortunate practice in the industry and personally I want it gone.
i agree w pretty much everything u said except for that last bit of part 2 which felt like a false dichotomy, which kinda surprised me w how fair that part felt. i don’t necessarily see it as a “pick one or the other”, as if it’s better to be a cocaine addict than a heroin addict, which may be true, but that doesn’t rly address the larger problem of damn this person is addicted. i def agree w the touch grass bit lol but also i don’t think it’s *only* on individuals to perfectly control themselves, some responsibility belongs on the industry/culture that makes space for this sort of behavior bc they do it for benefit/profit. my pov is that erotica and smut is perfectly normal to read and enjoy (safely!!) but if that’s all or even most of what u read that’s a problem. it would be like if u only watched x-rated movies, like there’s so many more films out there? tbh w any genre rly, why limit ur self? especially when the media one consumes impacts their perception and pov and if all one consumes is 1 very specific thing that might be rly bad for how u see ur self, others, the world, etc. rly like the vid good job :)
I would quibble that, I don't think it's so much "if that's all or most of what you read" as it's more like "if you are reading this to the detriment of never actually doing anything else in life with yourself or other people"-if that makes sense? 😅 🙂 (Like, you could read only or mostly that, but this doesn't necessarily/automatically mean that you aren't still also sometimes putting it down and actually engaging with life or other things/people outside of or beyond that in perfectly normal/healthy/positive/constructive ways or whatever....even if you never personally read any other kind of fiction.?)
I am someone who does a lot of written erotic roleplay so I understand the enjoyment of "spice in text". But I think it is something we should know how to engage with and do so sanely. I am a big fan of dark stuff on those things I do. Still, I also am perfectly capable of enjoying written word that has little to non of it and I believe that such balance is good. Not saying "be like me, mortal!", but I do believe some level of restraint and separation is important. After all, if ALL of your approach to the written word is plainly sexual, then you are losing out on all the other cool things such a medium can offer. And that is a shame. Do not narrow your views, try to expand them to a level in which you're comfortable!
Personally, I just wish authors would disclose how much “spice” is in their books, or that there was some sort of public rating system like there is for tv, because I don’t enjoy reading spice and it’s stopped me in my tracks while reading NUMEROUS books and I’m just tired 😢
Red Tower Books toyed with that with Yarros’s The Empyrean. The problem was that, in the first book, they drastically understated how graphic the sex scenes were, while for the second book, they just listed a link to a content warning web page that they didn’t fill in for months (and probably is still blank to this day).
Yes it’s a porn addiction. I tried reading a popularly suggested one and it was so badly written and non stop sex and made me feel so weird. 10:09 also, they are not watching normal amounts. It is constant daily things.
I want to say i'm not advocating for more. I do think it's gotten out of hand. I recently read the new Ali Hazelwood coming out in June and it's like the balance is gone and it's just smut smut smut the whole way through. So it was frustrating and actually pretty unsatisfying. THAT BEING SAID I do think it's important to note how the less shame women feel around sex the more likely they are to enjoy this kind of literature. I do feel like the popularity around these books is from the need for "intimacy" to be shown in a way that is more satisfying for women since we know most sex scenes in movies and in porn are generally created for the male gaze. Women just want something for themselves and this smut insanity has been a big part in helping women find that. Seeing as so much of this literature is written by women I think it evens the playing field a little bit.
I agree with the whole sex empowerment part but these are so many people who glorify these books and say that these are actual good romance stories instead of what they are which is p*rn.
While it is highly debated if compulsive "corn" use is a genuine addiction, it can have negative side effects similar to addiction, and some doctors think it could be a sign of a hypersexual disorder. Now, you're probably right in saying that smut isn't nearly as bad as actual "corn," but I think it could act as a gateway towards consuming "corn," so maybe people should practice more discretion and scrutiny before consuming/endorsing smut.
As someone who went through a phase recently where i was exploring my sexuality and reading a lot of spicy romance and erotica, I honestly think the extremely poor writing quality of those books is much more "brain rotting" than the sexual content. Many of them are written so poorly that of course the only simulating thing about them is the sex, which I think can lead people who haven't read much before into thinking that's the only thing about books that can be mentally stimulating. And then the dark romances...I just don't think it's healthy to have these mass marketed books romanticize things as horrific as stalking, sa, inc*st, etc. I think well written erotica that includes consensual kink between partners who respect each other would be a much healthier outlet for women in general than abusive relationships being romanticized. I think it's perfectly okay that a lot of women want sex in their romance books, for a lot of people that's an important part of a romantic relationship so it makes sense for it to be represented in fiction. AND I think it's also fair that some people want less or no sex in their romance books. I think the solution to that is promoting greater variety/diversity in the genre instead of just reducing sex in books overall, that just screams purity culture to me. Overall, I guess I feel labelling people p*rn addicts is...not helpful and reduces the actual conversation down to tired conservative talking points. I'm not saying someone can't have an unhealthy relationship with p*rn, and the mainstream p*rn industry is for the most part extremely unethical, but the term "p*rn addiction" has no scientific basis or diagnosis as an actual addiction besides the behavior itself possibly being a symptom of a deeper psychiatric problem. Any "research" about p*rn addiction will always lead back to religious institutions who have their own agenda to prove (such as fight the new drug). Honestly, I think consumerism, lack of diversity, and lack of media literacy are probably the biggest reasons for "mainstream" booktok being so unbearable.
What pisses me off that there are books that are good without the spice. I mean the storyline and romance are well written so I have to skip the smutt. I wish I could just wipe the smutt off the pages.And also I can't recommend them to anyone because they'll think I'm a smut addict. But I'm actually here for the feelings,for the real romance,for the emotional build up before the first kiss(sometimes I don't even like when they kiss too early). I need to root for them first then I maybe sometimes enjoy the physical interaction. I almost always read romance book because I only read books to enjoy and be happy and romance makes me happy. But it's soo hard to find the kinda romance that I actually like.
it’s the same for me, i’m not a fan of smut early on in books, i can barely remember characters’ names at that point 😅 also i feel like smut is so so personal, so it can also ruin the book for me
Personally I think there a few key things to this. One; there needs to be a balance of plot and smut in a book if you’re writing an explicit adult romance. If there is more smut and like no plot then it’s erotica. Two, there is nothing wrong with reading and enjoying erotica, dark stories, or romance books, you just have to be mindful and make sure that’s not the only thing your consuming diversity is key. Three, there needs to be much less shaming on people who are reading those types of books and also yes it does take some searching to find people to follow on booktok who you can connect with but if you aren’t putting in the effort then that’s on you. Four, using the word addiction in this context is extremely disgusting and disrespectful to those who are going through addiction or who knows someone who is. Obsession would be a better word to use. An addiction will literally affect your whole life and it seems most of these supposed book porn addicts don’t fit the criteria to be classified as such. Finally, instead of judging people from behind your screen I say interact with those people and ask them if they’ve read other books, you will be happily surprised to find that a lot of them do read diversely.
Thank you! People are calling out being exhausted and stereotyping women readers, when they barely engage with the material or even do research on what 'addiction' is. What I'd also like to add to your great points is that people don't often take into consideration The consumer and reason for consuming. It is known that primarily women read these erotica. It is also well known that women are the FIRST in relationships to be sexually abused, reprimanded, and ignored. Mediums like smut can help people throughout these situations. When media is so vast and reasons for consuming such can also be vast. I am just appreciative of your lens of this situation lol have a good day :D
forbidden romances should be like a princess and a palace gardener who saved her from falling off a wall not some CEO and their tiny little underling who's struggling to pay rent
"Spicy romance" is definitely pornographic. That's not a bad thing, I'll never shame anyone for consuming porn, sex-positivity is important to me. I just think we should treat it the same as any other pornographic media. You wouldn't sit there at the beach or in a café scrolling through hentai on your laptop. You wouldn't recommend a pornographic movie to an underage kid. I'm not gonna shame women for reading this stuff, but in return I don't wanna be shamed for the porn that I consume.
It's actually always been like this. In early 2000s-2010s with wattpad and fb pages with fandoms of boy bands, women always made fics with explicit context. Then on Tumblr as well with anime series. It's just never got too mainstream for people to criticise before, and i am glad at least it now is mentioned. Like seriously going to a fandom and the 90% of fics it's corn and it's something that can be exhausting when viewed so much.
@@hayley179g because it has gotten out of control. The quality in writing has dropped because of fast profit and tropes like dark romance have been reduced to a joke. Having for a example a book with a trope like dark romance or having explicit content isn't bad but it's again the low quality that makes the end result bland
@@margaret7949 I don't feel like it's the quality that's being criticized as much as the genre itself. It's heavily tied to the new MGTOW movements. I agree the quality in writing has dropped off, I take it in stride though. It's the same thing that happened to mainstream cinema, and the tv boom. It's like, one diminished in quality while another one rose. You don't _have_ to buy dark romance novels, you can just go to the places that have more quality like independently published fiction. I totally agree we should talk about the drop in quality, but I worry with the current state of censorship it'll be used against us in the long term.
I don't see how smut is different from porn though. The industries, of course, have different target demographics and different practices, but sex is sex. It's still explicit depictions of arousal, with their own little subcategories of kinks, fetishes, scenarios, occupations, character tropes, etc. Like it's certainly the same thing, and I don't think there's anything wrong with acknowledging that. It's weird to deny it and annoying when people try to pass this stuff off as romance despite there being no genuine connection between characters like 80% of the time.
porn profits off of real people. smut is (mostly) fiction. in the general sense, yeah, it's porn, but it doesn't have the same implications. it's pornographic, sure, just not exactly *porn*.
Most of my issue with the current trend with smut is that because there's so much demand and volume, the majority tends to not be well-written. There was always romance/smut books (hell, I read a ton of them in my early 20s), but because it was mostly a sort of back-shelf genre that middle-aged women read, it tended towards better quality. SO many "spicy fantasy" books people are recommending now are just mediocre romance and mediocre fantasy smashed together with a lot of shallow characters and bad tropes, or they're dangerous and violent and fetishing abuse. Like, spice is great, fine, we love sexuality and we have always loved fantasy, but for the love of the gods, make it good. 🥴
I hate to bring this up as you obviously put a lot of effort into this, but Fight the New Drug has connections to the Church of Latter Day Saints, or Mormons. The fact it’s located in Utah would be the first red flag for that. I would not put much faith in their articles and “research”.
They at least claim to try not to be regliously affiliated. I remember looking there articles and I never really saw anything that was pushing a reglious agenda. I haven't looked into the studies they cite yet so idk.
