What happened when BookTok was unleashed on the Seattle Kraken

11:36When "spicy" BookTok went too far

It's no secret that BookTok, the nickname for TikTok's enthusiastic community of readers, loves a hockey romance. 

But a recent crossover-gone-wrong between the online community and a real-life NHL team has left hockey and romance fans alike wondering where the line is when it comes to online discourse.

For about a year, the Seattle Kraken leaned into the BookTok community and their penchant for hockey romance novels by posting slow-motion videos of players doing everything from drinking water to walking by in suits. The team's forward, Alex Wennberg, quickly became popular with BookTok users and became a viral fixture on BookTok.

WATCH | Kierra Lewis' TikTok vlog from a Seattle Kraken warm-up:

One user, Kierra Lewis, garnered particular attention for her playful and somewhat raunchy sports romance content. Lewis's content was so popular that the Kraken invited her to attend a playoff game, and even gifted her a custom jersey with "BookTok" emblazoned on the back.

Earlier this month, however, the relationship between BookTok and the Kraken took an uncomfortable turn. What started out as lighthearted and flirty, fun content about the team later turned "vile," according to Wennberg himself. The player and his wife both asked users via Instagram to stop posting explicit comments and sexualized content about him.

Culture critic Stacy Lee Kong and romance author Farah Heron join host Elamin Abdelmahmoud to talk about what happens when companies try to capitalize on niche communities, and what it means to thirst responsibly on the internet.

We've included some highlights below, edited for length and clarity. For the full discussion, listen and follow the Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud podcast, on your favourite podcast player.

Elamin: Farah, I hate to ask you this, but can you just talk about how horny BookTok generally is?

Farah: BookTok is super horny. TikTok goes through trends with what's popular in the book environment there. For a while it was all about horny fantasy romance, and then it started going into extra, extra spicy contemporary romance…. Now, hockey is having a moment on BookTok. It's strange when I think about it; I'm a Canadian, hockey is just there. We don't really care much about it. But hockey is actually the biggest sports subgenre in romance outside of Canada. It's not just Canadians reading it…. It's places where hockey isn't the most popular sport. I was just reading something about Australia, that BookTok has made people interested in hockey in Australia — because before it wasn't a very popular sport.

Elamin: So maybe this gambit kind of succeeded a little bit too much in a way…. What are some of the questions still left to answer?

Stacy: We don't really know how official [the Seattle Kraken and influencer Kierra Lewis's] relationship was. We don't know whether Lewis was paid for any of the content she posted. We don't know what the team's expectations are. We don't know if there were any contractual obligations. That, I think, is actually really important because it speaks to the challenges of companies trying to capitalize on these niche communities. If you want to market your team by engaging with a community, you still need the same contracts and the same very clear expectations as in any other business relationship. I think it was in the New York Times where they were saying ice hockey is not that popular in Australia, but their professional teams have actually explicitly credited BookTok with increasing game attendance and fan interest, so you can see that there's a value…. But are you going to do this responsibly as a company? Are you going to lay out clear expectations?

We don't also know how much conversation there was between team management. How much did the organization tell the players? Did the players understand what this would be? Were there clear boundaries at the beginning about what could and could not be said? Were there any protections in place, or was there any conversation about what would happen if things went off the rails? Because things go off the rails on the internet all the time. We just don't know, and I think this is a really big cautionary tale about what happens when you don't have those clear guardrails.

Elamin: I think on a base level, Farah, we're all kind of broadly familiar with thirsting; that's not new…. To that end, there are no official rules for how to thirst responsibly on the internet. I think we should make them. Farah, how would you approach it?

Farah: Think about people as being people. I'm all for BookTok finding that safe place and expressing female desire — that place where they can talk and and just be free with things that as women we've kind of been socialized not to talk about a lot, so I'm totally for it. But I think we need to remember that BookTok is not a private room.… I think you have to remember that even if the only people you're encountering and the only people you're communicating with are people from within your community, that doesn't mean that the rest of the world doesn't see it as well.

I'm going right back to the things that we learned in kindergarten: treat people the way you want to be treated. You can thirst in ways that are not overly explicit or not very sexual harassment-y, or you can thirst on characters. Authors are creating make-believe people for you to thirst all you want. You can write and talk about anything you want about these make-believe people. But when you're talking about real people, you're crossing a line.

Elamin: Stacy, what are the rules for you?

Stacy: I think you should not actually tag anybody in your thirsts. I love fandom; I think it is so fun and so interesting, and such an interesting sort of space to explore. But you don't actually have to go to someone's front door…. If they go searching for it, that to me is a different thing than you going to them.

I think the other thing that I really want to emphasize is that consent can be withdrawn at any time. So even if Alex Wennberg consented initially to being part of this marketing campaign, it's actually OK for him to say, "I don't want to do this anymore. It has gone too far. It makes me uncomfortable." Yes, the company absolutely should expect that this would happen; this is what happens on the internet all the time, just in terms of things going where you didn't expect. But the key point is if someone doesn't want something anymore, that's OK.

You can listen to the full discussion from today's show on CBC Listen or on our podcast, Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud, available wherever you get your podcasts.

Panel produced by Jane van Koeverden.