Well... I Tried Booktok...
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 17 ก.ย. 2024
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Is BookTok really as shallow as people make it out to be?
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Thinking of doing anything for 1,000,000 subs?
Did you try to follow the people who were talking about the gems you liked? Follows really help the algorithm as well
I think that you are more likely to find what you are looking for on TH-cam, as unbelievable as that is.
I'd recommend Cari Can Read.
She's entertaining, funny and thoughtful and she goes over the plot of the popular "booktok" books, but also a much wider range of book recommendations.
The Book Leo has some very good content, too. About books, about the topics surrounding them, and about how certain books are perceived.
Both of those channels present honest, witty, intelligent takes on books that are trending and on books that are worth the time, and are well aware that those are not always the same.
The Book Guy also has a well rounded point of view and gives all sorts of genres an honest look.
I stay away from the truly negative channels that put down popular fiction too much, complain about "booktok" too much, and from the channels where they just fall over themselves gushing over the latest spicy romantasy.
But the three I recommended don't do either. And they bring up and speak honestly about how YA fiction or ACOTAR or some other often scoffed at book got them back into reading, even though they can see the flaws in much of it.
There is balanced, smart, entertaining and nuanced stuff out there. Other than just you, of course. And you might find something you'd find interesting out there.
I agree about tiktok being an absolute mindless void, though. Good for everyone who likes it, but I couldn't stick with Tiktok, Facebook or the former Twitter, even before it was wrecked.
I used to be able to handle being on some small Facebook groups. Usually the kind you have to apply for and wair to be approved to see.
People keep telling me to try discord. I have no idea how it works, but it would be nice to find some kind of interactive social media that wasn't completely awful.
Sweet Lord, you madman...
TaleBot - I don’t know if you might enjoy picking out a commemorative day based on how far back you can remember, and a date that is personally significant to you-?
"Go tiktok-children, read your naughty books." I have laughed waaay too much after hearing that sentence lmao
me too! lol
You... Ventured into the forbidden depths?
He's a talebot of courage
He had to... For our sakes 😂
AND returned with the elixir of life for the village. Happy ending!
@@davidpo5517 ikr
Journey to the center of the earth.
"less reskinned Star Wars fanfiction" That was... weirdly specific.
There’s a lot of accidental Star Wars in literature. Especially YA novels lol.
@@uncivilized_caveman A lot of it is very much not accidental. Just rebranded Reylo fanfiction.
Surprisingly common.
@@joshhall1967 either I haven't been reading these books or I've just missed it. What books if I may ask
@@LucarioNinja92 The Love Hypothesis and The Hurricane Wars are the most egregious.
Once again I scream out: THIS IS WHY LIBRARIES AND LIBRARIANS ARE IMPORTANT!!!
Just don't be screaming while in the library.
shhhh keep it down lol
Shhhhhhhh no "lol"ing in the library
As a librarian, I say thank you.
Sadly there are those constantly trying to kill libraries.
@@matteste sadly, libraries _are_ a thing of the past. just like horse carriages have been replaced by cars, oil lamps by electic lighting, ice boxes by refrigerators... the world is ever changing, and no amount of nostalgia will change that.
I am incredibly impressed that a youtuber with almost 1 milion subscribers doesn't use social media and is genuinely confused about how to operate something like tiktok
He has a passion for reading and writing. Tiktok doesn't fall into that.
@@AndrewFrancisIlyrian that doesn't necesserily exclude him from being a youtuber
I like to think he's at least aware of the fact that people watch him talking about stuff
I like to think that talebot knows that such platforms offer nothing in terms of furthering his pursuit of literacy knowledge, and instead is just a garbage cesspool of toxicity and 'vibes' that would make any sane person lose it
The channel owners were just adding that in to play a character.
I'm no big TH-camr, but I downloaded TikTok for an hour to try it & I *hated* the UI. Deleted it instantly. I still feel bad for not posting on Insta often enough so my active high school friends can hear of me (my only post is me reassuring I'm alive). I'll be hard pressed to ever download "X". TH-cam itself is a nice platform, though. So I understand Talebot, using stuff for mostly research.
I LOVE how he represents Tiktok's """"""search""""" feature as a clown making balloon animals out of people's requests! 🤣
So glad Talebot got tiktok so I don't have to. He is a true hero
As he said, “TikTok is just a tool. What matters is how you use it.”
@@darlenefraser3022Only reasons why I bothered getting one was: (A) My partner cosplayed Detective Gumshoe from Ace Attorney, for a while; (B) DndDtok, because it's neat to see some of the shenanigans and scenarios people come up with; and (C [the main reasons I bother ever checking my account on the occasion, anymore]) keeping up with an eldergoth called GrannyBat, as well as another fan of an obscure video game series called Legacy of Kain.
@@Daelyah Brilliant! I find so many that pan the platform when they know nothing about it. It’s not my favourite but I use it on a limited basis like you do, too.
i thought the same exact thing lol. sometimes i get curious about how much the app has changed since i ditched it in 2019, but whenever i re-download it, it's just a bunch of advertisements. also, i prefer content on youtube. it's much easier to train the algorithm here in my experience.
Talebot really took one for the team
the algorithm isn't designed to give you the content you will like the most... the algorithm is designed to glue as many people as possible to the phone as long as possible. it's not meant to enrich your time, but enrich the shareholders at the cost of your time.
I gave tiktok a try, it did not work out. I was already on TH-cam shorts, but I hated how the algorithm kept trying to push misogynistic alpha male content when I specified I was not interested. I gave tiktok a try because I thought it might be better, and yes while the misogyny was lessened, the algorithm sucked. Even after a week it had no idea what I liked. I even subscribed to some of the content creators I discovered from TH-cam shorts, but even that didn't make the algorithm budge. I promptly uninstalled and went back to YT shorts.