@rayareadzzzz There's an 2016 op-ed in The Salt Lake Trubune from sex therapists who have stated the FTND individuals have no experience in the sexual health or mental health field. At a quick glance I personally can't find anything saying the FNTD founder (Clay Olsen) is for sure Mormon, but from what I can find I would say he also has 0 qualifications in research, mental health, or sexual health fields. Also, a lot of religious publications have platforms FTND which isn't necessarily a smoking gun but is kinda fishy in my opinion. Edit: I also checked the media bias fact check website and the organization has a right lean and those who have fact checked FNTD's publications have leaned towards their stances being pseudoscience. They have also been backed by The Ashton Family.
it's interesting to think about a world where age ratings were put on books. I think that could honestly be a good idea but ONLY in a world where the rating was not based on the amount of sexual content, but it's basis in reality and the maturity required to not internalise the incorrect or toxic depictions of sex
I just remembered a yt short. It’s was basically a husband/boyfriend who told other men if they see their partner late night reading a smutty book to grab that book, read it and do exactly THAT (I’m really hopping it wasn’t about a dark romance book 💀)
i felt this "need for spice" problem a few years ago when writing my fanfiction. at some point i felt like stories that end up with spice scenes gain much more popularity, that a story without spice is a child's one and you will be perceived as a child's author for not including spice into every tine piece you write. i felt it being a problem for me cause I'm asexual and writing spice has never been easy and it's self-violence to insert it into stories where spice doesn't have any emotional or storytelling meaning. it looks like this fanfiction spice need just grew up into booktok spice because this area of media is dominated at the moment by millennials and gen-z who at some point had started with fanfiction or were familiar with it before switching to published literature. and the only way out i see is letting spice readers separe in their niche if interest and look for/write what you personally want, not what is acceptable by trends 😳
I think one of my biggest problems with it is that its like a massive amount of people are going through an 8th graders first fanfiction phase and it's in all of our faces right now. ....but also a lot of whats being published I can literally find better written smut on AO3, Wattpad, etc. It's the slop that's being published and heralded as five stars that gets me. (And also all of the a*busive relationships that are being romanticized. I cannot wrap my head around how people think books like Haunting Adeline or Colleen Hoover are good because they're not and they need to be called out more and not in the hands of a YA audience IMO). And don't even get me started on Romantasy.
What boggles my mind is how things like ACOTAR are marketed as these wickedly spicy books, but it rly didn’t get all that explicit until silver flames, most of her writing is plot based. Then, they market things like haunting Adeline as “romance” as everyone else is saying, but it’s not romance it’s like…stalker erotica lol. I’ll also definitely say there’s something very different about women reading these books and men consuming porn of that nature (not to get super binary, but based on socialization it feels weirder for men to get off on those things, if only bc they could misinterpret fantasy/trauma healing for genuine desire) Edit bc I watched more: on the note of psychology, some of these topics might fall more under paraphilic disorders, which are only diagnosed if there’s non- consensual behavior involved (I.e, children, animals, sadistic disorder) or if it causes distress/impedes their life in some way for the individual experiencing those fantasies. What you said about people thinking they have porn addictions due to shame and social training TOOTALLY falls into that as well!
I admit that I read on occasion smut. But only from archive our own. Basically fanfics. It’s entertaining enough that I don’t feel the need to read a book with smutt in it. Its the same with films that has sex. I get bored. If I want to see some smut I know where. And its not from TV.
Not me on the bus between Albania and Germany last summer reading MM hockey smut on my phone with a young man falling asleep on my shoulder, blissfully unaware... 👀 But in all seriousness. Smut in a book? Fine. Smut only? Nah. At heart, I need a story and awful, painful, impractical, and/or impossible s3x scenes aren't my jam. If there's no story to support the smut, then it's not spicy romance, it's something else.
my main problem is actually that I completely agree with all you have said & i wish that we could shift away from generalizing booktok as this. I don’t have tiktok anymore (not good for my mental health) but I used to be a booktok creator and we have HUGE communities devoted to classics, diverse books, palestinian books, litfic, women vs the void, and etc etc etc. and smuttok is so not the entirety of booktok. generalizing booktok as smuttok, to me, seems to push away potential readers who might really get a lot out of so many of the other sides of booktok. I think a lot of smuttok creators are very good about calling their community smuttok, so it’s not a callout to them, but to the people outside of booktok who are constantly generalizing
i completely agree, and i’ve talked about in many of my other videos it’s called For You page for a reason, and my algorithm personally almost never serves me smut books 😅 but just like with everything else, it’s easier for outsiders to look at something once and just generalize it it as “a bunch of romances by white authors”, “only smut books” etc.
@@rayareadzzzz yes! and the algorithm is also better on tiktok about this. I recently switched completely to bookstagram and still constantly get recommended posts with SJM or dark fantasy, which I rarely ever saw on booktok (I have the keywords blocked on both, one algorithm is just better than the other). the tools are there for people to find their sides of booktok, but the outsiders generalizing it is so discouraging to new readers and to people who might want to engage with booktok. there are SO many great books still being published and so many great creators talking about them 💜 but outsiders only want to talk about the drama and erotica 😔 (and that’s absolutely misogyny imo)
I mean, I would argue that some of these creators don't even realise that they're 'smuttok' creators not 'booktok' creators. I mainly read classics, fantasy and weird fiction but even then, when I was on booktok (also deleted tiktok for the same reason, haha), I still frequently ran into these books with the 'booktok' hashtag and nothing else. ACOTAR, especially. I didn't even know that it was THAT explicit before looking into it because I was interested in the fantasy aspect. I am glad that you had that experience but the algorithm genuinely brings you to these dark romance books faster than it brings you to anything else when you interact with booktok - but it might be a demographics thing.
I mean, going off definitions alone, I think a good portion of these books might qualify as porn, but imo there’s nothing wrong with that. Like you said, it’s a lot more ethical than a lot of other stuff out there and if that’s how they get their rocks off, more power to them. Pornography for women is so stigmatised, looked down upon or used as joke and punchline. I’m not saying all of them read these books just or mainly because it turns them on, I’m saying, if they do, so what? God forbid would do anything and all that.
Danielle was actually making a joke , she was talking about the most spice book and then she pulled out Dune XD so yeah I agree with video but she was just joking.
You could find erotica in normal bookstores. Always. It's just that they used to have naked chests on the covers and were marketed towards older women. My grandma has a collection of such. Heck, I remember when we'd make fun of those by calling it 'divorced wine mom's' literature.
As a hopeless romantic who is not just asexual but also kinda sex repulsed, booktok doesn't feel like a 'safe space' for me. I understand the people who like this type of content but I am especially concerned for teens/minors looking into 'booktok' simply because they love reading, and then getting these recommendations. I just don't think straight up taboo fetish content should be this accessible under such a non-conclusive label as 'booktok'. They're clearly a separate community from the average reader, so they should make their separate space. but this is just my opinion, at the end of the day I guess you can just say you're not interested and hope that the algorithm actually picks up on it edit: Also, as a pretty vanilla romcom writer I am really concerned about this trend from the other side as well. It's already hard enough to make a living, or even just any money, out of writing novels. So now this is even harder - you basically have to have sexual content in your book for it to sell, or publishers won't be as interested in your work.
I don’t like smut so I have to search up books beforehand to know the plot and reviews of it. I can’t go into a store, read the back and then buy it, because all the books I’m interested in has smut in it.
tbh the one thing i dont get about booktok spice people is that theyre paying for badly written smut, when they deadass could go on ao3/literotica/wattpad, whatever, and have MILLIONS of those thangs for free.
As an author myself, it always gets me. Like I read books with spicy, I enjoy my spicy books. But I'm getting irritated because I'm worried my book series won't do well at all because ANY spice that does happen isnt explicit and it takes a while to get there. 😭
My main issue is that I don’t care if they are reading smut or dark romance just make sure the main male character isn’t a damn r*pist and sexist POS and at least write the book well. Also I hate all this cause it’s setting a standard for publishing houses to follow just so they can get sales in as people who submit there work will be judged by how much smut is in it not by structure world building or anything else that makes up the fundamentals of novels. Also Dark Romance Tok is cancer to society they literally cheered on and gushed over a man named Wade Wilson (No connection to Deadpool the character.) who Unalived two women he choked one and ran over the other until she passed away and guess what Dark Romance Tok was making thirst traps of this man who savagely harmed these women so I have to disagree it’s an addiction leading to brainrot in some individuals
Another great video! I've thought about this topic a lot and you've covered it so thoroughly, I appreciate the historical research you've done as I didn't even consider that aspect. I'm still figuring out my opinion, but something that stuck out to me was a TikTok I saw of someone throwing a bunch of books aside with the caption something like "when you can't enjoy a book if it doesn't have any sex scenes." I don't think the person who made this TikTok is necessarily interested in reading, reading is just their preferred way to engage with porn. Which I think is great! Everyone deserves to explore their sexuality in a safe, healthy way that they feel comfortable with. I've read several spicy books and loved them. But I do think that booktok is the wrong category for those engaging with books mainly for the purpose of consuming smut, because its not the format of storytelling through the written word that they enjoy, its the spicy content. It doesn't seem different than preferring to consume porn with an audio app or with videos on PornHub, they're just different methods for the same thing. The conversation around books that don't focus on porn is so different than those that do that I don't think it makes sense for it all to be under the same booktok umbrella anymore, they're two really different things that are equally important. I guess I just wish the online conversation for booktok was more well-rounded and didn't focus so heavily on smut when those conversations usually aren't really about reading. Plus, I imagine those that are triggered by sexual content must have a hard time getting into the online reading space because all of the top content is usually smut-based. Sorry for the essay in your comment section, I just find this so fascinating. Can't wait for your next video!
I specifically don't want to read 'spice'. I now just avoid the whole romance genre because I can't just browse books at the bookstore - I'd have to do research ahead of time to find the few romance books that won't have smut in them. There should be a marker somewhere on the cover.
I saw this video a few days ago and today my younger sister (who is in middle school, mind you) told me that some of her friends in her class have read books like Icebreaker, or some other books from Colleen Hoover (Sorry if I said her name wrongly, I'm not familiar with her) and I am actually concerned cuz reading those books at such an early age can really mess up the minds of kids, since they could think that some kind of abvsive behaviour is "romantic" or that it's "cute" which is obviously not. My problem with these books is that so many times they glorify 🍇, abvse, misoginy,, bullying and much more that made me dislike the Booktok community. I don't have any problem if someone ADULT likes those books but the fact that kids can calmly buy them and read them is still concerning to me and also the fact that they get publicized to kids (for example the 16-year-old biker being recommended an 18+ book is absolutely disgusting)
The spice obsession is getting to freshmen in high school! My journalism teacher who teaches 9th english, bought ice breaker for her 9th grade students...
Proof is in the pudding. If you need to have "spice" in the book for you to consider reading it - then you have a problem. Its like claiming you love movies but you only watch softcore and hardcore porn movies lol.
