Reading has become a performance. An act that signals to others that, unlike everyone else, you don’t need to rely on blue light to feel alive. Unlike everyone else, you don’t need to doomscroll when you can just turn a page. Unlike everyone else, you can engage in a world outside your screens. But it’s a false engagement. BookTok has turned reading and books into an engagement of aesthetics and “anti-intellectualism,” rather than of thoughts.
If you have TikTok and have come across the book community there, deemed as “BookTok,” you may have watched videos ranging from “Hot Girl Book Recommendations” to people raving about dragon “Romantasy” series to heated debates about Colleen Hoover. The topics widely span from one genre to another, allowing you to be in the book community's smaller pockets. However, what should be a space for a shared love of reading and books has become a battlefield for arguing over the literary merits of certain genres and, most controversially, the need to read critically.
Even before the existence of social platforms like TikTok and Instagram, there was a divide between the worth of particular fictional genres like romance and fantasy and the classics. Old literary classics have always been highly regarded as the epitome of literature for their timeless relevance and influence on readers and writers. The same can’t be said for romance and fantasy, which have been seen as indulgent and frivolous, not intellectually comparable to the brilliant novels of our past. But this is exactly why we have “anti-intellectualism” discourse.
Literary elitism is very real and valid. As with anything, there is a hierarchy. What supposedly sits at the very top of literature are Classics. They reign above everything, according to the sophisticated. So when I hear people criticize other readers for not reading genres that are intellectually challenging or rigorous, I can’t help but scorn the pretentiousness. We should be allowed to read whatever we want, right? Every genre deserves its praises and acknowledgement, where warranted. Every genre has its worth, whether you can recognize it or not.
So what’s the problem? Well, the problem is rejecting critical thinking and intellectualism in defense against elitism, and deeming it a person’s right to read whatever they want and however they want. Every book has its worth, so by practicing “anti-intellectualism,” one is dismissing that value. I know that every person will gain something different from reading a book, but it is one thing to view a novel adversely; it’s another to reject the vital essence and substance of it. Reading can be fun, and so can thinking critically. They’re not mutually exclusive from one another. It’s okay to have a hard time reading “The Secret History,” so did I. It’s okay to be giddy over “People We Meet on Vacation,” so was I. But be engaged with those books. Don’t treat it like a symbol of status or an accessory to be worn. Books are worth more than that.
Perhaps my disdain for anti-intellectualism seems excessive, but as an English student, it goes against every principle I’ve been taught about reading and literature; It goes against every principle I’ve been taught about living. It has always been imperative that, as readers, we should always be in pursuit of knowledge. We should actively seek to learn and understand the world we operate in. We should chase the stories through those unknown paths because you never know what you’ll find. Literature can open us to nearly every facet of life, so don’t close your eyes to it. Turn the next page.