You would hope there is a lil bit of crossover, that the stuff you like and enriches you if the stuff that will hold you the most and keep you coming back. But it seems like instead it's just cycles and trash and bombardments of stimulation.
Yeah he says that at the beginning
One thing I hate on Booktok is the love for books with abusive relationships. Don’t get me wrong there is nothing wrong with reading them but I hate the community loving the romanisation of the abusive relationship portrayed in books.
Oh, so BookTok is the inspiration for Tumblr and Twitter's obsession with toxic ships. Bonus points if said toxic ship involve two lesbians because who doesn't love girlboss ships?
@@OhTheDeliciousIrony Dude, that has long been a thing before the extremely recent Booktok
I call it "Fifty Shades" Syndrome
I don't know... as long as it's just a fantasy. This feels like freaking out over Doom to me. This kind of thing can be superficially attractive to a certain kind of woman, and fantasy books can be a decent way to explore those feelings in a safe way.
Makes sense when you realize that BookTok overlaps with the diehard AO3 crowd, who are obsessed with toxic & abusive relationships cuz they're somehow more interesting. And then they unwittingly carry that into reality, which I've seen way too often.
I also thought "booktok" would be an open discourse on books. Which sounds cool, if it worked like that.
Eh, it's the internet. Discourse is probably better avoided.
For the anime watchers here, Spicy Booktok is like the less demented female version of guys who only watch Ecchi/harem/isekai anime.
As someone who has never used Tiktok that really helps put it in perspective lol
I'd argue it's just as demented as those guys, just... a different flavor of it, per se
@@TheKeeperofChaosdon’t think anything can beat the guys who watch that stuff
honestly more demented
@@wolfeeviAs a woman, I can assure you it's really demented, it's just demented in a different way. Women objectify men too, but it goes over people's heads. Hence the whole "Daddy Pascal" Internet fenomenon. There's no way homeboy was comfortable with that whole dynamic after a couple of months, but no one called women out for it. And I'm saying this as a woman. I don't like how we seem to have a free pass to be overtly lewd towards men. But maybe I'm digressing too much lol.
The main gripe I see with Booktok is that it's really smutty. There's no other real issue just very smutty.
eh there's the recent event where a bunch of middle aged booktokers were SHing a minor, or rather, dozens upon dozens of them.
Probably because the booktok fandom heavily overlaps with the fanfic fandom which is very smutty in itself. And the books that are often read are just straight up smutty.
I thought people like seggss
@@namikkou the problem with this is with fanfic you can filter out the smutty tags if you want. with books, it's a bit harder to tell, especially since the cover art gets a lot more subtle these days.
@@trashraccoon2635 that's why you can look at reviews, they usually mention how smutty or not a book is
As a seventeen year old girl, I read a book I didn't know what a Booktok book because my mum bought it for me from a local supermarket. But it was The Cruel Prince by Holly Black. And though I initially enjoyed the series, looking back I see so many moral problems with it and I think it serves as a good example of everything wrong with the current state of romantasy.
In the first act, the love interest and his friends used magic to essentially drug and SA the protagonist, but it's always just called bullying by the book and fanbase. And I mean SA. They made her take off her clothes, crawl around and tries to start with her kissing the LI's foot before they were stopped.
The book attempts to be feminist, but I've learned most feminist books are actually just books that feature women. So many of these series romanticise physical, emotional, and sexual abuse under the guise of being "dark romance". And as a teenager, the main demographic, I didn't see anything wrong with the series. But then I ended up getting abused, and now I look back and wonder if perhaps my normalisation of that scene might have contributed to my ignoring of the warning signs throughout.
And whenever TH-camrs here refer to books they found on Tiktok, their complaints are often the same. They treat women like purely sexual punching bags and promote them to children. They are often mislabeled as romance when erotica is more accurate. And tiktokers who promote these series, who are mostly adults, have no media literacy to understand how harmful they are.
It happened with Twilight making girls stay in abusive relationships too. It's not a new thing, but it's never been as blatant and unashamed as it is now.
I wish I could say I'm surprised that tiktok is full of people condoning SA.
Maybe you could try reading some other genres, especially nonfiction feminist theory. I would highly recommend anything by bell hooks, the mother of intersectional feminism, which explores the struggles where race, class, gender, and sexuality meet. I'm currently rereading her brilliant book "All About Love", a short but powerful book on rethinking the meaning of the very concept of love, and how to bring more love into a hateful world. It's beautiful, uplifting, and thought provoking stuff.
Err, I seriously doubt "Twilight" made girls stay in abusive relationships. You can't blame fiction for what happened to you in reality. You ought to be able to tell the difference between fiction and reality, and know that even when people write about that stuff, it doesn't mean they want it to actually happen, or to normalize it.
@@WickedWicka agreed. It's a safe space to explore feelings and experiences you wouldn't want to happen in real life but can still be interesting. A vampire who's obsessed with you to the point of wanting to kill you is hot to imagine perhaps to some, but that doesn't mean they want a stalker in real life.
@@AirsickDolphinYou and WickedWicka have never heard of mental illness before, have you? I invite you to look into dissociation and its related disorders, and perhaps a statistical study on how many people deal with this kind of stuff in their everyday life before you pull the "I didn't personally experience this so it cannot exist" card again. I, however, do not have the time to teach you personally, so my engagement stops here.
What I was actually in this comment thread to say was that this lady's story deserves more attention! Incredibly important as far as anecdotes go, because it highlights first-hand exactly what the propagation of toxic ideas in media can do to people. Especially marginalized people, like young women in a society that's still run by chauvinistic jerks that would probably have someone in their basement if they could get away with it. I am happy OP saw through the "programming" that this kind of story instills after lowering its reader's guard with- well, all those chili peppers, mostly- as the propaganda it serves as, though I'm saddened it was only after having to suffer through an example of exactly the kind of manlet this stuff enables.
