Booktok & Anti-intellectualism:
With all the talk about anti-intellectualism on TikTok recently I wanna share something that I've been thinking about for a while.
I've noticed in recent years that the publishing industry, writers and even some readers have turned books into fast-fashion; what used to take writers years to achieve (coming up with a good book that includes plot twists, complex characters, character development, pacing that fits the story, amazing quality, good writing style, no grammar mistakes and a well edited literary work) now takes only a few months or a year with barely any thought put into the work and only a focus on popular tropes and how to market them towards consumers.
With the rise of booktok and many non-readers getting into that space and discovering books for the first time, we have lost the nuance of what a well written book should include and have now turned it into something to be consumed for the sake of consumption instead of for the sake of pure entertainment, knowledge, analysis and interacting with the written text.
I've seen a lot of readers say that they skim through the text or even skip "long" paragraphs just so they can read the dialogue (I even saw someone on tiktok admit to reading just the dialogue). This is where my question comes, when did we lose the ability to actually enjoy reading outside of certain tropes and only wanting to reach the good parts so we skip literal paragraphs? And why do we have to add smut and romance to most books (not the romance genre obviously) in order to market the book as "enemies to lovers" or what not so that we can actually lure readers into buying the book instead of actually marketing what the book is about a.k.a the plot?
[Note: I'm someone who enjoys reading romance so I'm not judging nor am I calling romance a "lesser genre" or "cheap" as I've seen some people say on TikTok as a way to attack people making this point.]
My point is, people nowadays seek tropes instead of actual good plots, storyline, character development, characters that are diverse and different instead of the same carbon copy of recycled characters that we see marketed these days. The term anti-intellectualism isn't used to insult anyone, it's just used to point out how some people are out there recommending books that are poorly written as "the best thing they've ever read" just because they enjoyed it (enjoying a book does not mean it was well written, it just means that you enjoyed it because you found it interesting or it had something that you like). All I want is for people to realize that there's a huge difference between a good book and their own subjective opinion since there are certain literary standards that writers must follow for their book to be considered a good literary work.
I'm interested to hear other people's thoughts about this as well and hear different opinions so if you have anything to add or you don't agree with anything I said, I'd like to see what you think.