It does. I follow a few people read non fiction, some who read classics, historical fiction and non fiction and there are some great people on there discussing literary fiction
Thats ofd because there have definitely been reports talking about people watching porn that ruins their mental health and relationships due to be dissatisfied with reality
I struggle to find a well written newer fantasy novel in general. It sucks. I don't mind romance in the book, but that isn't what I'm there for. I prefer fade to black style books because sex scenes are distracting and make me uncomfortable now. I did used to read Shanna Abe books, but I really felt they were well written at the time. Now, I feel like most books are written like twilight with sex. It's boring, the writing is lazy, and the narrator or protagonist is obsessed with themselves. I want fighting, adventure, and romance can be present, but not the main thing. I really enjoyed Mrs. Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children series, A Darker side of Light series, The Shadow Game Series, The Giver, Circe, Howl's moving Castle. One of the triggers I can't read through involves child sexualization. It makes me sick, and I hate it. The arthor of Circe wrote a second book called The Song of Achilles. It describes a young boy discovering his sexuality as a child and young teen. I'm not sure how long it continues to do that. I had to stop reading it. At least, can we wait for the imaginary people to be adults before we objectify them?
I find it funny that anyone can argue that smut is any different from porn. One appeals more to men, the other to women but they are the same. It’s sexual content meant to titillate. Just as this youtuber says smut isn’t inherently bad, the same can be said about porn. Smut is just porn for women. I don’t care, personally. Read what you want, watch porn if you want. But if you don’t think smut is porn you’re lying to yourself and everyone else.
I largely agree, but it need not be so gendered. I first heard about my favorite porn film from a woman, and I'm currently reading a smut book written by a man. Are there trends? Sure, but let's not needlessly reinforce them.
It is different though, even if the goal is the same. The porn industry is rampant with irl abuse and misogyny, and very unsafe for a lot of performers (decriminalisation now!), and caters almost exclusively to men. It's also very normalised for that reason. Smut or erotica, especially by women for women, is derided for being mommy-porn in a world where female sexuality is both set-up and punchline. It doesn't harm anyone, especially if it comes with warnings, and it's usually focused on female pleasure in an extremely patriarchal world. That being said, over consumption is never healthy, and there's definitely a discussion to be had. But it's not the same.
It's a safe way for people to explore situations that they might not actually want in real life. There seems to be a neo-Puritan movement especially among younger people that rejects sexuality (totally fine) but then also imposes a lack of sexuality on everyone else (not fine). I think it's mostly people who are still figuring out what morals they have, but it's not a great attitude to cultivate.
@@SuperEkkorn I disagree. Porn is not inherently bad because most of the industry is. Nor is smut bad because some consumers take it too far and cross boundaries. They are both sexual content made to arouse the consumer. Smut is porn, only written. Though I do agree that over consumption is bad in both cases.
@@j.p.giambalvo1123 is it or is it not true that porn is mostly made for and consumed by men? Is it or is it not true that smutty books are mostly made for and consumed by women? I'm not needlessly reinforcing trends/stereotypes, I'm stating statistically supported facts. Of course some women watch porn and some men read smut, but the exceptions are not the rule.
I wanna tie in the increasing amount of unrated or mature rated TV shows as well. Due to the popularity of sexual scenes and other mature content (Game of Thrones, Spartacus, etc), it seems like almost every show that's been coming out has some type of smut. So in a way, there's been a huge spike in smut in books. I personally don't mind reading or watching smut every now and then if the story is actually good. But when it's in every single book or show, it makes it hard to enjoy and becomes stale and boring, imo.
I really wish we could have a little box on the back of the book with a rating and keywords that describe that rating like on movies. It's not perfect but it would sure be nice for people who don't want any spice, don't mind a little, only want spice, have teens but don't want to have to read the whole book to know if it's okay, more sensitive readers, etc. It would just be really nice
At this point I barely consider people who only read smut actual reader or fans of literature. Especially considering the smut that is often recommended is simply abuse. People are defending a bunch of disgusting degenerate behavior under the excuse of calling it “dark romance” and it’s beyond pathetic.
There's nothing wrong with wanting to read about sexual stuff but as a literature enjoyer i find it very sad that this is ALL that these people read all the time like- isn't that boring
All kinds of literature has it's place, and I don't have a problem with people reading smut. My problem is people reading smut almost exclusively. Nowadays if a teenager ( a child) tries to get into reading and looks for recommendations on tiktok, their first encounter could be with this glorified porn. And that shouldn't happen.
I have an author friend that makes 6 figures a MONTH by writing Sweet Romance (no smut) and even had one of her books made into a movie for this years Hallmark Christmas Movies. It is possible.
@rayareadzzzz Look up Anne-Marie Meyer. Nov. 30 at 6pm on Hallmark "Believe in Christmas" is based on her book Christmasland. I'd start with The Magnolia Inn and read down the series. 💞
men and women's brains work differently. the creative imaginative inclination of women pushes them more toward a romanticised built-up literary version of corn, in contrast to men who gravitate toward a straight-forward visual format with no plot or romance in it. corn is corn, and it DOES damage us psychologically. the most recent Kris Tyson fallout can show you the dark places that corn obsession can lead you into. you have the freedom to consume whatever content you want privately, but we need to stop trying to 'normalise' this stuff or pretend it's not damaging. it clearly is.
Personally I think there's no need to find like some kind of medical reason to call these "romance" novels crappy. They're just badly written. Which, like, doesn't matter all that much if all they're for is just as set dressing for sex scenes (though personally for me it seems weird that they'd waste so much time on bad set dressing, why not just stick to fanfics at this point). I think having to pretend that they are "romance novels" instead of what they actually are is the only problem.
Storm and Silence series, a slow burn romance adventure comedy historical series, all free on Wattpad with no smut, just kissing scenes and some scenes that lead close to sexual scenes but it never gets to the actual scene in detail, and these scenes start taking place in the 3rd book
better than the movies by lynn painter the do-over by lynn painter never ever getting back together by sophie gonzales (wlw) the weight of the stars by k. ancrum (wlw) icarus by k. ancrum (mlm) ya contemporary is pretty much all you can get
While in general i have a neutral/slight distaste towards smuttok, i do agree with the point on misogyny. Smuttok (for better or worse) has connotations to the fanfiction writing community, which is and has been a historically female/gender queer community. Unlike fanfiction, which can somewhat lay low compared to broader society, Booktok is much more mainstream and has more visibility. Elements that fanfiction emphasizes (dark topics, stronger sexual themes, a general "write whatever you want" attitude) are shared with the modern adult romance books of today. However, since these books feature "original characters", they are able to reach a further audience of both readers and critics of those borrowed values from fanfiction. TLDR, what used to be the central themes/ideas of fanfiction writers (mostly women/gender queer writers) has been adopted by women into original books, and those books gain more visibility in culture and subsequently more criticism.
to be honest i bought some books with smut but it becomes annoying in the end when there's too much for example the book about persephone and hades, there isn't a line when they're not... but there is a book i liked with smut and it was academy of protectors. BUT, i'm looking for real books now, can you guys recommend me a book where the characters write letters to each other ?
24:59 I refrained from commenting until I got to that time stamp. Yes I agree there should not be a bleed in real life that affects other people who did not consent to whatever fantasies a reader may want to project. But also, yes women's fantasies are also villified too heavily sometimes, so seeking them in books is way safer and geared to them as opposed to the very male centred ones in video format on "the hub".
especially since women’s reproductive rights are being stripped away and said lawmakers have explicitly expressed wanting to punish women for basically having any sort of sexual contact! this desire doesn’t exist in a vacuum!!
Considering a lot of dudes watch porn multiple days a week, if that's not considered an addiction, I don't think the smut book girls should be accused of this lol. However, I do think there are ethical conversations we should be having about both to keep humans in check if that makes sence.
Ive seen people consider once a week an addiction, but then again, this entire subsect of booktok makes its personality on smut so I guess we gotta discuss semantics for some of this
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a couple of things I wanted to clarify:
1) it has been brought to my attention that Fight The New Drug apparently have ties to the Mormon Church, please check the description box for more info.
2) i tried to preface the entire conversation around corn and smut by acknowledging that there is no *scientifically-recognisable* basis for it, but just in case it wasn’t clear, the entire section 2 and 3 of this video essay are rather speculative and abstract.
thank you all for watching and commenting! xx
don’t know if yt will let me post a link but there’s a comprehensive article from the raquet press on FTND’s religious affiliations. Just bc the mormon church itself doesn’t run it doesn’t mean the people running the organization themselves don’t have political and religious motivations
one of the founders literally says corn and pre marital sex and put of wedlock pregnancy as “threats to modern marriage”
on top of that the director wrote a brief in legal case against samesex marriage, this organization is not neutral
a lot of the stuff in this video I agree with and has merit but it’s just irresponsible to include references from FTND especially without disclosure or closer research
@@julesbilee thank you i updated the des box with the link.
agreed this was my bad , since i can not add this info into the video itself, trying to make this info visible the best way i can
i think my main problem wiht it is that the smut isn't even well written. like ten minutes in ao3 will get you better scenes c'mon
exactlyyyyy
It's the same thing, though. I don't think it pays to c**p on others who are just in a different place in the same market as you. Like, ao3 authors might get their better stuff published one day, if a market still exists. This is still a trend to moralizing something that shouldn't be moralized, that I don't like, and there's something about women that makes them do this.
@@hayley179g ao3 authors do get their stuff released that hit mass media just look at ali hazelwood and her rebranded reylo works and a lot more like the harry styles ff inspire movies
YESS ITS SOO BAD DUDE
This is why I don’t like smut heavy books! I can eat up ao3 fanfiction but books just make me cringe if it’s too much 😭
Am I upset about women reading 'Spicy' literature? No. Bodice rippers have been a thing for ages.
Am I upset that people call Haunting Adeline and things like it 'Romance'? Yes. They aren't romance. They romanticize dangerous behavior and excuse terrible actions because 'he's hot'.
i agree, i would prefer for dark romance to simply mean a romance that also happen to touch upon some dark difficult topics, e.g: SA, abuse, addiction
not that a love interest is a literal unaliver or stalker 😅 but that’s just me
Recently I watched the 2 hour long video by ContraPoints, where she talks about twilight and moreso, well the type of smut that is associated with these books. Apparently she called 3 of the mist prestigious universities ti ask, what the difference is between erotica and romance. The answer is that erotica is for sluts and romance for good girls. There.
@@rayareadzzzzI think I would prefer it if it had more straight forward morals eg demonising a character for SAing the main character or another character and just have the dark aspect be like murder or something.
Right? The way that book was categorized gave me a COMPLETELY different impression than what it was, which almost felt like abuse fetishizing
People actually admire and desire 'Zade Meadows' an actual rapist
Idky we call it dark romance when there’s no romance in so many of these books. It should just be called erotica, because that what it is. I want romance.
There's also no actual romance in normal romance books these days, let alone dark romance. Normal romance books now just base the whole relationship between the main characters on sex and sexual tension. No communication, no real plot or development, no spending time together without sex, and neither of them are ever able to have a single thought about eachother outside of "wow the love interest is so hot I'm so horny right now." It feels like romance authors are just living vicariously through their characters instead of writing actual stories. The genre as a whole is a mess.