Run-on sentences aside, I appreciate that this comment exists! So have a like and a reply, miss, and may the algorithm smile on you.
"Human Man" nice
As someone who doesnt use tiktok besides watching the occasional thing my friends send me, I appreciate your sacrifice on our behalf :)
Pretty solid summary of tiktok and how it operates. I briefly got STUPID addicted to that platform when the pandemic first hit, and while there are good creators and bad creators like any platform (some of the indie animators on there are absolutely amazing) the way the app itself is structured is designed to tap into your most compulsive monkeybrain. Misinformation and bullshit rises to the top more than almost any other platform, which is impressive yet horrifying, and the kind of longform discussion that is necessary for something like a book community is basically impossible.
Plus, cults. So many cults.
What is it with sites like TikTok and suspected Cults?
I did not expect to see ACoTaR in the thumbnail of a tale foundry video…
We're going places around here. Next up, an actual review.
Such a brave soldier....🥺
From an article on the dangers of reading, written in 1864:
"Listen to the evidence given by a physician in Massachusetts: 'I have seen a young lady with her table loaded with volumes of fictitious trash, poring day after day and night after night over highly wrought scenes and skillfully portrayed pictures of romance, until her cheeks grew pale, her eyes became wild and restless, and her mind wandered and was lost - the light of intelligence passed behind a cloud, and her soul was forever benighted. She was insane, incurably insane from reading novels."
The moral panic about women reading Jane Austin novels (and men reading Charles Dickens) never fails to amuse me.
Just adding some perspective on "modern" topics about reading for entertainment, rather than reading out of necessity, academic, religious, etc.
The French book Madame Bovary is about exactly this - it’s about a woman who gets caught up in joyful fiction in a miserable world. It does not end well.
Hmm, I don't see any criticism here of "reading for entertainment" (and of the handful of "booktok critiques" i've read/watched, _none_ have had a problem with that). I suspect most readers even see that as the "purest" form of reading - _everyone_ reads for work, study etc. right ? That doesn't make one "a reader" IMO.
I agree with your implied point though - _some_ of the criticism seems (to me) to be a bit sexist and a_lot_ "the kids are doing it ALL wrong !" and _that_ IS a "forever problem".
(in fact if I have an issue with booktok at all it's that people on there often _don't_ seem to read for entertainment - they read to complete arbitrary "reading challenges", they read to make videos about what they've read, they read because they've been sent books to review, they read because booktok has told them this is something they "have to" read, they read out of guilt because hyper-consumerism has led them to amass a huge TBR pile etc. Few people seem to just be passing from book to book at their own pace according to what _they_ fancy reading - it sometimes seems slightly mechanical and even joyless. The _only_ metric of success if you're reading for the love of it is just "I enjoyed that reading experience" - it doesn't need to be "gameified" because reading _itself_ is the point, not ticking books off some list or finishing X many in a year)
@@anonymes2884 Those are all good points. My real point is that this phenomenon of reading very popular books that aren't seen as being great works of art (and truthfully, most are not great, but can be entertaining) is not something new by any stretch of imagination.
Booktok isnt completely female, but the aesthetic is very female centric. Romance has long been seen as a lesser genre of fictional works, not taken very seriously. But works by Jane Austin and other similar writers gained a great deal of respect, once those works had been around for a long time.
So I feel like at least some of the critique of booktok, the casual dismissal of it, might be missing something. I know a lot of it is just pop culture at the moment, and a lot of aesthetics and over the top smut. But I hesitate to dismiss it as a whole, since I know that female centric writing tends to get categorized as unimportant at best, dangerous as worst, more quickly than genres that appeal to men, or are assumed to appeal to men.
@@christopherlyndsay8611 It was reflecting certain views of the time. Nearly all writing with a female protagonist or major character reflects the views of its time about women. I'm not judging, its just a fact.
You’re defending something the video clarified in the first minute. Reading for entertainment doesn’t enter into it, it’s reading just to be labeled a ‘reader.’ Also, if all someone reads are YA romance books, that still seems like a character flaw. Same thing if someone only reads overblown grimdark fiction, or faux-enlightened “you are a badass” self-help guides. You’re shooting yourself in the foot if you stick exclusively to one genre of anything.
1:07 Never seen him look up before
If you pause it it's honestly threatening
he praisin' tha lawd
I immediately thought, "Oh, is that a new picture?"
Bro is about to cast a healing spell
I love that there's been new additions to his animations over time.
I genuinely shouted "No!" 😭
I almost threw my phone away when I read the title 😭
@@sapphiregemi._ I had to read and reread again and again 😭 took me awhile to accept 😭
The timing of this video was actually quite coincidental with an american tiktoker helping to viralize one of the most important pieces of Brazilian literature, called "Posthumous Memoirs of Braz Cubas", although it was indeed just a point out of the curve, it still was interesting to see such a visibility for a national work
Yeah, fr. It's interesting something like that came from booktok
Brasil mentioned, VAI BRASIIIIIIL!!!!!
Really? I'm mainly familiar with that book from the booktuber emmie
_This_ is one of its upsides - people can be exposed to works from the entire world.
But i'd argue that's just a function of having a global reach. You can get the same thing _without_ the negatives of 'the algorithm' driving things or the faddish nature of the platform, those are just about the attention economy/late-stage capitalism (as a native English speaker I see TV shows from Germany, Japan, Korea and yep Brazil just because Netflix _exists_ as a global media provider _not_ because of how it feeds me that media).
You need to use the "Not interested" option to suppress things you're trying to avoid (not just use "like" for what you want)
Actually no, the time it takes to press "Not Interested" is enough time for the algorithm to pick up on you watching the video and recommend you more.
