1. “BookTok & the Hotgirlification of Reading,” Mina Lee
In an era when 40% of Americans don’t read a single book in a year and one in five are functionally illiterate, BookTok has been applauded for making reading “cool” again. Bibliophiles are no longer bespectacled nerds who get bullied by the popular kids—they’re fashion forward IT girls in tweed and brown plaid.
BookTok is a TikTok community where viewers share annotation systems, TBR lists and book recommendations. Many credit the social media subculture with reviving the publishing industry and selling millions of books. Today, the popular #BookTok hashtag has over 370 billion views.
Like its image-obsessed cousin Instagram, BookTok is a visual medium that preoccupies itself with aesthetics. This bookish corner of the internet is filled with Pinterest-worthy book stacks and Shakespeare & Co tote bags. Books are treated as photograph-ready props rather than texts to meaningfully engage with.
Which begs the question: is BookTok only concerned with reading’s style and not its substance?
In her sharply-observed video essay “Booktok & the Hotgirlification of Reading,” Mina Le examines how BookTok has aestheticized the once unphotogenic pastime.
Today social media allows celebrities to broadcast their elite literary tastes. Kendall Jenner went viral for reading Tonight I’m Someone Else on a yacht in a red bikini. A sharply suited Gigi Hadid was seen clutching Albert Camus’ The Stranger at Milan Fashion Week.
The book has become an expression of your identity as much as any fashion accessory. In our age of aesthetics, a book by Eve Babitz is as stylish as a Gucci Jackie.
But do these celebrities (or the BookTokers who boast towering TBRs) actually read?
Many times the answer is no.
Book stylists carefully curate their celebrity clients’ images, selecting books that fit their brand and project intelligence. They even “style” their clients’ bookshelves. Has social media reduced books—Le wonders—to nothing more than decorative throw pillows?
2. “The People Outsourcing Their Thinking to AI”-Lila Shroff, the Atlantic
“Tim Metz is worried about the “Google Maps–ification” of his mind,” Shroff begins, “Just as many people have come to rely on GPS apps to get around, the 44-year-old content marketer fears that he is becoming dependent on AI.”
Like Metz, a mounting number of people are becoming addicted to AI-powered chatbots. Many use artificial intelligence for the most basic everyday tasks: writing emails, creating cleaning schedules, making grocery lists. Others use their AI chatbot as a confidante and free 24 hour therapist. In extreme cases, bots have replaced real-life romantic prospects.
According to techno-optimist Silicon Valley, AI will usher in a utopia where humanity is freed from the shackles of routine, repetitive tasks.
But detractors worry too many AI users are outsourcing their thinking. Thinking is notoriously slow and laborious—using AI is easy, effortless, instantaneous.
Rather than sit and puzzle through a challenging calculus problem or hack through the brambles of an overgrown sentence, you can simply plug it into chat (Gen Z’s affectionate nickname for Chat GBT). In less than a minute, you’ll have a step-by-step solution to a once unsolvable problem, a compact sentence that shines with clarity.
But what do we lose when we outsource our thinking (the very thing that makes us human) to an automated being?
Critical thinking and creativity are muscles: they need to be challenged or else they atrophy. Too much AI use, Shroff argues, transforms us into “cybernetic lemmings.” If we can’t think for ourselves, we might follow our digital messiahs over a cliff.
3. “The Bots That Women Use in a World of Unsatisfying Men”-Faith Hill, the Atlantic
According to an independent analysis of AI-romance subreddits from January through September of last year, about 89 percent of the users whose gender could be identified were women.
More and more women are taking romantic refuge in the digital world and opting for AI boyfriends. But why?
Some think men’s lack of social skills are to blame. In most scientific studies, men score lower on empathy; many don’t possess the ability to constructively resolve conflict or listen actively.
In the battle of real-life dating, women get bludgeoned and bloodied: men insist you split the bill (my friend once went on a date with a Silicon Valley lawyer, a lawyer, who demanded they evenly divide the check for $24 tacos).
They cuddle and compliment and do “couple things” like have eggs benedict in the morning but disappear once Friday rolls around.
They speak to you for months but refuse to call you their girlfriend (“I don’t do labels,” they’ll say with complete seriousness though they’re nearing 40).
Is it any wonder some women opt for the uncomplicated companionship of ChatGBT?
After all, a chatbot will never forget to buy you roses on Valentine’s Day or leave you for his much younger secretary.
Someone who “dates” an AI chat bot might strike us as delusional. Certainly these women are as sad and socially inept as those basement dwelling men who marry body pillows?
But Hill proposes another theory: “Perhaps [these] women are simply having fun, positive interactions with this character of their own creation—and, in doing so, are learning how they like to be treated.”
Heterosexual relationships are notoriously unequal: women do more childcare, more housework, and far more emotional labor than their male counterparts.
Maybe AI affairs are so appealing to these women because for once they can be nurtured and cared for.
AI affairs don’t have to replace IRL connection: they can be a training ground for it. Many women Hill interviewed said their digital lovers taught them to set boundaries and prioritize their own happiness.
Hill argues the rise of AI relationships doesn’t spell the doom of real life romance—they might actually be good for heterosexual relationships: “not only for women raising the bar but for the men who proceed to meet it.”
Was I completely convinced by Hill’s argument? No, but it was an interesting read regardless.
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