BookTok is Burning Its Own House Down

We need to talk about author takedowns, online cruelty, and what it’s doing to the future of fiction.

I have soooo many unposted drafts. Not spicy scenes or spoilers. Just real difficult truths I don’t know how to say publicly.

Because there’s this trend (especially in the bookish space) where the easiest way to get clicks is by mocking a woman who dared to publish her book.

It’s packaged like literary taste, but to me it sounds a lot like:

“You’re cringey for trying a new genre.”
“You don’t deserve grace if your world-building isn’t perfect.”
“You should’ve known better before using X trope when this and that writer already did it - and they did it so much better than you ever could.”

And I can’t do it.
Even when I hate a book, even when a scene makes me want to throw my Kindle into the sea, I still won’t hop on camera to sneer about the author behind it.

Because I’ve seen what that kind of bandwagon backlash does.
Not just to the author, but to all the authors watching it happen.
To the ones still too scared to publish.
To the stories we’ll never get because someone decided a girl writing in her room was fair game for public ridicule.