@@45eugenia52The pause button: "Am I a joke to you?"
@@addison_v_ertisement1678
It still doesn't make sense for a button's feature to be completely overridden by the time it takes to press it.
It almost effectively makes it like one of those "useless switch" contraptions that flip back the switch that you just flipped to turn them on.
It does NOT work 😭
I swear I left a reply here before, and now it's gone
What people love to hate so much about booktok is the promotion (not literal, just in the sense of circulation) of mediocre quality of writing and repetitiveness. Case and point - ACOTAR series is written with the quality of poor fanfiction and has 'borrowed' heavily from previous work (Shannara Trilogy by Terry Brooks), that is never mentioned; it's not like 'oh this book made me dig up the original inspiration', no, it's more like - let's copy-paste the same fantasy heroine and hero and see if we can artificially up the drama around non-issues or flat out plot holes, so the main characters can have s*x for one chapter at the end ... and leave the 'story' with a cliffhanger. It has literally become an algorithm that has publishers churn out mass produced garbage. As someone who LOVES fantasy, this is like having someone spill soda all over my gourmet stake and call it cuisine.
So ACoTaR is like Twilight and Fifty Shades.
I mean, that so many people like them should tell you that they have an appeal to them. Not everything has to be good to be enjoyable, just like most people enjoy fast food which by definition isn't good.
@@OhTheDeliciousIrony Yep :D
@@lilowhitney8614 I'm not sure that many people like them tbh, it's more like them in their videos for the memes. Or, like many in my case, you see the name everywhere, read it and get the case of the infinate eyeroll :D Worse, legitimatly well-written books, like the Folk of the Air series for example, get lumped in the same category. Also, many people enjoyed 50 Shades of Sh*t which is plagiriezed and glorfies abuse, soooo ...
@@giverdend1416 My guy, EVERY fantasy story past the 1950s can be said to have borrowed from LotR, not a valid argument. :D We're talking here about whole characters types, plot points and even names. That's why you don't argue about sth you haven't read. ;)
I really appreciate what you are saying here. Far too often I see videos bashing Booktok, and while I don't use the platform myself, a lot of the books I read are the same popular Booktok books like Acotar or the Folk of the Air series. All the negativity I see towards Booktok has really made me insecure about the things I like to read, genres like fantasy and romance are put down so often for being something only young women can enjoy. So thank you for encouraging people like me to continue to enjoy the things they read regardless of what others might say about it.
Your last sentence is the point IMO but the point of that point (that's a thing, honest :) is that _nothing and no one_ should be telling you what it's "OK" to read, _including_ TikTok.
It's obviously easier said than done (some might argue it's even the project of a lifetime) but you shouldn't feel insecure about your tastes because they only matter to one person - you. You are literally the only person you should be trying to please with your reading habits.
(ironically, that's an issue I have with BookTok - _because_ it involves "putting your taste out there" I sometimes wonder if people on it are too concerned about what others think)
Dear Tail Foundry.
Recently I have read what is probably my new favorite book, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. I have heard so much of this classic that I wanted to read it for myself and it was a lot different than what people lead me to believe.
Could you one day make a video on how pop culter has kind of changed the way people remember classic books? Sorry, there's probably a better way to phrase what I'm trying to say.
Throw Frankenstien and Dracula on that pile while you're at it.
Heart of Darkness to a lesser degree
@@bensmith8682I haven’t read the others but I love Frankenstein with a passion. It’s my favorite book that’s not a manga or part of a series.
@@bensmith8682 Those are good ones too!!! If I can suggest another it's Dracul by Dacre Stoker. And the Asylum trilogy by Madeleine Roux and Invictus from Ryan Graudin. :D
Don Quixote belongs in this discussion
You're being very, VERY generous to BookTok, but that might be cuz I can't stand most of the book genres & audience motives of the books that appeal to the user base for the site. And like you point out, their engagement with the books is extremely shallow, with everything reduced to "here's the cover & here's star ratings". I don't know, I was an English major, and I'm inherently annoyed by people who don't want to think about any creative work beyond "did I like this" or "was this horny enough". I'm not saying that you should only read literature, but treating art of any kind like easily digested & disposable garbage isn't a healthy mindset. And TikTok, by its nature, treats EVERYTHING like easily digested & disposable garbage.
Beyond generous. Sure it's nice to be understanding but essentially saying the critics are just haters is quite generous
The amount of misinformed anger about tiktok from people who have probably used it for at most 15 minutes and who's knowledge of it stems mostly from the Fox News-eque channels of the world, is honestly staggering.
Yes, of course mindless drivel exists on tiktok, like it does any social media. I don't know the last time you've opened youtube in incognito and seen the mind-numbing insanity that exists in the homepage when it is not yet curated, but there's a lot. Same with facebook, twitter, and every other algorithm-based social media. Just because the easily digested and disposable garbage is the majority doesn't make it the whole.
I was hopeful when Talebot was starting to talk about actually curating your own experience, only for it to fall flat because they were unaware of the 'Not Interested' button or the assumption that the entirety of what they were looking for existed within the subgenre of BookTok which is one of many but has just become the most well-known. Like, I opened tiktok maybe an hour ago and the first video I saw was a back and forth discussion about the resurgence in popularity for I Have No Mouth & I Must Scream and how it relates to people's perceptions of AI.
And that's not even mentioning the notion of being "annoyed" at how other people enjoy art because they express it in a surface level way. Don't get me wrong, I get it. We all want the great works that have had an impact on us to get the recognition they deserve, but not everyone wants or needs to go on minutes or hours long analysis of every aspect of something they enjoyed. Especially since a lot of them are younger and don't have said English Major or maybe even haven't picked up a book outside of schooling for a majority of their lives and are only now finding enjoyment in it.
