The Rise of Smut: How TikTok is Reviving Romance Literature

This is for all the BookTok girlies who are madly in love with fictional men.

It's always been me and my books vs. the world, and I'll never forget the grip E.L. James' "Fifty Shades of Grey" had on me and every other woman on the planet a decade ago. A book about an ordinary girl swept up in forbidden feelings, with explicit passages touching on the world of kink? Moms, housewives, grandmothers, and teenagers were all rushing to add it to their Amazon carts (along with a pair of handcuffs...oops!). Since then, the popularity of similar books has grown and evolved beyond the "Fifty Shades" universe. Under the hashtags #smut, #smutbooks, and #spicybooktok, the erotic-romance genre happily found an audience of over 4.8 billion users on TikTok.

What was once relegated to the bargain bins of used bookstores, their dog-eared pages fading with age covers depicting flaxen-haired heroes on horseback, and their buxom the main character hanging motionless in his bulging arms, romance novels are more popular than ever - and all thanks to the app we despise.

Booktok. It is, as the name implies, TikTok's section dedicated to all things related to books. However, Booktok has recently reissued many smutty books from a while ago. I'm talking about Sarah J Maas's Throne of Glass series and old Wattpad favorites (throwback to my fanfic days)! BookTok is a TikTok section where users discuss their most recent reads, recommend new favorites, and share illustrations and cosplay videos from all genres. However, fantasy, sci-fi, and romance novels with narrative sex scenes have become a BookTok sensation, with posts from users all over the world falling under the #spicybooktok or #smut hashtags. 

Romance literature in all forms — historical, comedies, dramas, fantasy, and sci-fi, young adult romance — may be the last true media created by, about, and for women. Users on BookTok who post in this section rate their spicier reads on a scale of one to five pepper emojis or rave about their favorite tropes. The "one-bed trope," which is common in fantasy novels, involves the main characters being forced to share the last room in a roadside inn and finally confronting their sexual chemistry. Since their rise to recognition among users in 2020, BookTok, and more specifically, Spicy BookTok, have been shaping sales and best-seller lists.

The creators also look to be young, mostly female and queer people who are shockingly open about the sometimes extremely kinky or taboo content they consume — or, at the very least, open about their reactions to graphic scenes and romantic fiction tropes. This side of TikTok uses the same memes and viral sounds that everyone else does to farm out content, although in NSFW ways, to gain views and followers. They make jokes about reading smut in public places or in front of their parents. Others use popular sounds to recommend a diverse range of fiction and books in less than a minute, even linking long spreadsheets. There's even TikTok nostalgia for those readers who discovered the genre years ago. 

To avoid TikTok's community guidelines, which restrict sexually explicit content on the platform, Smut creators have to communicate in coded language. Pornographic tags, as well as "erotica" and "omegaverse," a smutty fanfiction trope, have been prohibited, prompting the smut and erotica communities to get creative. Instead of putting 'virgin' on the screen, we put 'virginia' and instead of writing long steamy quotes, we write acronyms (yes, I am looking at all you Twisted fans reading this). 

Two factors make #SmutTok a pioneer in female pleasure. To begin, the creators suggest books that recognize the (much-derived) genre of romances written by women, for women. Second, SmutTokers aren't shy about revealing what gets them going. They superimpose dirty phrases that you hope no one on the train reads over your shoulder on videos of themselves feeling hot and bothered. 

Sexual exploration is also a part of it. Erotica is a way to rewrite negative sexual encounters as well as uncover unknown sexual desires. If you've been in a bad situation before, you can sort of get yourself out of it by reading fiction as a way to deal with reality. It's a place where the female gaze governs supreme and leading ladies are allowed to think, feel, and grow on their own terms. They deal with family issues, friendship breakups, career stagnation, self-esteem, mental health crises, and a lot more, and they do it all without degrading or dismissing them or minimizing them for the sake of a hero's journey.

Hockey romance, mafia affairs, rivals to lovers, faerie romance, you name it, BookTok has it, and as unfashionable as it sounds, BookTok is one huge book club. It's global word of mouth. People are desperate to talk about the fantastic book they've just read, layered with filters and dreamy pop songs, wedged into memes and viral soundbites. They're expressing their thoughts, frustrations, and delights with visuals, themes, and styles in an open forum in an easy-to-digest format. They have crushes on fictional characters. They're putting together their dream cast for imagined adaptations. They're bringing romance novels out of the shadows — the steamy, forbidden shadows where dresses rip and loins burn — and into the light. Their gloomy and silver-tongued love interests function to serve the protagonist and, by extension, us.