The Power of Suggestion | Reflection Blogging: Week 5 – Hyperlinked Communities

The Power of Suggestion

Reflection Blogging: Week 5 – Hyperlinked Communities | INFO 287 SP24

 

For this reflection, I wanted to sit down for a moment with the article by Kelly Jensen in our readings this week in the School Library Journal, “As Seen on #BookTok: Inspiring Young Readers, TikTok is a Boon for Books”. I will preface this post with a disclaimer – I have never been, nor have any intention of being in the future, a TikTok user. I have somehow managed to evade conscription despite all the factors working against me; being a twenty-four year old, working with fourth and fifth graders, and living in several major cities in California in the last five years (to name a few). I simply am not made for short-form content consumption, and I’ve learned to accept that fact and enjoy my hour long deep-dive YouTube videos into obscure topics I have never heard of before they popped up in my recommended feed – and now know way too much about.

 

Now, being a children’s librarian, most of what #BookTok recommends – and what students request of me – unfortunately does not have a place on my shelves. It is often too raunchy, too vulgar, or too emotionally heavy to potentially expose to students as young as five or six years old. That being said, I will be the first to (somewhat shamefully – and I’ll explain why in a minute) admit that I have not completely managed to escaped the influence of #BookTok; not as a librarian, but as a reader. 

 

As several interviewees in Jensen’s article mention, when people talk about books online – no matter how categorically good those books actually are – “It’s contagious.” I am not immune to the power of suggestion; if anything, I embrace it. Suggestion, I would argue, is a librarian’s lifeblood. 

 

And if something is contagious, what is it going to do?

 

Well – spread, of course.

 

Which is exactly why the greater online space has become such a refuge for book-lovers like myself in these turbulent pandemic years (speaking of contagion…), even for those particularly resistant to joining the TikTok echelons such as myself. Finding a community that is predicated on talking about the books you read was slightly problematic considering that talking a little too closely – less than six feet, to be precise – could put somebody in the hospital.

 

So, alternatives had to be sought out to keep myself sane.

 

YouTube was a natural choice, seeing as it was already a go-to for satisfying my hyper-fixations. Allow me to offer some statistics for those who find them useful: Today alone, I spent approximately 4 hours and 36 minutes on the video-sharing platform. Granted, I don’t work on Fridays, and I did fall asleep mid-afternoon listening to an ASMR video – so perhaps it is not the most accurate figure I could offer to represent my watchtime. Still, it is a figure nonetheless.

 

2 hours, 14 minutes, and 51 seconds of those 4 hours and 36 minutes was spent watching this video by the user cari can read:

 

 

I actively seek out content on this topic, and I actively seek out content from this user – a perfect storm for some background-watching. ACOTAR, or, A Court of Thorns and Roses, is the first entry in a series by young adult and adult book author Sarah J. Mass, and what I would describe as a high-stakes soap opera thinly-veiled by derivative fantasy tropes. I first read the series in early 2022, around the time cari can read’s video was first published, because one of my favorite YouTubers in the book review space, withcindy posted a scathing review of the frankly hackneyed plot and characters.

 

 

I caution the reader now – it’s a rather explicit video right from the outset, so be warned if you choose to view it; but, as a source of comfort and levity, I found withcindy at the start of the pandemic, and they quickly became the centerpiece of my obsession with book review videos. I thoroughly enjoyed listening to them complain about every single flaw in a book that otherwise had been praised so thoroughly in online spaces, and I still revisit their reviews of all the books in the series on occasion when I need some company during breakfast.

But here’s the thing – I felt like, despite having seen the videos and actively participated in the comments section on them, there was still more to be had. It felt unfair to engage so critically with a piece of media that I had never actually consumed for myself; and withcindy had seemed to insidiously entertained with how outrageous these books could be, I figured that at the very least I would be getting the same laugh they got from reading it, only firsthand this time.

 

So I bought them.

 

And I read them.

 

And, well – I kind of enjoyed them.

 

Let me qualify that immediately: It wasn’t the books themselves that I enjoyed. Yes, I did have a good laugh slamming my head against the wall as the main character, Feyre (pronounced fey-ruh – and, yes, she is a fairy), made mistake after mistake and fumbled her way through her romantic trials and tribulations. But sifting my way through upwards of 3,000 pages total and finally snapping that last doorstopper shut wasn’t the true payoff of having spent so long powering through them. What I enjoyed was being in the know; what I enjoyed was experiencing these emotions (outrage, mostly, sprinkled in with some tempered disbelief and serious amusement) alongside withcindy and other users interacting with their video who had also read the books; what I enjoyed was that I had been immersed another level deeper into this community that had become integral to making it through a really tough and scary time that, honestly, a lot of us – for a lot of reasons – were afraid that we weren’t going to survive at all.

 

I want to remark now on a phrase that librarian Christine Lively (Wakefield High School – Arlington, VA) introduced in the article; being able engage with viral (speaking of contagion…) material, she says, “has become a valuable social currency” for those in the #BookTok community. I love this term, and I love how economic it is. I described the sense of belonging as a “payoff” for a reason – because the information I had at my disposal was something I could exchange, it was capital I had gained by putting in the back-breaking work to earn it, with all the added likeness of a closing shift at a grueling retail job.

 

I give you my thoughts about this character, for example, and you give me your thoughts about that character. 

 

Give, and take. 

 

Is that not the heart of community? 

 

Of librarianship?

 

What I’m trying to say is this: Whether you enjoy these books that gain so much attention or not (I, for one, think Song of Achilles is one of the best books I’ve ever read – thank you, this video from Jack Edwards: “I’m pretty sure they actually invented the chef’s kiss just to describe this book”), the fact is that the real value of having these under-the-radar-no-longer authors gain popularity is what the attention paid (again, how economic) to their work does to link readers together, and to strength a sense of internal cohesion in even the most fraught and terrifying external situations.

 

I’ll conclude this post by reiterating again – suggestion is at the core of what we do as librarians, because it is at the core of readership, and it is at the core of community.

 

So, as far as I’m concerned, suggestion is a two-way street. 

 

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References (all are hyperlinked within the post)

cari can read. (2022, July 14). here’s the entire plot of ACOTAR so you don’t have to read 500 pages (a court of thorns and roses) [Video]. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hCdrM4JPVs

Jack Edwards. (2021, May 23). i read tiktok’s most popular books — can booktok be trusted? *no spoilers* [Video]. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QbKrYH9ujJg

Jensen, K. (2022, February 10). As seen on #BookTok: Inspiring young readers, TikTok is a boon for books. School Library Journal. https://www.slj.com/story/as-seen-on-booktok-inspiring-young-readers-tiktok-is-a-boon-for-books-libraries

withcindy.  (2019, April 13). WTF is A Court of Thorns and Roses? [Video]. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJTNn99UPuk