Yeah, mostly agree. I'd go further and say I _actively_ don't think people should only read "literature" (whatever that means), everyone should read whatever they like IMO (in general i've never seen much value in separating "high" and "low" culture - it's all just culture) but I feel the same way about star ratings etc. They're _supposed_ to effectively be the "headline" for a more substantial review, in themselves they mean nothing. One of the reasons i'm not on Goodreads is I had to keep resisting the urge to reply to 1 star, "This was terrible !" single sentence dismissals of a book I love with "No YOU'RE terrible !" :).
Underlying the trend is, I think, the modern elevation of opinions as _intrinsically_ valuable when really the old adage is pretty much spot on - we all have one and most of 'em stink.
(similarly, I dislike the idea of "consuming" books - I get that they're trying to be inclusive of listening to audio books etc. where "reading" doesn't fit but the connotations just really rub me the wrong way)
Well... At least the thumbnail didn't have "The Haunting of Adeline." 💀
Oh goodness, my girlfriend told me about that. As long as she aware of the worrying aspects I support her guilty pleasure. She’s a trooper and I love her
@@greywolf845I'm more inclined to just go to Ao3 for that level of madness, but more power to her. 😅
The only book in memory that I just couldnt finish. It wasnt even a fun bad book to read like Twilight is.
Don't get me started on that 😭
explain plz. in one word, to make it funnier
As an avid reader of primarily spicy romance of all persuasions but a lover of books and storytelling in general (I've never had tiktok though), and a consistent fan of Tale Foundry's videos, I was a little concerned that this video would have 'gate-keeping' vibes (it doesn't really, thank goodness!)... in my opinion, it doesn't matter what genre or format you read, you're still a reader.
"I have a number... No you may not have it."
"I just panicked and picked a random year." 4:47
Like 1525? Which was the last year shown, I wonder if this is new lore.
The plot thickens.
👀
Gosh, Talebot you have an incredibly nice voice to listen to. I really like the way you speak, it's so calm and gentle while still very clearly expressing how you feel. I was having a bit of a rough day when stumbling upon your video, and it made things just a little bit better, so thank you.
I can't say I'm super familiar with Booktok specifically, but I absolutely get what you mean about Tiktok and trying to find what you're looking for. The same applies to Instagram Reels I think. There are things I like about these spaces, and how sometimes you'll stumble upon someone with a niche interest that aligns with yours, but it's also a lot of other stuff that's all over the place. It's so refreshing to hear someone else talk about curating your spaces online, genuinely. So many people I run into don't quite understand that concept.
The issue with social media for niche interests is that politics and life will always find its way in to the discussion. As an author and application developer, I talked with a group of authors about creating a social media platform to allow readers to connect with writers. But, no matter how we wanted to frame it, it was easy to see how the site would get diluted by politics/life. Our ideas are now just another project idea file on my computer, along with dozens of others that will probably never see the light of day.
Yeah, even as a basic user, it's frustrating how quickly every sort of social media platform goes from "here's a place for a very particular purpose" to yet another place for strangers to shout insults at each other & pretend it's a political debate.
Its just the natural result of algorithm mediated social media, its a hodgepodge of seeing something entertaining followed by something enraging followed by something saddening. The only way to avoid this is to make a site without an algorithm and have a team to curate a front page every so often. That being said, because of the nature of the internet, users will end up trying to grow their audience using other sites that can have an algorithm to exploit and transfer it over.
I think most of what is written is political from utopia to dystopia, fantasy to scifi, nonfiction, religious, queer fanfic, etc.
I think something like that could work if the shared space didn't host fan submitted reviews and ratings. Goodreads is a nightmare because of this. Everyone is miserable over there, authors and readers alike.
I'm not sure having such a direct line between readers and writers is a good idea, at least on a larger scale. If fandom is any indication, it tends to breed entitlement in readers over the course of the story because they feel they have a way to control it (by shouting and hurling abuse at the writer until they give in to the mob).
It is surreal to see ACOTAR in the thumbnail for a Tale Foundry video.
If you are reading this then you are reading.
How dare you
omg!? No way!
I didn’t even know I could do that!
what do i do with this information
If you are reading this, then it is very likely you are literate
TALE FOUNDRY NO TURN BACK WHILE YOU STILL CAN
Didn’t expect there would be layers to this vid’s storytelling. Like not knowing the birthday, not using social media. Great characterization🎉
I'm genuinely curious how much of that was real or not. Of course, the whole account creation was for humor, but what about how much talebot knew? I have no doubt that the creator hasn't used tiktok much at all. They definitely don't seem to be "trendy," but I'm curious how exaggerated the mentions of not understanding the app or social media as a whole were.
@@StarBeam500tbh, judging from his videos, it’s believable. He doesn’t really speak about trendy topics.
I just have to leave a comment saying how much I LOVE YOUR INTRO!!! The animation of the hand taking out the book and the opening, ahhhh. There is just something so satisfying about it and the music!!
This really makes me want to just post tik toks that actually try and start conversations on books. Admittedly, would be Lovecraft's work atm, but as I read more and make more tik toks maybe somebody could introduce me to something new?
I’d watch that:) you’ll probably get a few people wanting a spicy version of it tho so be prepared for that
You should make content about the books you care about. TikTok has a sub community for just about any book niche you can think of. But you do have to dig for the content you want at first.
That's a laudable aim but I just really don't think the platform is suited to conversations. It _looks_ like it should be but really it just democratises the megaphone (i.e. it's still most suited to one person broadcasting their opinions to spectators rather than the symmetric two-way channel needed for an actual conversation).