@@emmalynn877that’s what I’m saying! I don’t need sexual tension through out the book, I want some character development! 😂
Ive been seeing so many people say "Oh dark romance is called that because the author chooses what romance is" like that makes no sense, starting to think some of these readers are diluted 🧍♂️
Im meant deluded im just stupid lol but yeah, these folks need a glass of water cause your thirst isn't the business of the internet
for the most part i agree, i can not bring myself to read any of those dark romances that are going viral on tiktok 😅
but i guess everyone considers different things “romantic” and have different standards for partners, relationships (fictional & real) and maybe they have their own reasons for it, so i don’t wanna judge anyone for their taste or choices
@@rayareadzzzzyes but phrasing literal r*pe as “romance” absolutely SHOULD be judged for absolutely not being a dark “romance”
Ive read 5 spice mm books and let me just say, those ao3 "english is not my first language fics" HAVE BETTER WRITING.
1000%😂
I mean, in my opinion, smut is the literature version of porn. Lol
That’s not to say that all books that include sex scenes are porn. That’s ridiculous, just as it is ridiculous to label all movies with sex scenes as porn. But if the entire premise of the book is based on sex…. Idk, there’s obviously a market for it, so just label the book as erotica and be done with it lol
It may seem that way on the surface, but there's actually major differences between the two genres
@@hayley179gnow that's just excuses from readers who think smut is romance
As an asexual person this obsession with “spice” is exhausting. It makes me so upset when I’m hearing about a romance book only to find out it’s actually just a bunch of smut scenes. In my opinion this takes away the conversation about asexuality and makes people believe that romance and sex are the same thing which is not true at all, I just wish there was more of a differentiation between romance books and spice books on tiktok
You spoke before me and thank you for it! ❤ I try my best to avoid these kind of books, even though i love to read since i was a teenager. I tried to dip my toe in with BookTok books with Red, White and Royal Blue, because i loved the movie and i was stunned. The movie was so heartwarming, just a little feel-good story and the sex scene(s) didn't bother me because that was not the main focus. And then, i stumbled upon the book and my oh my, the plot is just a poor excuse and only the buildup for the smut. And then, every scene is explicitly written, and sometimes painfull to read. I'm not bashful, and i don't act like a nun when a sex scene is comeing up, i'm only indifferent, and yes as you wrote, it's exhausting, and it implies that there is no romantic love without sexual attraction, and no romance without sex. So i just retract to my mothers huge book collection from the 80-90's and i'm fine with it, currently reading The Green Mile for the billionth time.
🤍🖤💜 Yessss, I love love romance books but all the smut is exhausting. I think it’s a huge part of why I used to read so much Amish romance lmao! Now I’m finally skilled **enough** at writing to write my own private romance stories just the way I like, but I would love it if the sPiCeY book trend would die.
Except it is the same thing for the vast number of people, or at the very least it is necessary to have one to get to the other. Romance is the path to sexual encounters.
Same!! Particularly so as it’s also being included in unrelated genres like fantasy as well (I’m also aromantic so I try to avoid romance books)
It’s genuinely gotten to a point where the only books I feel I can trust are YA books that still skew to a younger demographic, such as Warriors and Wings of Fire, which ofc comes with its own set of problems as I’m 23 and want to explore more adult oriented media. I’m glad others can enjoy smut, I just wish it wasn’t at the cost of an already marginalised group getting even more ignored, yknow?
I relate to the exhaustion. As an ace myself I do like reading romance in books, but when most of them have smut scenes, searching for the right book is like finding a needle in a haystack.
And sometimes I get jumpscared by smut scenes which just makes me feel even more hopeless that writers can't write a romance without s*x being the endgame (or something like that).
ALSO for the love of everything can we finally get more couples that are playful with one another and not every scene is charged with sexual tension? Is that too hard to ask?
Mini rant over XD
I find it pretty disturbing how people on BookTok have made it a requirement for books to have smut, to the point that they’ll rate a book 1 star for not having the amount of explicit smut they want. And I’ll admit, I enjoy well written sex scenes between two love interests I’m rooting for, but I don’t want their entire relationship to be about sex. That isn’t normal for real life so it shouldn’t be normal in fiction. Personally, I don’t think this mindset is normal, that smut must be included, or else book bad, 1 star. There’s nothing inherently wrong with smutty scenes or the enjoyment that readers get from them, but it becomes an issue when it affects how you feel about books for not having smut and sorta making reading smutty books into a personality trait and it’s especially an issue when people start harassing others, like with the hockey and bikertok situations.
Although this topic does lead me into one other opinion I have that the smut requirement is the reason a lot of viral books are lower quality since people don’t seem to care so much about a good story, good writing, or good characters because they just read for the spice.
Which also leads to the other separate issue of how it seems like certain authors don’t even care about the quality of their own books and just want to push them out as fast as possible (cough cough Tracy Wolff who released a 6 book series from 2020 to 2023, put out a whole ass trilogy from February 2019 to June 2019, and another 4 book series from January 2014 to September 2015. And I speak from experience with the 6 book series, Crave, that they are absolute garbage, so inconsistent and poorly written, but hey, at least there’s smut 🙃🙄)
I read _Does it hurt?_ by h d Carlton. I hated it! The smut didn’t make any sense with the story and who would be attracted to a man who tried to feed u to the sharks?! Oh not to mention get a random tattoo at a bus stop from a total stranger… yet everyone 5 stars it. It’s sucked.
It is giving so many people unrealistic expectations about what good, fulfilling relationships can be like.
giving a book a lower rating just because there is no smut in it is actually ludicrous to me 😂
if anything smut often makes me deduct points just because how cringe those scenes can sometimes get
ESPECIALLY when there is 0 emotional connection between the characters 😵💫
That's why I never trust Goodreads popular rankings 🤣
100% agree. It also infuriates me when those readers will pick up a YA book and complain that there's no spice. It's a YA book, it's not supposed to be spicy!
Personally I don't understand vehemently opposing the idea that smut books are corn. The definition is "printed or visual material containing the explicit description or display of s- organs or activity, intended to stimulate s- excitement" and those books definitely fit it.
Right? I'm so tired of the idea that corn is inherently a super bad and violent thing. Corn ≠ corn industry. It's just a label for a genre
It's just a word people use. It wouldn't make sense to only use it in one way if people are constantly trying to use it in different ways. That being said, there's a clear difference in extremes between corn and smut.
It's the difference between a scene in film that's saying something vs straight up corn. It's not about "printed visual material containing the explicit description/display of", it's in intention. Does the material what *you,* as the audience, to feel that excitement and get off, or is the material just showing a very vulnerable aspect of our lives to say something or showcase a relationship? Because there's a *huge* difference, and a very clear one at that.
The difference here is really about if the story can stand on its own without the smut. Court of the Vampire Queen? That is corn. Straight up. It has no plot, it is just smut after smut after smut. I got 3 chapters in before I realized there was no plot, and put it down. ACOTAR, on the other hand, does have a plot that can stand on its own without the smut. Is it good? That’s up to personal opinion (I’m not a big fan personally) but the actual plot does stand on its own without needing smut to make the plot.
@alexjones8843
"ACOTAR has a plot that can stand on its own"
Can it though?
As an ace these romance books just make me feel even more hopeless that people will never understand that there’s a difference between sexual and romantic attraction.
S*x doesn't have to be the endgame!
At this point I'm desperate to read about couples who are also each others best friend, are playful and not every scene is charged with sexual tension.
You'd need ace authors for ace audiences for that. There's no way for a not truly asexual person to write for an ace audience, and most people wouldn't find those types of romance books as interesting.
I second this
Go look at fanfictions. Better relationship dynamics than most published works, and yes, the best friend to lovers trope in addition to slow-burn is very prevelant there, so that's what you'll find there. More queer people writing can be found in fanfictions, so it will be more similar to your understanding of relationships than published straight smut books.
@@hayley179gwell that’s just not true tho like I am not ace but I am confident I can write a cute lil friendly romance about two people who love each other deeply. Like op said it’s understanding the DIFFERENCE between ROMANCE and just sex
@@The-Busy-Beeeee I'm not sure I could. All the fluff I know of has sexual undertones in it, even when all they're doing is building furniture or something. I don't know, either you're right, or because ace people don't understand that, they might need something more tying the characters together. I don't know what, maybe a plot, or a more intense platonic activity.
Tiktok as a whole has a teenage spice problem💀
It's an addiction that will never be considered as such. The simple reason is how much power the corn industry has on the world. It's HUGE. And they'll like people to think that is harmless and good for you. No matter how many stories we hear of how much it can ruin someone's life, this industry we'll always have the power to control the its narrative
Yep it’s a multi-billion dollar industry as I’m sure it has its hooks in everything at this point
Most of these books are just terrible in general. SJM, for example, is an abysmal writer and I can’t stand her books. I love fey stories/ dark fairytales so my sister-in-law, who is a HUGE SJM fan, gave me the first two books of the ACOTAR series. I couldn’t even get past the first chapter without rolling my eyes. I have a degree in English literature and creative writing and these books are an abomination to the English language and good plot development. I sat there with a red pen and crossed out all the run on sentences and superfluous words until nearly the entire book was marked up. I obviously have some serious feelings about this genre. 😂
"these books are an abomination to the English language and good plot development": This can apply to Shadowhunter by Cassandra Claire. I tried yesterday, not even 1 chapter was possible for me😅
Christ Maas writing is lacking, her world building it’s lacking, there’s plot holes everywhere and the spice is cringe. I’m so done with that woman 😅
Sarah J Maas is one of authors who I blacklisted. After reading book 5 of Throne of Glass. I said goodbye. I don’t care if she improves. And her fanbase is just scary to me.
I recently picked started reading ACOTAR and it’s not the best book ever but so far I’ve been having fun with it. I’m 100 pages in and so far it’s a fun and easy read. I still have more than 200 pages to go so opinions could change.
I can totally understand not liking her writing style, there have been a few moments that bugged me a bit. I understand not liking the bad grammar but personally for me I don’t pay much attention to the grammar. Idc too much if a book as run on sentences as long as they convey what they need to. If the grammar makes the stuff being conveyed more confusing then I do have a problem.
As of right now for me I’m having fun with it and I’m mostly neutral. I went into the book knowing there were mixed opinions so maybe that helps me like it more. I think if I went into it hearing only high praise then I probably would not like it as much.
I’ve heard some bits of spice in one of SJM’s books and it does sound cringe and silly. I think once I get there I’ll likely just have fun laughing at it. It might depend on how cringe it is though.
Can you drop some recommendations. I want to read more stories about fey that aren’t SJM
I'm not going to judge people for reading any content. Read and enjoy what you want.
That said, people have to realize that if the majority of a book revolves around explicit sex, then the book is erotica. The fact that the book just might be written by a woman for a demographic of mostly women means absolutely nothing.
actually the market definition for publishers for romance is just it focuses on two characters’ relationship and they end up together, that’s it. so something can be erotica and romance by publishing definitions
I watched a really good essay about Twilight from the creator ContraPoints. Her conclusion is that women like these books bc, basically, it's a fantasy of "taming the beast" via UwU to gain power by proximity, without having to take power by force. Bc taking things by force is apparently, too masculine and unattractive to men.
And with the non-con fantasy, the woman can be ravished by a hot, powerful man without feeling ashamed bc, since she didn't ask for it, she can maintain her purity.
