tiktok creator @lizabookrecs There was a question: When did BookTok become political? It was in the hours after donald trump Won the election for US President and subgroup tiktok The man who loved to talk about literature was already beginning to break down. People had begun unfollowing fellow booktalkers whose views did not match theirs – mostly those who had expressed support for Trump – and a lively debate was growing over whether this space was political or not. . In his post, @lizabookrecs claimed“We don't need politics ruining what's good for us.”
By the following Monday, it appeared as if BookTok's collapse had already occurred.
Unfollow lists, sometimes called red lists, began to circulate. In response, some creators Posted that they were starting to follow red-listed creators show of supportcreators Asked Trump-supporting followers will be lost. While each person is claiming that an online community designed to discuss books shouldn't be a community to discuss politics, another person pointed out that most great works of literature include at least some perspective on social matters. Are there. “You voted for this future,” TikTok user @_onesteph saidHolding a copy of Margaret Atwood maid story,
Some people responded, creating a video by @lizabookrecs that has received over 100,000 views and echoes the sentiments of many TikTok users. Romance novelist JJ McEvoy compared the post to violence: “When someone tells you, 'This place is not for anything', they are just trying to shut you up so they can pretend that everything is fine with them.”
In the week since Trump defeated Vice President Kamala Harris, these types of arguments have been going on in all kinds of online communities. Often, the arguments boil down to the same end point: If there's a corner of the Internet dedicated to one type of discussion, why would people now use it to talk about politics? A fair question, but it implies that politics does not touch almost every aspect of people's lives and hobbies. Car enthusiasts can easily finish the conversation Elon Musk And TeslaOr foreign manufacturing, or the merits of EVs. Space lovers can easily find themselves in discussions about Elon Musk and spacexOr privatization of space flight.
Books are the same—and different. While, yes, like books maid story Or Atlas Shrugged Or hunger games The series tackles real political issues with fantasy and allegory, with many of the books also being the subject of a form of political persecution. According to the American Library Association, there were 414 attempts to censor books In public, school and academic libraries in the US between January 1 and August 31 of this year. That number is slightly less than 695 attempts That made up the same period in 2023 – which focused heavily on books by or about people of color or those in the LGBTQ+ community – but still far outstripped the numbers from the years before 2020. Nationwide efforts have sought to remove queer books from schools, and PEN America found that there were 10,046 cases of book bans during the 2023–24 school year. Those stops come often, According to PENWhen guidance from teachers and librarians “is ignored by school boards, administrators, or even politicians on the basis of a book's content.”