(for all its flaws, a platform like Reddit is far better suited to discussions IMO - maybe ironically, for all the talk of disruption etc. the best place on the modern internet to have conversations is somewhere that fairly effectively replicates the mid-late 90s internet :)
This reminds me of trying to use Pandora for music. I'd try to listen to Prog Rock, and within 5 songs, it would be playing Lynyrd Skynyrd. I'd try to listen to punk, and within 5 songs, it would be playing Lynyrd Skynyrd. I'd try to listen to some classic metal, and within 5 songs it would be playing Lynyrd Skynyrd.
I hate, and have always hated, Lynyrd Skynyrd.
"Many a good spy died to give us this information"
It was nice to see content maker who acknowledge pretty specific preferences of the most popular(and major) side of booktok and yet not demonizes them. Heck, even defending them at some measurement. What a professional/objective take of this topic!
First time TH-cam has recommended me a video within 10 minutes of release
the problem with booktok isn't the type of books. It's the behaviour of the people. Harassment, stalking, cyberbullying, sexual harassment of minors, racism, artificially forcing publishers in directions that sell to overconsumption without leaving room for other styles etc.
They're a problem because of what they do, not their relationship with books.
Although 'booktok' is a community of readers on tiktok, they aren't the only readers on tiktok. There are also readers of 'webnovels' such as the fans of: Omniscient readers viewpoint (ORV for short), Reverend insanity (aka RI) and lots of other small communities like the book i became a god of a horror game. The fanbase of ORV is quite large! 😅
Yeah, webnovels do give a breath of fresh air, but they are unfiltered. At least in a book store, you can say that at least 60% of books aren't mediocre. Webnovels are pretty long by normal reader standards and they are more or less hit or miss, with most being miss.
@@ferociousmaliciousghostthey are a breath of fresh air up until you've exhausted every possible well written plot and start reading the ones that resort to gimmicks. Which makes up a vast majority of webnovels right now. There may be a few good webnovels, but if you're looking for recommendations anywhere, most people only talk about RI and LOTM. Webnovels are highly dependant on how far you're willing to read.
@@Catsrnice_ That's why I said most are a miss. I think of it as looking through a landfill. It's mostly trash, but once in a while, you find some good stuff.
Also, I am pretty sure that's with most literature. A lot of them are just gimmicky. We just don't read them as often because they usually flop with maybe less than 10 people buying them. Webnovels just allow you to see that area better.
@@ferociousmaliciousghost Or to paraphrase Ted Sturgeon, "90% of everything is crap" :).
(it may not seem so because even long before TikTok, Amazon etc. we _still_ didn't watch/read/listen to anything _remotely_ like everything that was released - recommendations have _always_ been curated so that the "good" stuff tends to float to the top, nowadays we just have different - sure, arguably _worse_ - ways of doing so)
You recently introduced me to Metamorphosis and Homunculus. They were both equal parts disturbing and thought provoking. I appreciate your content 😁
YOU GUYS HIT 1 MIL SUBSCRIBERS?! Congratulations! 🎊🎊
8:03 NEVER underestimate the h__nyness of humans.
I always love your guys’s videos and they inspired me to write a book. Thanks for all you guys do.
What?
Some social media are more about keeping up shallow appearances than actual content?
Who could have guessed.
I've been trying to produce short-form book content on TH-cam, and based on my experience I think part of the reason it's so hard to find Booktok discussions is they are very hard to create. It's difficult to give any clear analysis, to divide discussion between spoilers and no spoilers, clarify nuanced positions, or do nearly anything besides give a pitch for the topic at hand.
This. The problem with Booktok (and social media in general) IMO is, it _looks_ a bit like a discussion forum but it's _actually_ mostly a short-form broadcast medium.
A video goes out and then _most_ responses are a short "yay/nay" style comment. _Maybe_ at most a few other content creators will post their own short videos in response but again, _most_ people are effectively just spectating not really involved and swapping videos is basically the same as having a conversation by letter _except_ anyone can read your post :).
(for all its flaws something like Reddit is far more amenable to actual discussions IMO)
I love your work! congrats on not yet 1 mill!!
TikTok's algorithm seems to favor trends and memes. Maybe because it focuses on matching keywords to try to figure out what you did and didn't like. It is interesting when an older work suddenly enjoys a week or so as a trend, though. Recently Harlan Ellison's "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream" enjoyed a big re-discovery, with several people discussing it and making little memes and fancam-like videos from the audio book. Then it went away in favor of the next big meme.
The fable reading app does what you're asking for. Whenever I start, update progress, finish or review a book my feed gets flooded with other people who are actively doing the same with that same book. This is just one example of how it tries to bring like minded people together.
None of my friends read, which made things feel really isolated, but fable has helped me meet some cool people with the same interests in books.
I think the problems with booktok is that it seems like it follows a similar pattern with tiktok and fast fashion where you have people showing their book hauls but the question becomes, "will they read any of them?"
Human Man,
Take me by the hand,
Take me to the land,
That you understand.
How do you exist? The internet thrives of off hate and you could have made us all so angry random smut lovers, but you didn’t. You just stayed calm and reasonable. Your existence defies the algorithm. You aren’t human and that is beautiful
Unrelated, but I think Tale Foundry and Curious Archive should collab.
YESSSS
Hate hate HATE tiktok, its a brain fryer
its tiktok, im supprised people have a brain left
Brain Rot Tool
I now see it as the Cocomelon of social media, tbh. The overstimulation model of consuming that TikTok has popularized is really offputting to me.
@@footh1013 it was off-putting to begin with
@@footh1013 Beyond just the stupidity of it all, TikTok is just an inferior TH-cam where the videos are just way shorter and they can't be paused. Why would I want to do that when TH-cam exists? I felt the same way when Vine and Snapchat came around the first time and I never got into them. Maybe I am becoming a boomer, but TikTok "content" is clearly not for me.