It's weird. But I get it. But also, girl, stand up! Letting a guy walk all over you isn't going to make him commit.
I saw the video and honestly like, I feel like this is coming from the POV of a middle aged conservative house wife and not a 20 something year old, and those are the people who mainly advertise and probably consume this stuff
It kinda reminds me of "superhero fatigue", the whole thing is about how people are tired of superheroes but this POV is almost exclusively from people who see nothing but Marvel, Image and DC and not the general public
I saw that too, and while I understand her point and I agree that women should have the right to read what they want without men thinking that it's what they desire in real life, denying that it is corn (idk how youtube filtering works lol) is just delusional. It's also delusional to say that it has no negative effects whatsoever - I genuinely don't think it's healthy for anyone to only consume media which sexually arouses you, lol.
@@arkkon2740 Ye admittedly Nat wasn't saying anything new there - but the shift in demographics definitely should invite some re-evaluation of our ideas about the average reader of smut.
The way I see it... it just happens that most straight women (in today's English-speaking world) are subs, and also the general public isn't too well read. So, you get badly written porn (as most porn is) aimed at straight women presenting a submissive fantasy. But because it's badly written, often by people who don't really understand BDSM or dark fetishes, it's kinda awkwardly straddling the lines between "oooh it's dark and taboo and scary" and just plain juvenile.
Like... none of these "romance" authors are writing Histoire d'O, no matter what TH-cam critics may say. They're just writing conventional bodice rippers with protagonists who are kinda trashy assholes and maybe some of them are *thinking* it's dark taboo romance instead of crappy porn.
That's honestly kinda sad tbh 😆
thank you! it's very interesting to see these preferences through basic biological needs
I've gotten to the point where I just don't read romance books that have come out in the last ten years. It's just really hard to find books with a serious plot with romance as a subgenre without gratuitous sex.
try Abby Jimenez if you still want to read a romance of course 😅
i’ve been soo soo impressed with her books - truly romantic & almost no smut, although for her characters and books i wouldn’t even mind if she had pages of spicy scenes
I'm so picky now after seeing how much the market has been saturated by smut in so many subgenres... I mean, I've found an awesome looking supernatural series only to find from the description of the reviews that it's mostly just smut.. so now I read the description thoroughly and check reviews on just about all books, especially romances 😭
I really look for the words "clean romance" a lot 😆 it doesn't have to be no sex for me to enjoy a book, but that seems safest. Though then I also have to make sure it isn't clean because it's full of religion cuz I don't much enjoy that from a book either usually lol
@@melaniemitchell9419 I totally get that! It doesn't have to have no sex necessarily, but I find a lot of books with smut in it seem to care more about the sex than the actual plot. Like, hey there's people dying rn, should our characters really be doing the devil's tango?? Priorities please! 😂
@@julianasohmer6176 exactly!!! I also get frustrated when it seems like the super popular ones aren't even well written. Which I'm sure sounds judgy, and it's not meant to be...I don't think less of people for enjoying them.. it's frustrating because I want more good recommendations 😆 in general. Like hey people, recommend me some good books, and if there is sex in it that comes naturally, then fine lol
lol if you want romance you go before 2016 releases cause everything from that point is smut
Yes it’s a porn addiction. I tried reading a popularly suggested one and it was so badly written and non stop sex and made me feel so weird.
Humans are, for the most part, sexual beings. Women are also not generally as visually stimulated as men. I feel it only becomes an addiction when it bleeds into and starts affecting other areas of their life. Reading a spicy book in bed after a long day at work? Not problematic. Your job performance suffering because you are continually either thinking about or reading said spicy book during work hours? Problem.
If I want to read a spicy book I just go on ao3 lmao. It’s my favorite place to read smut. When I don’t want smut I just read a book.
truer words have never been spoken
Omg I was raised on wattpad and now I can't understand AO3
@@miracleyaadd9454 hey sorry now seeing this!! It’s called archive of our own. definitely check it out, the fics there are good!
They just love to flood bookstores with shit written porn
I think the worst issue is that this trend makes people equate ‘romance’ and ‘sex’ to be the same thing, when they don’t have to be. Really, why not just call it porn?
Or they can just call it what it really is. Erotic books. The biggest problem, in my opinion, is that people call those books romance novels when it's very clearly erotica.
The problem I have with these books is that they lack passion and eroticism. They have sex but it feels very mechanical. I feel people forget what erotic can be, beyond making beautiful people put their genitals together.
100000000%
Exactly! It's probably connected to the fact that these books are usually very sparse on an engaging plot and proper character development; so a sex scene feels less like a satisfying payoff to a story arc, but the sex scenes are the entirety of the book and everything else sort of takes place in the background.
9:51 this is crazy bc corn addiction is 100% real and 100% affects brain chemistry and functionality in life and is NOT religion’s fault. If it gives people a dopamine rush it can cause addiction, as well as how it affects hormones, relationships, and interests. Over consumption can even lead to other problems which is a whole other horrifying rabbit hole 😭
Edit: glad this was addressed with hyper frontally and the elevation of chasing that high
I mean, experts attribute the addictive aspect to a cause, not the activation of dopamine specifically which is why it's been recognized as something else. People can become addicted to anything, but there seems to be more evidence between people of specific attitudes and upbringings as opposed to, say, the substance itself in the case of consuming explicit material.
Actually, it is religion's fault. See how the most well-known religions use sexuality as a weapon to shame people for something natural, which transforms "corn" in a secret, forbidden pleasure, which only makes matters worse.
Thank you cause she got that sooooo wrong
@@XZeroDragoonXthere’s tons of studies about this all with different conclusions and i know I was generalizing for the sake of the TH-cam comment about dopamine but people who are more religious are typically more likely to say they’re addicted even if they aren’t because they treat the topic with more scrutiny, sure, though I’ve never seen anything about how there’s any broad truth that backs your claim that there’s a correlation between religion and adult content abuse. I can see how upbringing can affect what things people become addicted to as adults tho, but I don’t think that would apply to adult content unless there was a push of it in the home from a young age which I’ve heard happen before which is truly disturbing so it’s definitely not like that in the vast majority of religious homes
You started at 2012, but I think it's much earlier than that. Once I took my grandmother's Harlequin book to read and I didn't expect the amount of spice that was in it, which makes me think about the amount of Harlequin books published in the world before we even had the internet. And Harlequins in Poland were the books you could buy with all the 'women's magazines' and they sold it as a subscription with new books delivered to your door every month. You can still find these books in any local shop that sells magazines/newspapers, and old ladies have bookshelves with series of these books. And in the end it's no different to what we have now, but with the internet people can talk about it all over the world, not just with their closest friends. And now men are commenting this is P, and before they probably were thinking girls are only reading about falling in love with some guy in 1880.
Fun fact: I was curious enough to go to my local church library and even there I could find series of Harlequins.
true true, just to clarify: i didn’t mean that smut/erotica in literature didn’t exist before 2012, just that 50 shades of grey and the explosion of booktok led to normalization of this content
erotica as a genre existed and thrived for years, but now it feels like it has leaked into almost every genre out there, and that a book has to have smut in it to be ‘viral’
@@rayareadzzzz yes I agree with all you said, I wrote the comment when I started watching you talking, but totally agree
@@zapisanekartki3845I still think your comment still stands, because of how harlequins were normalized. However, the popularity of that now isn't the same as saying a book is good, there is still nonsexual literature out there, it's just not featured on smuttok.
Dark Romance books nowadays make Fifty Shades look like the bible
💯💯
vincent pfp spotted
Eh, dark romance books nowadays are still very much in the vein of fifty shades: rich fuckboy who acts like any other douche in a club being sold to you as if he's Marquis de Sade.
Smut scenes tend to get me feeling so uncomfortable, I usually skip them. It's like those unnecessary s*x scenes in movies, so annoying
I agree with most of what you have said. I have read a lot of these "spicy" books and here's what I think as an avid reader since I was like 5:
- the writing is just, excuse my harsh remarks, SHIT. I mean, a LOT of these books lack basic editing, it is SHOCKING. As others have said, I have read better fanfic online, with better editing and language and flow. I understand English is not everyone's first language (it is not mine!) but if you are in the mainstream publishing space, it is appalling that you don't have a good editor. (Im looking esp at you ACOTAR series)
- Most Dark romance is not romance. It is either alarming erotica or straight up horror/psychohorror. I am fine with the trigger and content warnings, my problem is it being sold as romance. Why are we romanticising a rapis t as a hot man and as couple goals? Why is the whole narrative around this? That does not sound like a romance that sounds like saying the netflix series "YOU" is a romance series. Which I still have a problem with. I understand while some of these books are purely made for their audience to jerk it off to, labelling horrifying, egregious crimes being committed as "ROMANCE" is and always will be AWFUL and is an instant negative review for me. (I'm looking at you Haunting and Hunting Adeline)
- I don't care what women are jerking off to based on books, if you think a guy stalking you, killing your family and impregnating you by force is hot- you need therapy but I wont force you to not enjoy it. That is your choice. But I can not for the life of me defend these books or authors. It does not seem right and it feels violating to defend them and romanticise them as a survivor of grape.
- Romance as a genre DESERVES better. 'ROMANTASY' as a genre deserves better, even if it is not for me at all. I understand that the romance aspect of the romantasy will always take precedent before fantasy but having read TOG, Fourth Wing, ACOTAR and so many "booktok" reccs- I am so sad to know the worldbuilding, magic systems, lore and etc are so backseat. Furthermore, you can be a woman and have complete agency without a man having to tell you your choice matters. And don't get me started on the icky age gaps.
We as readers, deserve better and safer erotica, smut and romance.
Honestly my problem with all this is how some people think it's okay to go into other generas and expect dark romance or smut to be there. I was at B&N not long ago and there was a group of grown women in the YA section talking very loudly about how they read this one book and there was no smut. They were just hovering in the YA section and they expected those books to have smut. Of course they don't because they are ment for teens and young adult. I just think that some people need to be more aware when they read different generas or are in public spaces. There are kids around you shouldn't be talking about smut and how the book you read have men who beat women up in them. I was very grossed out when I was at the B&N and it was very uncomfortable. I wish people would keep that stuff to themselves or at home, no need to bring it out in public loudly.
