Why does BookTok care about the NHL?
TikTok’s drama of the moment is truly a doozy.
For the uninformed, the combination of BookTok and hockey might sound like a Mad Libs. But these two cultural forces have become thoroughly intertwined as of late, spawning a controversy that touches on fandom, sexual harassment, and the responsibility of creators.
Why does BookTok love hockey?
BookTok is a huge community — the tag boasts more than 162 billion views — that contains a number of smaller groupings focusing on specific genres or styles. One subset devotes themselves to smutty romance novels, including the surprisingly popular subgenre of steamy books about hockey players. These novels have titles like Trying to Score, Pucking Around, and Empty Net. In quite the crossover event, hockey smut enthusiasts have transferred their love of the novels to real-life hockey teams. Fans make videos fan-casting players as fictional characters in the books. Seeking even further immersion in all things hockey, some ended up becoming hockey fans in real life.
Here’s where the Seattle Kraken come in. Last year, the NHL team’s TikTok embraced BookTok, and started posting content aimed at that audience. One of its earliest videos mentioning BookTok posted by the team featured Alex Wennberg drinking water it read, “what is booktok and why do they like wenny so much?”
The Swedish center became a sensation, and the subject of major thirst in the hockey x BookTok community. The Kraken TikTok account fed into the obsession by posting videos of Wennberg geared towards romance fans and changed its bio to “mostly booktok.” It also engaged with fans by commenting on their Kraken videos.
Who is Kierra Lewis?
One fervent fan that the Kraken repeatedly engaged with is the popular BookTokker creator Kierra Lewis. Lewis posted incessantly about hockey players and devoted much of her content to making lewd videos about the players. In a since-deleted video about Wennberg, Lewis says, “I may not got five holes, but I’ve got three and since you’re so good at assisting why don’t you assist your teammates at scoring in all three of my holes.”
The team went as far as to pay for her tickets to a Stanley Cup game and gift her with a custom Kraken jersey with BookTok written in place of a last name. At the game she posted a video (also deleted) yelling, “yeah, I like that” while the players did their groin stretches and said “I’d like to be in-between his legs” in reference to Wennberg.
What happened?
Last week Wennberg’s wife Felicia made a statement on her Instagram story condemning the sexual harassment of her husband and other hockey players. Earlier, Felicia had played along with BookTok’s obsession referring to her husband as “booktok’s w*nkb*nk.” But now Felicia feels fans have taken things too far. On Friday (July 28) she wrote, “there has been videos and comments made that has crossed the line of what it means to fancy someone.” She described the comments as “predatory and exploiting.” Later in the post she said, “I feel that women who have experienced catcalling, getting filmed in exposed situations (like a groin stretch at their job) should hold ourselves to a higher standard.”
The next day Alex posted his own statement to his Instagram saying that fans had crossed a line by leaving “vile” comments on his wife’s Instagram and on photos of his child. He wrote, “We can all take a joke and funny comments but when it turns personal and into something bigger that effects our family we need to tell you we have had enough.”
The Kraken responded to the Wennbergs’ post by deleting all their BookTok videos and unfollowing Lewis. Lewis replied to the controversy with a series of five videos uploaded to her TikTok account. In the videos she takes issue with Felicia writing her statement over what appears to be a screenshot of the aforementioned “I’ve got three holes” video and with the Krakens using BookTok and Lewis “for clout.” [not needed for the story, but have they said anything more broadly about oversight of the social media strategy here?
The BookTok community is divided. Some support Lewis and are coming to her defense in the comments of Felicia’s Instagram post. Others are vehemently against the sexual harassment and want it to be known that this subculture is not representative of BookTok as a whole. For example BookTokker @mynameismarines made a series of insightful videos about the controversy. One reads, “Stop doing this in BookTok’s name and maybe think a little more about consent.”