"Hay, I just decided to toss off this quick video on the spur of the moment, with professional lighting, makeup, hair, color balancing and sound mixing..."
I had TikTok for a week, kept trying to make it work, kept trying to find the feed Jason Pargin assured me was there if I just "put in the work" to "train the algorithm" and..... nope. It was just like poking a sore tooth over and over, until I just removed it.
Wow, so nice to finally see someone on this internet actually say “at worst, it’s not for me.” and then say it’s ok for those it is for, rather than call it the death knell of civilization.
So, it's been a while since I watched one of your videos and I gotta say, amazing animated intro. Really sets the mood
I absolutely love when I stumble across channels like these! Artful, interesting, and heavily entertaining!
We are about to break 1 mil foundry subscribers 😍
I don’t like TikTok in general but one thing I will always be grateful for is the excitement of people sharing their reviews and recommendations on there reminded me how exciting reading can be. It got me to purchase and read my first book in nearly a decade and rekindled my love of reading and the pure serotonin boost that comes with getting lost in a really good book.
I’ve read a couple of the biggest booktok recs and have moved on to explore my favourite genres and picking up new books from authors I loved in the past. I’m not sure if I’d have picked up reading again if not for hearing about booktok and I know I’m not the only one in that same boat so I think that alone is an overall positive to come from that community.
I tried to use tiktok a few years ago. I found it far too overwhelming to use. So loud and fast-paced...
I think the common argument against booktok is how it glamorize abusive relationships, and we shouldn't forget that most of the users are teens and young adults-especially girls-who don't have a lot of experience in relationships and will be exposed to this type of content and then they will start to believe that it's to be expected-if not desired-for a relationship to be abusive.
This just was a critisicim of TikTok's alghorithym and I am fine with that
really appreciate you taking time and trying to find the depth in this community even if there was none there to find. people tend to be so quick to dismiss anything young girls like and gatekeep interests and hobbies from them calling them cringe and fake. tiktok just doesn't seem like the best place to be in general, let alone build a community around a shared interest
all the booktok mfs talking about their generic romance books 24/7 instills in me this weird feeling of hatred that i genuinely cant describe. it sounds so unreasonable and scummy of me that just some teenage girls talking about cringey romance books makes me this mad but i genuinely cant help it bro something about it is so irritating
It undersells the real value of reading. There's no actual thought in how they talk about these books. Just temptation. Just "did I like it" and "was it horny enough". It's, in a way, sinful. It twists that which is beautiful into a method of cheap pleasure. The horrors of TikTok are truly boundless and I wholeheartedly support the ban of this platform.
As a former teenage girl, I can't say that I blame you for finding the scene scummy & irritating. I genuinely think they have bad taste.
@@meeb_consumerI mean. Pulp’s always existed.
@@strangevol5264 yeah and what I said still applies to that pulp. TikTok, with its entire basis being the spread of instant gratification, just facilitates that.
@@meeb_consumeragreed and its a big part of why i hate it. theyre turning the very concept of reading into a hotgirl trend and its just kinda irritating 😠
Almost at a million subs. Proud of you homie
thank you talebot i havent touched tiktok since 2019 and this video has reminded me why
No lie I went on book talk sometime and this is exactly how I felt the only thing I can say is that all of mostly talked about Brandon Sanderson
Well. I have a bone to pick with booktok. And you've just proven my point. Since i was a kid i was a reader of fantasy. And by fantasy i mean LeGuin, Tolkien, Morcock, Zelazny, Williams etc. Guess what I find now in the fantasy section... Just because the main love interest of the protaganist has pointy ears it does not make a book a fnatasy. Since things like "court such and such" became popular the genre section in bookshop overflows with wierd erotica novels with elves 🙄.
Edit: To be clear. These books are NOT fantasy ffs.
I CANNOT BELIEVE I HEARD SOMEONE SAY NICHE AS NITCH. WOWIE IT'S A GLORIOUS DAY.
The image of tale foundry on tick tok is just so funny in a cute way lol - imagine a little grandpa robot with his little reading glasses trying to figure out how to serch 😭😭 that’s adorable
The sentence “booktok issent really a thing at all” justified my lack of knowledege for me!😂
I loved this video, it's refreshing to see someone take their time with the algorithm. I agree with most of what was said, in my case, though, I have found my niche of booktok that doesn't give me bland reviews and recommendations of booktok-y books (apart from the occasional cringe "POV: booktok recommendation", but I reckon that that's due to me sending them to my friends so we can have a laugh). That being said, it's mostly because of particular content creators I follow and it's taken me years to train my algorithm like this.
You are so wholesome. Your videos always makes me smile:D
Wow, thanks for doing that so I didn't have to... I don't FW tiktok like that honestly except just for memes and funny relatable events in games and life.
I never go on tiktok for books to be relatable to unfortunately.
You should talk about Guardians of Ga'Hoole sometime!! The world building is so awesome, and I love it dearly.
I feel like these problems are common for many different social medias
The animation in this video where you pick up and open a book looked really good, it reminded me of noble frugal studios
11:16 I would have agreed with you, in another world.
The problem is that we're not facing the users who enjoy something very specific that is not for us.
The problem is that the book industry and ad revenue work with tiktok algorithms. So a culture of showing off reading as a style instead of actually mindfully reading is deciding which books we get and how the industry pays or does not pay for which books with what quality.
I wish my only problem with Fourth Wing were the spicy content, but it was extremely poorly written, and barely edited. Booktok is now telling the industry that it's ok because as long as there is a specific kind of spicy content and pretty packaging (book cover, pages, etc) it will still be a bestseller and will bring so many clicks, so that both the publisher and tiktok will make loads of money off to it.