We I can answer that as I’m entering the publishing industry, the reason why they confuse that too much is because of sexism in the writing industry when it comes to publishers and women writers who write Romancetasy and fantasy they always put them in the YA section no matter the age like Rebecca Yarrows and SJM books they are clearly not for kids or young adults but the industry demands that they are in that category. However, when you look at Grrm and his work on his A song of ice and fire books all of the characters are just about underage as young as 13 and 14 yet that isn’t classified YA personally it shouldn’t b/c Grrm pairs these kids with grown men and women but you see the issue here. Unfortunately female writers work is always classified as YA and the stores market as such especially if it strays outside Romance genre that’s why you heard that conversation. It’s an unfortunate practice in the industry and personally I want it gone.
i agree w pretty much everything u said except for that last bit of part 2 which felt like a false dichotomy, which kinda surprised me w how fair that part felt. i don’t necessarily see it as a “pick one or the other”, as if it’s better to be a cocaine addict than a heroin addict, which may be true, but that doesn’t rly address the larger problem of damn this person is addicted. i def agree w the touch grass bit lol but also i don’t think it’s *only* on individuals to perfectly control themselves, some responsibility belongs on the industry/culture that makes space for this sort of behavior bc they do it for benefit/profit. my pov is that erotica and smut is perfectly normal to read and enjoy (safely!!) but if that’s all or even most of what u read that’s a problem. it would be like if u only watched x-rated movies, like there’s so many more films out there? tbh w any genre rly, why limit ur self? especially when the media one consumes impacts their perception and pov and if all one consumes is 1 very specific thing that might be rly bad for how u see ur self, others, the world, etc. rly like the vid good job :)
I would quibble that, I don't think it's so much "if that's all or most of what you read" as it's more like "if you are reading this to the detriment of never actually doing anything else in life with yourself or other people"-if that makes sense? 😅 🙂
(Like, you could read only or mostly that, but this doesn't necessarily/automatically mean that you aren't still also sometimes putting it down and actually engaging with life or other things/people outside of or beyond that in perfectly normal/healthy/positive/constructive ways or whatever....even if you never personally read any other kind of fiction.?)
I am someone who does a lot of written erotic roleplay so I understand the enjoyment of "spice in text". But I think it is something we should know how to engage with and do so sanely. I am a big fan of dark stuff on those things I do. Still, I also am perfectly capable of enjoying written word that has little to non of it and I believe that such balance is good.
Not saying "be like me, mortal!", but I do believe some level of restraint and separation is important. After all, if ALL of your approach to the written word is plainly sexual, then you are losing out on all the other cool things such a medium can offer. And that is a shame. Do not narrow your views, try to expand them to a level in which you're comfortable!
Well said!
completely agree 🫱🏼🫲🏽
Personally, I just wish authors would disclose how much “spice” is in their books, or that there was some sort of public rating system like there is for tv, because I don’t enjoy reading spice and it’s stopped me in my tracks while reading NUMEROUS books and I’m just tired 😢
Yeah there really should be a rating system! At least smut fanfiction has tags.
Red Tower Books toyed with that with Yarros’s The Empyrean. The problem was that, in the first book, they drastically understated how graphic the sex scenes were, while for the second book, they just listed a link to a content warning web page that they didn’t fill in for months (and probably is still blank to this day).
Yes it’s a porn addiction. I tried reading a popularly suggested one and it was so badly written and non stop sex and made me feel so weird. 10:09 also, they are not watching normal amounts. It is constant daily things.
I want to say i'm not advocating for more. I do think it's gotten out of hand. I recently read the new Ali Hazelwood coming out in June and it's like the balance is gone and it's just smut smut smut the whole way through. So it was frustrating and actually pretty unsatisfying. THAT BEING SAID I do think it's important to note how the less shame women feel around sex the more likely they are to enjoy this kind of literature. I do feel like the popularity around these books is from the need for "intimacy" to be shown in a way that is more satisfying for women since we know most sex scenes in movies and in porn are generally created for the male gaze. Women just want something for themselves and this smut insanity has been a big part in helping women find that. Seeing as so much of this literature is written by women I think it evens the playing field a little bit.
Well said
I agree with the whole sex empowerment part but these are so many people who glorify these books and say that these are actual good romance stories instead of what they are which is p*rn.
While it is highly debated if compulsive "corn" use is a genuine addiction, it can have negative side effects similar to addiction, and some doctors think it could be a sign of a hypersexual disorder. Now, you're probably right in saying that smut isn't nearly as bad as actual "corn," but I think it could act as a gateway towards consuming "corn," so maybe people should practice more discretion and scrutiny before consuming/endorsing smut.
As someone who went through a phase recently where i was exploring my sexuality and reading a lot of spicy romance and erotica, I honestly think the extremely poor writing quality of those books is much more "brain rotting" than the sexual content. Many of them are written so poorly that of course the only simulating thing about them is the sex, which I think can lead people who haven't read much before into thinking that's the only thing about books that can be mentally stimulating.
And then the dark romances...I just don't think it's healthy to have these mass marketed books romanticize things as horrific as stalking, sa, inc*st, etc. I think well written erotica that includes consensual kink between partners who respect each other would be a much healthier outlet for women in general than abusive relationships being romanticized.
I think it's perfectly okay that a lot of women want sex in their romance books, for a lot of people that's an important part of a romantic relationship so it makes sense for it to be represented in fiction. AND I think it's also fair that some people want less or no sex in their romance books. I think the solution to that is promoting greater variety/diversity in the genre instead of just reducing sex in books overall, that just screams purity culture to me.
Overall, I guess I feel labelling people p*rn addicts is...not helpful and reduces the actual conversation down to tired conservative talking points. I'm not saying someone can't have an unhealthy relationship with p*rn, and the mainstream p*rn industry is for the most part extremely unethical, but the term "p*rn addiction" has no scientific basis or diagnosis as an actual addiction besides the behavior itself possibly being a symptom of a deeper psychiatric problem. Any "research" about p*rn addiction will always lead back to religious institutions who have their own agenda to prove (such as fight the new drug).
Honestly, I think consumerism, lack of diversity, and lack of media literacy are probably the biggest reasons for "mainstream" booktok being so unbearable.
such a great take, thanks for sharing!
i miss the man that i was 30 minutes ago, how is romace around ahild cbuse is legal??? 😭😭😭😭
What pisses me off that there are books that are good without the spice. I mean the storyline and romance are well written so I have to skip the smutt. I wish I could just wipe the smutt off the pages.And also I can't recommend them to anyone because they'll think I'm a smut addict. But I'm actually here for the feelings,for the real romance,for the emotional build up before the first kiss(sometimes I don't even like when they kiss too early). I need to root for them first then I maybe sometimes enjoy the physical interaction.
I almost always read romance book because I only read books to enjoy and be happy and romance makes me happy. But it's soo hard to find the kinda romance that I actually like.
it’s the same for me, i’m not a fan of smut early on in books, i can barely remember characters’ names at that point 😅 also i feel like smut is so so personal, so it can also ruin the book for me
Personally I think there a few key things to this. One; there needs to be a balance of plot and smut in a book if you’re writing an explicit adult romance. If there is more smut and like no plot then it’s erotica. Two, there is nothing wrong with reading and enjoying erotica, dark stories, or romance books, you just have to be mindful and make sure that’s not the only thing your consuming diversity is key. Three, there needs to be much less shaming on people who are reading those types of books and also yes it does take some searching to find people to follow on booktok who you can connect with but if you aren’t putting in the effort then that’s on you. Four, using the word addiction in this context is extremely disgusting and disrespectful to those who are going through addiction or who knows someone who is. Obsession would be a better word to use. An addiction will literally affect your whole life and it seems most of these supposed book porn addicts don’t fit the criteria to be classified as such. Finally, instead of judging people from behind your screen I say interact with those people and ask them if they’ve read other books, you will be happily surprised to find that a lot of them do read diversely.
Thank you! People are calling out being exhausted and stereotyping women readers, when they barely engage with the material or even do research on what 'addiction' is. What I'd also like to add to your great points is that people don't often take into consideration The consumer and reason for consuming. It is known that primarily women read these erotica. It is also well known that women are the FIRST in relationships to be sexually abused, reprimanded, and ignored. Mediums like smut can help people throughout these situations. When media is so vast and reasons for consuming such can also be vast. I am just appreciative of your lens of this situation lol have a good day :D
forbidden romances should be like a princess and a palace gardener who saved her from falling off a wall not some CEO and their tiny little underling who's struggling to pay rent
"Spicy romance" is definitely pornographic. That's not a bad thing, I'll never shame anyone for consuming porn, sex-positivity is important to me. I just think we should treat it the same as any other pornographic media. You wouldn't sit there at the beach or in a café scrolling through hentai on your laptop. You wouldn't recommend a pornographic movie to an underage kid. I'm not gonna shame women for reading this stuff, but in return I don't wanna be shamed for the porn that I consume.
It's actually always been like this. In early 2000s-2010s with wattpad and fb pages with fandoms of boy bands, women always made fics with explicit context. Then on Tumblr as well with anime series.
It's just never got too mainstream for people to criticise before, and i am glad at least it now is mentioned.
Like seriously going to a fandom and the 90% of fics it's corn and it's something that can be exhausting when viewed so much.
why out of curiosity are you glad it's being criticized?
@@hayley179g because it has gotten out of control. The quality in writing has dropped because of fast profit and tropes like dark romance have been reduced to a joke.
Having for a example a book with a trope like dark romance or having explicit content isn't bad but it's again the low quality that makes the end result bland
@@margaret7949 I don't feel like it's the quality that's being criticized as much as the genre itself. It's heavily tied to the new MGTOW movements.
I agree the quality in writing has dropped off, I take it in stride though. It's the same thing that happened to mainstream cinema, and the tv boom. It's like, one diminished in quality while another one rose. You don't _have_ to buy dark romance novels, you can just go to the places that have more quality like independently published fiction.
I totally agree we should talk about the drop in quality, but I worry with the current state of censorship it'll be used against us in the long term.
reading a good book and getting jumpscared by bad smut has honestly become par for the course with a lot of these new contemporary romances
I don't see how smut is different from porn though. The industries, of course, have different target demographics and different practices, but sex is sex. It's still explicit depictions of arousal, with their own little subcategories of kinks, fetishes, scenarios, occupations, character tropes, etc.
Like it's certainly the same thing, and I don't think there's anything wrong with acknowledging that. It's weird to deny it and annoying when people try to pass this stuff off as romance despite there being no genuine connection between characters like 80% of the time.
porn profits off of real people. smut is (mostly) fiction. in the general sense, yeah, it's porn, but it doesn't have the same implications. it's pornographic, sure, just not exactly *porn*.
Romance is romance, smut is smut, I feel alot of "dark romances" I've read are just smut and some glamourize violence wayyyyy too much.
unfortunately i have to agree
Most of my issue with the current trend with smut is that because there's so much demand and volume, the majority tends to not be well-written. There was always romance/smut books (hell, I read a ton of them in my early 20s), but because it was mostly a sort of back-shelf genre that middle-aged women read, it tended towards better quality.
SO many "spicy fantasy" books people are recommending now are just mediocre romance and mediocre fantasy smashed together with a lot of shallow characters and bad tropes, or they're dangerous and violent and fetishing abuse.
Like, spice is great, fine, we love sexuality and we have always loved fantasy, but for the love of the gods, make it good. 🥴
well said :)
I hate to bring this up as you obviously put a lot of effort into this, but Fight the New Drug has connections to the Church of Latter Day Saints, or Mormons. The fact it’s located in Utah would be the first red flag for that. I would not put much faith in their articles and “research”.
They at least claim to try not to be regliously affiliated. I remember looking there articles and I never really saw anything that was pushing a reglious agenda. I haven't looked into the studies they cite yet so idk.
