Aren’t Books Supposed to Make You Intelligent? On BookTok, Anti-Intellectualism, and Smut

today, it is almost impossible to make a living as an author unless you appeal to the masses, and it is no secret that BookTok has a very tight grip on what it likes and doesn't.

When I was twelve, I took a literary test with the rest of my class in our library lesson. Obviously, being twelve and unnecessarily stressed for no reason, I was nervous. But the next week I found that my results were off the charts. Quite literally. The librarian sought me out and told me that my vocabulary and literacy exceeded what they should have been at that age, and the grade I was given was basically out of bounds for my year group. She told the whole class, and I’m sure it arose from the pride of meeting a child who genuinely enjoyed to read, and did so regularly.

Obviously, I was elated, but I know exactly what to attribute this to. I don’t remember a period of my life when I did not read. Throughout my entire childhood, I have been reading. Multiple books at a time, anything the library supplied. At nine I read The Hobbit, and my teacher asked incredulously, “You don’t find it difficult?” At my tender Year Seven age, I read most of the good books in the school library and complained that there weren’t enough; I was granted special access to a small personal library that one of the teachers had in her office. At age fifteen I figured that since I liked reading books so much, why not try writing them? With deeper levels of involvement and so many other books to gain inspiration from, how hard could it be? (Harder than I realised).

I bring these instances up not to brag, but only to draw attention to the fact that there is some truth to the well-known fact that is drilled into us; reading does make you intelligent, reading enhances literacy, reading makes you a critical thinker, and so forth. 

Humans at their core are hopeless lovers of literature and stories. Even Alexander the Great kept a copy of The Iliad under his pillow (a habit I have picked up, though I settle for them being beside my bed). I am an amalgamation of the books I have consumed and the authors I venerate. How could I not be? And of course, reading makes you intelligent. How could it not?

In walks the rise of BookTok, the rise of a new set of criteria drawn up mercilessly by teenagers, heralding a whirlwind of new literature, new genres, and discarding the old. Personalities are based off of characters, looking to the famous bookworms that litter our culture - Hermione Granger, Rory Gilmore, Elizabeth Bennet, Matilda. Reading is cool, reading is fun, reading is sexy. But I’m all for reading becoming popular. Year Eight me would look at this time as a haven - maybe I wouldn’t get told off by my music teacher for reading too much fiction and not doing enough keyboard practice.

It isn’t its popularity that irritates me, it’s the twisting of criteria. Suddenly, all genres have taken on a new meaning - most notably Romance. No longer is it the demure flash of an ankle, the bashful skin-to-skin hand holding, lingering glances and forbidden meetings (Mr Darcy, the main perpetrator). There has risen a new need and craving for graphic romance, so strong in fact, that TikTok deems a book unworthy of your time - unless it includes what is christened ‘smut’. These graphic, well-described, often borderline abusive and definitely not U-rated scenes are all the rage.

Of course, book pornography - or what was deemed book pornography - did not only arise within the last few years. Even Nabokov’s Lolita, problematic as it is, was deemed “book porn” and this was part of the reason why it was banned in so many countries. Where I find they differ is in their treatment of these scenes. I’m not here to criticise certain authors but I do want to draw your attention to what it is we prioritise in literature, what we gain from reading books, and the everlasting impact this has on our societies. It is quite obvious that to compare certain contemporary authors with the classics is a dangerous path to tread, albeit one that is done very recklessly within comments sections. No, Colleen Hoover is not like Dostoevsky. Why? They prioritise different things in their literature. Dostoevsky and his books were notably solemn, cynical, and psychological, having characters grasp at inner conflicts. And from what I’ve read of Colleen Hoover’s books - which I admit, isn’t much - I can tell that she does not possess the same solemnity towards her literature as he does.

Regardless, it is almost impossible to make a living from being an author today unless you appeal to the masses, the masses on social media and on BookTok, and it is no secret that BookTok has a very tight grip on what it likes and what it doesn’t. (But once you begin to appeal to the masses, all acts become acts of self-commodification. How much of your personality and your values are you willing to sell in order to really ‘make it’?)

That isn’t to say that BookTok is entirely wrong and should be admonished. BookTok gives authors an outlet to present their upcoming books to a wide audience who will listen, as well as aiding books published years before, to become bestsellers now. My argument is simply that our meaning of what literature is has become warped in order to allow for its commodification, and capitalism has ruined our perception of it as a sort of fast fashion product rather than something to be absorbed. 

But I digress. Obviously, reading does make you intelligent. It exercises your brain, enhances your vocabulary, as well as your concentration. It is also supposed to significantly improve your IQ if you do it everyday, by up to 50 points. But if we are prioritising certain tumultuous and controversial criteria, does the same still apply? Does a Sartre reader increase their IQ by more points than a Hoover reader? 

Anti-intellectualism breeds on platforms like BookTok. The rise of anti-intellectualism - that is, its growing normalisation - can be attributed to the rise of TikTok, and in turn, BookTok and the growing uncertainty of what it stands for. ‘Anti-intellectualism is hostility to and mistrust of intellect, intellectuals, and intellectualism, commonly expressed as deprecation of education and philosophy and the dismissal of art, literature, history, and science’ (Wikipedia). If books famously promoted intellectualism, dealt with issues of intellectualism, and strove to depict intellectual struggles within their pages, then this begs the question; does the absence of such elements mean that books today (not all of them, mind you) strive for anti-intellectualism? If a novel’s only appeal is that it contains smut, is that its only purpose? What do we gain from that, that isn’t a brief bout of lust? Is that any different from a scroll on TikTok?

It may also be noted that an ‘intellectual’ book can still be an entertaining book, and the two are not so dissimilar. However, we have come to the point in our society where we hold the generalised assumption that ‘intellectual’ automatically means ‘boring’ - a child grumbling through a museum. This is exactly where the problem arises from. And in defense of pretension - to be ‘clued up’ so to speak; to know things, to know what is happening in the world, to critically think about the media we are bombarded with, to use big words and to chase information out of pure curiosity… This is becoming more and more rare, chased out of us by fast-fashion consumerism and the pace of our world.

But where I defend pretension, someone may also defend anti-intellectualism. Still, I hold my ground. My personal stance is that you are entitled to your own literary preferences, but a book that only entertains is not the same as one that also enriches. And which is the greater purpose of literature?

Possibly the most concerning dilemma of this entire discussion is that certain authors are being drowned out by novels that do promote anti-intellectualism, authors whose literature is eye-opening and does promote deeper thinking. (Do you think if Sylvia Plath attempted to market her book on TikTok, she would receive nearly the same amount of attention as Hoover? A lot of us would wonder who this somewhat miserable woman was and why she was so philosophical about such an average life (i.e The Bell Jar). I firmly believe she would be drowned out and read by a minority.)

So in retrospect, how do we go about giving authors the attention they deserve while avoiding the wrong sorts of literature? Can we please everyone? And does reading smutty books still make you intelligent?

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