This means that the books we would like to see would get less budget, fewer authors are likely to get deals that would help them really live off of their first works, and the younger generations will grow up in a booktok culture instead of a reading culture. So no, the industry is making this into an actual problem. (doesn't mean I think we should go around making booktokers stop)
FINALLY. Finally a TH-camr with a brain.
As a reader and writer who loved to hate-read (more like ironically adore) the same genre that blew up on BookTalk since before there was this mainstream name for it, all of the non-readers and miserable "readers" who flooded the scene to hate on these women who made books big again just got SO on my nerves.
Maybe this is me just doing the same thing as them, but I want to kick all of these judgmental people out of the community this platform has cultivated. The pretentiousness of hating on people who like these stories reads as soo fake to me, like they're the ones "pretending to read." No one who enjoys niche genres has ever felt threatened by a separate genre blowing up....like....it's giving guilty conscious / signaling to me. And as someone who has read these books (not my jam) I can tell you that there's a lot more to these "romantasy" works than what people post to get views.
Personally, I'm so glad that the platform has seen so much positive change on the industry. I know a lot of us here would love to publish a novel one day, and the opportunities and audience this social media trend has created has pulled so many more seats to the table for us. BookTalk has certainly done some bad, sure, but to try to willfully ignore the good? These people have to be joking - or they just don't actually care about books to begin with and just want to pretend to be better than others again.
Oh no
You are my favorite TH-cam channel. Please never stop.
Booktok gave me find a love for reading, not just romances but horror, ergotic, and even classical. I think it gets a bad wrap cuz romance fanatics are a pretty loud group but it has its benefits in other areas! I have to at least give it my thanks for making me interested in reading
Congratulations on 1million subs tale foundry. U deserve it.
I feel like my biggest issue with readers on TH-cam is that they seem pretentious, criticizing people for enjoying literature that the creator themself cannot see value in. I am thankful you don't seem to be that way. I consider myself a creative and it breaks my heart when I see people shame others away from exploring art and literature that isn't "good enough". Friendly reminder TASTE IN ART IS SUBJECTIVE. I have a copy of Stary Night by Vincent Van Gogh in my room because I find it to be amazingly beautiful, yet my friend thinks Van Gogh's work is subpar. We are allowed to have different opinions without causing the other to feel ashamed of what they enjoy. Diversity in opinion, in art, and in the world overall is beautiful and I'm tired of people trying to snuff that out.
Totally agree. I think of the vitriol towards Booktok comes off as rather pretentious. I don't like all of the shit on there either, but everyone has their own tastes in books, and that's totally fine. What matters most is that people are reading at all.
I don't understand your point. You started talking about quality and then changed to taste? Yeah, you can like things that aren't considered good, just like anyone else can point out the flaws of said thing.
Your example shows exactly that, just because your friend thinks that Van Gogh is subpar that doesn't mean that his works are bad.
It's OK to like bad things. Just like it's OK to criticize bad things.
@@diewott1337 People often seem to bolster their personal taste as if it is the objective truth when it comes to quality, for example "All smut is trash", "Modern horror isn't worth reading", "If you haven't read (insert title of classical literature) do you truly understand literature?", and stuff of that nature.
I was simply voicing my thoughts on pretentiousness such as that. Of course it is fine to have opinions, it is fine to criticize things (good or bad). I just personally find it upsetting to shame others for not having similar tastes.
People often conflate their own subject tase with genuine quality. Books I do not enjoy personally can still be of good quality. Some books are genuinely poor in quality (bad grammar, plot holes galore, and things such as that), but I have failed to find a genre where it is consistently poor in quality.
Yeah, let's let the booktokkers enjoy what they are doing as long as they are not harming anybody. Just have fun booktokkers.
But algorhytms stink. I think we need more personalized, robust yet easy to use search features, not algorhytms to think for us.
I remember during quarantine when I started to see a lot of booktok. It was mainly through the compilations on TH-cam, but I always was interested in the descriptions I saw of the books. It has been interesting watching the evolution of booktok, and I have read some really interesting books because of it. My personal favorite being the Six of Crows series. I still pop in every now and then to see what’s going on. I know not every book is gonna be for me, but it’s always interesting to look.
I really feel tiktok isn't really designed for any discussion beyond surface level things and ideas because of it's short form design and no ability to focus on any one topic.
As someone who follows book creators on TikTok and TH-cam, I come agree. I go to TikTok when I want a quick recommendations or reviews and TH-cam if I’m looking for a deep dive.
I haven't used it in a while because life, but Likewise was my way of finding new books to read that fit my niche. I'm hoping I have more time this summer to actually read.
My condolences Tale Bot
I feel like Booktok is a victim of the "how can I make this entertaining" sort of mindset, where it truly stems from a love of literature and reading in general, but the content that comes out of it feels played up to match the energy of TikTok.
Wait, doesn’t Tiktok use *location* data?
its a Chinese spying tool - based beyond belief, but I would rather not have brainrot tool gifted by like-minded people from this wonderful country as a highlight of my day
Hi!!! I want to recommend a series that you may find interesting- Delicious in Dungeon (or Dungeon Meshi) the whole manga is out and it a very interesting narrative!! You think of it as one thing and turns out to be a completely different thing all together and brings in some very interesting topics for something so seemingly simple. I cannot recommend this enough, even if you don’t end up making a video on it. Either way, keep up the amazing work! I look forward to your videos every week :)
Holy sh!t, Tale Foundry is less than 2000 subs away from 1 Million!
I also like how Talebot remains in-character, even when it comes to things that don’t matter in the current situation like his birthday
Edit: Less than 1000 now
He portrayed first TikTok experience just right. I downloaded the app a month ago or so, because my friend wanted to send me videos there. I was really confused with everything at first (not the date of birth of course but you know what I mean)