:( why am i not surprised
thank u, do you mind sharing a source for that? i d like to read up on it and maybe even add it to the des box
@rayareadzzzz There's an 2016 op-ed in The Salt Lake Trubune from sex therapists who have stated the FTND individuals have no experience in the sexual health or mental health field. At a quick glance I personally can't find anything saying the FNTD founder (Clay Olsen) is for sure Mormon, but from what I can find I would say he also has 0 qualifications in research, mental health, or sexual health fields. Also, a lot of religious publications have platforms FTND which isn't necessarily a smoking gun but is kinda fishy in my opinion.
Edit: I also checked the media bias fact check website and the organization has a right lean and those who have fact checked FNTD's publications have leaned towards their stances being pseudoscience. They have also been backed by The Ashton Family.
it's interesting to think about a world where age ratings were put on books. I think that could honestly be a good idea but ONLY in a world where the rating was not based on the amount of sexual content, but it's basis in reality and the maturity required to not internalise the incorrect or toxic depictions of sex
I just remembered a yt short. It’s was basically a husband/boyfriend who told other men if they see their partner late night reading a smutty book to grab that book, read it and do exactly THAT
(I’m really hopping it wasn’t about a dark romance book 💀)
i felt this "need for spice" problem a few years ago when writing my fanfiction. at some point i felt like stories that end up with spice scenes gain much more popularity, that a story without spice is a child's one and you will be perceived as a child's author for not including spice into every tine piece you write. i felt it being a problem for me cause I'm asexual and writing spice has never been easy and it's self-violence to insert it into stories where spice doesn't have any emotional or storytelling meaning.
it looks like this fanfiction spice need just grew up into booktok spice because this area of media is dominated at the moment by millennials and gen-z who at some point had started with fanfiction or were familiar with it before switching to published literature. and the only way out i see is letting spice readers separe in their niche if interest and look for/write what you personally want, not what is acceptable by trends 😳
I think one of my biggest problems with it is that its like a massive amount of people are going through an 8th graders first fanfiction phase and it's in all of our faces right now.
....but also a lot of whats being published I can literally find better written smut on AO3, Wattpad, etc. It's the slop that's being published and heralded as five stars that gets me. (And also all of the a*busive relationships that are being romanticized. I cannot wrap my head around how people think books like Haunting Adeline or Colleen Hoover are good because they're not and they need to be called out more and not in the hands of a YA audience IMO).
And don't even get me started on Romantasy.
What boggles my mind is how things like ACOTAR are marketed as these wickedly spicy books, but it rly didn’t get all that explicit until silver flames, most of her writing is plot based. Then, they market things like haunting Adeline as “romance” as everyone else is saying, but it’s not romance it’s like…stalker erotica lol. I’ll also definitely say there’s something very different about women reading these books and men consuming porn of that nature (not to get super binary, but based on socialization it feels weirder for men to get off on those things, if only bc they could misinterpret fantasy/trauma healing for genuine desire)
Edit bc I watched more: on the note of psychology, some of these topics might fall more under paraphilic disorders, which are only diagnosed if there’s non- consensual behavior involved (I.e, children, animals, sadistic disorder) or if it causes distress/impedes their life in some way for the individual experiencing those fantasies. What you said about people thinking they have porn addictions due to shame and social training TOOTALLY falls into that as well!
I admit that I read on occasion smut. But only from archive our own. Basically fanfics. It’s entertaining enough that I don’t feel the need to read a book with smutt in it. Its the same with films that has sex. I get bored. If I want to see some smut I know where. And its not from TV.
Make Romance distinct from Erotica. Also there's nothing wrong with Erotica, but me wants my fluffy cute Romance❤❤❤
Not me on the bus between Albania and Germany last summer reading MM hockey smut on my phone with a young man falling asleep on my shoulder, blissfully unaware... 👀 But in all seriousness. Smut in a book? Fine. Smut only? Nah. At heart, I need a story and awful, painful, impractical, and/or impossible s3x scenes aren't my jam. If there's no story to support the smut, then it's not spicy romance, it's something else.
i fell the same 🫱🏼🫲🏽
my main problem is actually that I completely agree with all you have said & i wish that we could shift away from generalizing booktok as this. I don’t have tiktok anymore (not good for my mental health) but I used to be a booktok creator and we have HUGE communities devoted to classics, diverse books, palestinian books, litfic, women vs the void, and etc etc etc. and smuttok is so not the entirety of booktok. generalizing booktok as smuttok, to me, seems to push away potential readers who might really get a lot out of so many of the other sides of booktok. I think a lot of smuttok creators are very good about calling their community smuttok, so it’s not a callout to them, but to the people outside of booktok who are constantly generalizing
i completely agree, and i’ve talked about in many of my other videos
it’s called For You page for a reason, and my algorithm personally almost never serves me smut books 😅
but just like with everything else, it’s easier for outsiders to look at something once and just generalize it it as “a bunch of romances by white authors”, “only smut books” etc.
@@rayareadzzzz yes! and the algorithm is also better on tiktok about this. I recently switched completely to bookstagram and still constantly get recommended posts with SJM or dark fantasy, which I rarely ever saw on booktok (I have the keywords blocked on both, one algorithm is just better than the other).
the tools are there for people to find their sides of booktok, but the outsiders generalizing it is so discouraging to new readers and to people who might want to engage with booktok. there are SO many great books still being published and so many great creators talking about them 💜 but outsiders only want to talk about the drama and erotica 😔 (and that’s absolutely misogyny imo)
I mean, I would argue that some of these creators don't even realise that they're 'smuttok' creators not 'booktok' creators. I mainly read classics, fantasy and weird fiction but even then, when I was on booktok (also deleted tiktok for the same reason, haha), I still frequently ran into these books with the 'booktok' hashtag and nothing else. ACOTAR, especially. I didn't even know that it was THAT explicit before looking into it because I was interested in the fantasy aspect.
I am glad that you had that experience but the algorithm genuinely brings you to these dark romance books faster than it brings you to anything else when you interact with booktok - but it might be a demographics thing.
I mean, going off definitions alone, I think a good portion of these books might qualify as porn, but imo there’s nothing wrong with that. Like you said, it’s a lot more ethical than a lot of other stuff out there and if that’s how they get their rocks off, more power to them. Pornography for women is so stigmatised, looked down upon or used as joke and punchline. I’m not saying all of them read these books just or mainly because it turns them on, I’m saying, if they do, so what? God forbid would do anything and all that.
Danielle was actually making a joke , she was talking about the most spice book and then she pulled out Dune XD so yeah I agree with video but she was just joking.
You could find erotica in normal bookstores. Always. It's just that they used to have naked chests on the covers and were marketed towards older women. My grandma has a collection of such. Heck, I remember when we'd make fun of those by calling it 'divorced wine mom's' literature.
As a hopeless romantic who is not just asexual but also kinda sex repulsed, booktok doesn't feel like a 'safe space' for me.
I understand the people who like this type of content but I am especially concerned for teens/minors looking into 'booktok' simply because they love reading, and then getting these recommendations. I just don't think straight up taboo fetish content should be this accessible under such a non-conclusive label as 'booktok'. They're clearly a separate community from the average reader, so they should make their separate space.
but this is just my opinion, at the end of the day I guess you can just say you're not interested and hope that the algorithm actually picks up on it
edit: Also, as a pretty vanilla romcom writer I am really concerned about this trend from the other side as well. It's already hard enough to make a living, or even just any money, out of writing novels. So now this is even harder - you basically have to have sexual content in your book for it to sell, or publishers won't be as interested in your work.
I don’t like smut so I have to search up books beforehand to know the plot and reviews of it. I can’t go into a store, read the back and then buy it, because all the books I’m interested in has smut in it.
"but is there spice?"
- "... i'm reading wonder"
tbh the one thing i dont get about booktok spice people is that theyre paying for badly written smut, when they deadass could go on ao3/literotica/wattpad, whatever, and have MILLIONS of those thangs for free.
right??
As an author myself, it always gets me. Like I read books with spicy, I enjoy my spicy books. But I'm getting irritated because I'm worried my book series won't do well at all because ANY spice that does happen isnt explicit and it takes a while to get there. 😭
My main issue is that I don’t care if they are reading smut or dark romance just make sure the main male character isn’t a damn r*pist and sexist POS and at least write the book well. Also I hate all this cause it’s setting a standard for publishing houses to follow just so they can get sales in as people who submit there work will be judged by how much smut is in it not by structure world building or anything else that makes up the fundamentals of novels. Also Dark Romance Tok is cancer to society they literally cheered on and gushed over a man named Wade Wilson (No connection to Deadpool the character.) who Unalived two women he choked one and ran over the other until she passed away and guess what Dark Romance Tok was making thirst traps of this man who savagely harmed these women so I have to disagree it’s an addiction leading to brainrot in some individuals
Another great video! I've thought about this topic a lot and you've covered it so thoroughly, I appreciate the historical research you've done as I didn't even consider that aspect. I'm still figuring out my opinion, but something that stuck out to me was a TikTok I saw of someone throwing a bunch of books aside with the caption something like "when you can't enjoy a book if it doesn't have any sex scenes." I don't think the person who made this TikTok is necessarily interested in reading, reading is just their preferred way to engage with porn. Which I think is great! Everyone deserves to explore their sexuality in a safe, healthy way that they feel comfortable with. I've read several spicy books and loved them. But I do think that booktok is the wrong category for those engaging with books mainly for the purpose of consuming smut, because its not the format of storytelling through the written word that they enjoy, its the spicy content. It doesn't seem different than preferring to consume porn with an audio app or with videos on PornHub, they're just different methods for the same thing. The conversation around books that don't focus on porn is so different than those that do that I don't think it makes sense for it all to be under the same booktok umbrella anymore, they're two really different things that are equally important. I guess I just wish the online conversation for booktok was more well-rounded and didn't focus so heavily on smut when those conversations usually aren't really about reading. Plus, I imagine those that are triggered by sexual content must have a hard time getting into the online reading space because all of the top content is usually smut-based.
Sorry for the essay in your comment section, I just find this so fascinating. Can't wait for your next video!
Most of this “Spice” is made for people who think Ranch is too intense.
I specifically don't want to read 'spice'. I now just avoid the whole romance genre because I can't just browse books at the bookstore - I'd have to do research ahead of time to find the few romance books that won't have smut in them. There should be a marker somewhere on the cover.
don’t let them find out what we do playing sims
lol
Hahahaha. 😈
_The Sims 4_ devs sure know, apparently I hear they add at least one new WooHoo action in most expansion packs...
