On the first weekend of the Singapore Writers Festival, I had the pleasure of being on a panel titled Reading the Feed: from BookTok to Bookstagram. I was joined by Amaryllis from Further Notes and Siew Ling from the online bookstore Wormhole. The conversation was moderated by Firqin who is one of the founders of No Readgrets Book Club.
It was a good conversation but I couldn’t shake how funny it was that I was invited to be on it in the first place. I have an Instagram and a Twitter for this newsletter that are updated very sporadically. Here’s the bio I wrote when I created the account:
My honest thoughts: BookTok sucks. Bookstagram sucks less but it also mostly sucks.
I must clarify that having a social media account where you post about what you’re reading is innocuous and that you’re not who I’m talking about. I mean the content creators who have made books and reading their niche. They’re the people who create elaborate flatlays of the book they’re reading, a charcuterie board, a toy poodle, and a scented candle. The content of the book doesn’t matter. The caption is always something like “This was so good. Funny, sad, heartwarming and frustrating!”. Five star emojis then #bookstagram #hellobookstagram #meetthebookstagrammer #alwaysreading #bookfriends #favouritebook #ilovebooks #bookaddicted #bookworm #bookaholic #instabook. They make TikToks with titles like “books I would sell my soul to read again for the first time” and “spiciest books I’ve ever read” (a lot of BookTok is about softcore porn) set to Taylor Swift songs.
It’s fine, it’s all fine. I don’t truly care. The Internet is large enough for all of the fluff it produces. And really, anything that gets people reading is probably a net positive. Me calling something bad doesn’t mean it doesn’t deserve to exist, it just means I don’t want to get involved.
I think of most book content as junk food. Not the good junk food like Oreos or Ruffles but more the off-brand potato chips in event swagbags that are used to fill space. Who is genuinely receiving value from a post titled “3 tropes that people with ADHD love”? Reading is simply a hobby for most people and that’s absolutely fine. But I think hobbyism is all that literature can be on Instagram or TikTok. These platforms are not even built for text. Why squeeze an intelligent book review into the captions (cont. in comments) of your photograph? You’re doing yourself a disservice.
Social media algorithms are designed to surface content that looks just like other content. The more your post resembles posts that a user has seen before, the most likely it is that the same user will see it. That means using the same audio track or meme format or keywords. These social media platforms turn literature into easily consumable memes — tropes, plot arcs, types of characters etc. There really is nothing wrong with liking formulaic fiction. But isn’t the unexpected why we read? If not, we’d all consume social media content all day. You know exactly what you’re going to get, every time. “Ranking The Booker Prize Longlist From Worst To Best!” is such a boring way to talk about some of the most critically acclaimed titles of the year. But these reductive metrics are reliably going to get people arguing in the comments, increasing the engagement received on videos and propelling content up the algorithmic rankings.
I gave TikTok a go when I first started this newsletter. I didn’t really have a strategy, I just wanted more people to read Tote Bag Library.
This video took at least an hour to make. I put on makeup and a dress to sit in my bedroom where I usually write in ratty old tees, no pants. There’s nothing in this video that communicates what I actually wrote in the newsletter. Nothing about my ideas. That’s the whole reason I write! Instead, I made lifestyle content related to my writing. I wanted TikTok users who liked the aesthetic I projected to look this Substack up and hopefully read my work. I’m not sure this video represents what I do though? I don’t even like this song!
I’m a writer. I post my work on social media because that’s the only way I get read. That’s now the case for most writers who don’t have institutional backing or careers that pre-date social media. Big corporations like Meta have wrecked the Internet so now most user-generated content lives on their platforms. Gone are the days when we’d cycle through our bookmarks and RSS feeds to read pieces from independent publications and blogs. RIP The Toast, The Awl, The Hairpin, Rookie, and the other websites I didn’t learn about in time. These sites launched many careers. Even the writers with staff jobs and book deals have to post their work on their socials because these platforms serve as funnels for so much web traffic. It’s a double-edged sword — I’ve preordered books from writers because I’ve followed their careers on Twitter but I’m not sure it’s a good thing that creatives have to cultivate online personalities in order to do their real job.
This 2019 essay by Allegra Hobbs explains that dynamic better than I can.
The writer-influencer’s identity must be quickly identifiable by the consumer, distilled to a meme-like essence in which content is the same as form. The writing is lifestyle, and vice versa. Tolentino as a cool girl who plays beer pong and smokes a lot of weed. Prickett as an aloof and modelesque bohemian socialite. Fry as a funny and enviably fun-natured lover of all things lowbrow, proclaiming her obsessions with reality shows and random celebrities.
…
As a writer without much in the way of influence, I see these women and I feel an imperative to find the thing about me that could best be underscored, amplified, and repeated across platforms, the fragment of self that could become persona. I do not believe any of them to be calculating persona-crafters – I take them at their word that what they present is authentic – but I believe they have a very useful instinct, in addition to their talent for writing, for precisely which parts of themselves to share and how. Frankly, I fear that is an instinct that I lack but would do well to cultivate. The media industry is less stable than ever, and the one safe strategy seems to be the commodification of personality, turning your voice into followers and paid subscribers that no CEO can take away. We are all but forced to make ourselves, not just our words, the thing we sell.
Is social media the endgame for anybody? We all use this as a medium. A phone book. I have an Instagram so that people can share my posts or chance upon my work. Other people use it as a way to share what they’re reading and have short conversations with their friends about books in the comments. Nobody’s end goal is to be a huge Instagram account. The content we create is just the rent we pay to use the site. Even this newsletter isn’t it for me. I like writing here; it’s nice to write without the pressure of pitching, deadlines, or emulating to a different publication’s voice. And I really do love the conversations I have with people who’ve read these newsletters. But I’m working up to something bigger. This newsletter has gotten me bylines and paid work. I would like to write a book one day.
During the panel, we were asked if we saw ourselves as fosterers of a community. My answer was no. I just write my little words on the little page. What kind of community could exist in the comment section of my Instagrams? Isn’t it insidious how the language of community and care is now applied to social media followings? Honestly, I’m very lucky that anybody is interested in what I have to say. Thank you for reading this far. 🤗
More:
The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshanna Zuboff is a really great book for understanding more of the relationship between technology and capitalism, especially in the sphere of social media technology. It is a very long book (my version has 672 pages) but there are plenty of interviews with Zuboff on YouTube or podcasts if you’d like a condensed version of her argument.
Twitter is probably the only social media site that is genuinely conducive to conversations about literature. There’s a lot of trash there, as there is with every site, but I’ve benefitted a lot from it. I published one of my first essays thanks to an open call I saw on Twitter! With its impending shut down, it’s worth reading this article on what writers stand to lose if it goes.
I was on a second SWF panel on literary journals in my capacity as the editor-in-chief of Mynah Magazine. I haven’t really talked about that work much in this newsletter but I’m thinking about making the next issue about the economics of independent publishing and being a writer. Please let me know if that’s something you’d be interested in reading!