@@chyandiniithey literally made an item called wicker whims in the actual game, a direct reference to wicked whims 😭🤣🤣
I saw this video a few days ago and today my younger sister (who is in middle school, mind you) told me that some of her friends in her class have read books like Icebreaker, or some other books from Colleen Hoover (Sorry if I said her name wrongly, I'm not familiar with her) and I am actually concerned cuz reading those books at such an early age can really mess up the minds of kids, since they could think that some kind of abvsive behaviour is "romantic" or that it's "cute" which is obviously not. My problem with these books is that so many times they glorify 🍇, abvse, misoginy,, bullying and much more that made me dislike the Booktok community. I don't have any problem if someone ADULT likes those books but the fact that kids can calmly buy them and read them is still concerning to me and also the fact that they get publicized to kids (for example the 16-year-old biker being recommended an 18+ book is absolutely disgusting)
😂 it’s so badly written that it left me not wanting to engage in devils tango for a week
The spice obsession is getting to freshmen in high school! My journalism teacher who teaches 9th english, bought ice breaker for her 9th grade students...
Proof is in the pudding. If you need to have "spice" in the book for you to consider reading it - then you have a problem. Its like claiming you love movies but you only watch softcore and hardcore porn movies lol.
And I was thinking Booktok included more interesting books like informative or philosophical ones.
Fantasy is just not my thing.
It does. I follow a few people read non fiction, some who read classics, historical fiction and non fiction and there are some great people on there discussing literary fiction
@@Daisymayspeaks Oh cool! Who are those?
@@kassd4169
theaceofbooks
_alyssaslibrary_
arab3l1a
kaliereads
grapiedeltaco
myonnaslibrary
poetry.shaman
shebereadinthembooks
tbretc
shannoonyreads
amymaybooks
newlynova
greekchoir
schizophrenicreads
bigbooklady
Fifty Shades really was the catalyst for everything. Smut in the mainstream began. Sigh
Well-researched, balanced, and informative as always. My views on the subject have gotten more nuanced as a result. Thanks!
thank you sm💛
Your accent is gorgeous! And i really like your eyeshadow ✨
thank you! ❤️
my friend once told me that pride and prejudice was boring because it didn't have smut 😐
I feel like reading smut isn’t bad, it’s just the fact that all of these “booktok girlies” are SO obsessed w it. It’s literally scary😭
Thats ofd because there have definitely been reports talking about people watching porn that ruins their mental health and relationships due to be dissatisfied with reality
I’ve been listening to this non-stop, she legit gave me music I would listen to regardless ❤
I struggle to find a well written newer fantasy novel in general. It sucks. I don't mind romance in the book, but that isn't what I'm there for. I prefer fade to black style books because sex scenes are distracting and make me uncomfortable now.
I did used to read Shanna Abe books, but I really felt they were well written at the time. Now, I feel like most books are written like twilight with sex. It's boring, the writing is lazy, and the narrator or protagonist is obsessed with themselves.
I want fighting, adventure, and romance can be present, but not the main thing. I really enjoyed Mrs. Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children series, A Darker side of Light series, The Shadow Game Series, The Giver, Circe, Howl's moving Castle.
One of the triggers I can't read through involves child sexualization. It makes me sick, and I hate it. The arthor of Circe wrote a second book called The Song of Achilles. It describes a young boy discovering his sexuality as a child and young teen. I'm not sure how long it continues to do that. I had to stop reading it.
At least, can we wait for the imaginary people to be adults before we objectify them?
the cover thing is so true because we had ACOTAR in our HIGH SCHOOL LIBRARY
omg
I find it funny that anyone can argue that smut is any different from porn. One appeals more to men, the other to women but they are the same. It’s sexual content meant to titillate. Just as this youtuber says smut isn’t inherently bad, the same can be said about porn. Smut is just porn for women. I don’t care, personally. Read what you want, watch porn if you want. But if you don’t think smut is porn you’re lying to yourself and everyone else.
I largely agree, but it need not be so gendered. I first heard about my favorite porn film from a woman, and I'm currently reading a smut book written by a man. Are there trends? Sure, but let's not needlessly reinforce them.
It is different though, even if the goal is the same.
The porn industry is rampant with irl abuse and misogyny, and very unsafe for a lot of performers (decriminalisation now!), and caters almost exclusively to men. It's also very normalised for that reason.
Smut or erotica, especially by women for women, is derided for being mommy-porn in a world where female sexuality is both set-up and punchline. It doesn't harm anyone, especially if it comes with warnings, and it's usually focused on female pleasure in an extremely patriarchal world.
That being said, over consumption is never healthy, and there's definitely a discussion to be had. But it's not the same.
It's a safe way for people to explore situations that they might not actually want in real life. There seems to be a neo-Puritan movement especially among younger people that rejects sexuality (totally fine) but then also imposes a lack of sexuality on everyone else (not fine). I think it's mostly people who are still figuring out what morals they have, but it's not a great attitude to cultivate.
@@SuperEkkorn I disagree. Porn is not inherently bad because most of the industry is. Nor is smut bad because some consumers take it too far and cross boundaries. They are both sexual content made to arouse the consumer. Smut is porn, only written. Though I do agree that over consumption is bad in both cases.
@@j.p.giambalvo1123 is it or is it not true that porn is mostly made for and consumed by men? Is it or is it not true that smutty books are mostly made for and consumed by women? I'm not needlessly reinforcing trends/stereotypes, I'm stating statistically supported facts. Of course some women watch porn and some men read smut, but the exceptions are not the rule.
I wanna tie in the increasing amount of unrated or mature rated TV shows as well. Due to the popularity of sexual scenes and other mature content (Game of Thrones, Spartacus, etc), it seems like almost every show that's been coming out has some type of smut. So in a way, there's been a huge spike in smut in books. I personally don't mind reading or watching smut every now and then if the story is actually good. But when it's in every single book or show, it makes it hard to enjoy and becomes stale and boring, imo.
I really wish we could have a little box on the back of the book with a rating and keywords that describe that rating like on movies. It's not perfect but it would sure be nice for people who don't want any spice, don't mind a little, only want spice, have teens but don't want to have to read the whole book to know if it's okay, more sensitive readers, etc. It would just be really nice
hard agree!!
“Secret garden” and “cunt” are equally as shaming in my mind. Just opposite ends of the spectrum.
I wish you booktubers who bring up that disgusting hockey incident would give a warning before playing that unhinged, disgusting, video.
honestly, you have a point here
At this point I barely consider people who only read smut actual reader or fans of literature. Especially considering the smut that is often recommended is simply abuse.
People are defending a bunch of disgusting degenerate behavior under the excuse of calling it “dark romance” and it’s beyond pathetic.
As Talebot says:
“Go Tiktok children. Read your naughty books.”
There's nothing wrong with wanting to read about sexual stuff but as a literature enjoyer i find it very sad that this is ALL that these people read all the time like- isn't that boring
I wonder if all these people know the existence of vibrators?
All kinds of literature has it's place, and I don't have a problem with people reading smut. My problem is people reading smut almost exclusively. Nowadays if a teenager ( a child) tries to get into reading and looks for recommendations on tiktok, their first encounter could be with this glorified porn. And that shouldn't happen.
I have an author friend that makes 6 figures a MONTH by writing Sweet Romance (no smut) and even had one of her books made into a movie for this years Hallmark Christmas Movies. It is possible.
share her work with us ❤️
@rayareadzzzz Look up Anne-Marie Meyer. Nov. 30 at 6pm on Hallmark "Believe in Christmas" is based on her book Christmasland. I'd start with The Magnolia Inn and read down the series. 💞
Stellar video - what eyeshadow do you use? It’s beautiful!
ty so much!
idk if that helps, it’s a polish indie brand called “GlamShop” they have amazing sparkles ✨
It’s sad how people have to say and type corn instead of orn with the p in front :/
men and women's brains work differently. the creative imaginative inclination of women pushes them more toward a romanticised built-up literary version of corn, in contrast to men who gravitate toward a straight-forward visual format with no plot or romance in it. corn is corn, and it DOES damage us psychologically. the most recent Kris Tyson fallout can show you the dark places that corn obsession can lead you into. you have the freedom to consume whatever content you want privately, but we need to stop trying to 'normalise' this stuff or pretend it's not damaging. it clearly is.
Personally I think there's no need to find like some kind of medical reason to call these "romance" novels crappy. They're just badly written. Which, like, doesn't matter all that much if all they're for is just as set dressing for sex scenes (though personally for me it seems weird that they'd waste so much time on bad set dressing, why not just stick to fanfics at this point). I think having to pretend that they are "romance novels" instead of what they actually are is the only problem.
Anyone has any romance books with no smut
Storm and Silence series, a slow burn romance adventure comedy historical series, all free on Wattpad with no smut, just kissing scenes and some scenes that lead close to sexual scenes but it never gets to the actual scene in detail, and these scenes start taking place in the 3rd book
Yh Wattpad story and no smut… believe it or not
better than the movies by lynn painter
the do-over by lynn painter
never ever getting back together by sophie gonzales (wlw)
the weight of the stars by k. ancrum (wlw)
icarus by k. ancrum (mlm)
ya contemporary is pretty much all you can get
Better Than The Movies one of my faves too 💛
+The Flatshare by Beth O’Leary
Abby Jimenez also writes truly romantic stories, i don’t remember there being tons of smut in her books, it’s more like fade to black
While in general i have a neutral/slight distaste towards smuttok, i do agree with the point on misogyny. Smuttok (for better or worse) has connotations to the fanfiction writing community, which is and has been a historically female/gender queer community. Unlike fanfiction, which can somewhat lay low compared to broader society, Booktok is much more mainstream and has more visibility. Elements that fanfiction emphasizes (dark topics, stronger sexual themes, a general "write whatever you want" attitude) are shared with the modern adult romance books of today. However, since these books feature "original characters", they are able to reach a further audience of both readers and critics of those borrowed values from fanfiction.
TLDR, what used to be the central themes/ideas of fanfiction writers (mostly women/gender queer writers) has been adopted by women into original books, and those books gain more visibility in culture and subsequently more criticism.
to be honest i bought some books with smut but it becomes annoying in the end when there's too much for example the book about persephone and hades, there isn't a line when they're not... but there is a book i liked with smut and it was academy of protectors. BUT, i'm looking for real books now, can you guys recommend me a book where the characters write letters to each other ?
Yours Truly by Abby Jimenez has letter writing element to it ❤️
@@rayareadzzzz thank you ! 😁
24:59 I refrained from commenting until I got to that time stamp. Yes I agree there should not be a bleed in real life that affects other people who did not consent to whatever fantasies a reader may want to project. But also, yes women's fantasies are also villified too heavily sometimes, so seeking them in books is way safer and geared to them as opposed to the very male centred ones in video format on "the hub".
especially since women’s reproductive rights are being stripped away and said lawmakers have explicitly expressed wanting to punish women for basically having any sort of sexual contact! this desire doesn’t exist in a vacuum!!
The booktok went crazy over bike guys to point a girl stalked a biker guy bruh brain rote at its fullest
Considering a lot of dudes watch porn multiple days a week, if that's not considered an addiction, I don't think the smut book girls should be accused of this lol. However, I do think there are ethical conversations we should be having about both to keep humans in check if that makes sence.
Ive seen people consider once a week an addiction, but then again, this entire subsect of booktok makes its personality on smut so I guess we gotta discuss semantics for some of this