Assembling “Sides” of TikTok: Examining Community,Culture,and Interface through a BookTok Case Study

Abstract

The term “side” has emerged to describe communities on the short-form video app TikTok. But what discursive work does the metaphor of side do to describe online communities? Through a case study with a textual analysis of the culture, technology, interface, and platform vernaculars present in reading fandom TikTok, BookTok, we explore how user practice and app features intertwine to establish sides of TikTok as relational, individualistically positioned, and exclusionary. In the process, we also present a cursory charting of the BookTok community. Unpacking the construction and implications of this metaphor matters because it shows the distinctive and exclusionary work done by the term side, not just across TikTok but within collectives as well. Who TikTok believes to be the typical member of a side has implications for discrimination and exclusion on the app, as it feeds into existing divisiveness in communities and the app’s tendency to suppress people of color, LGBTQ individuals, and disabled individuals.

Introduction

The term “side” of TikTok has emerged as a colloquial way to describe communities on the short-form video app. According to Kaye et al. (2022):

The short pause before “Tok” indicates a platform vernacular that refers to the many different sides of TikTok. . .the platform vernacular to signify communities on TikTok is to add “TikTok” or simply “Tok” just after the community classifier, say “Alt” in “AltTok,” “KinkTok,” “FoodTok,” “ScienceTok,” and countless other Toks are examples of other such communities. (p. 108)

To frame sides of TikTok as communities, Kaye et al (2022) draw on platform vernaculars, which are a way “of understanding how communication practices emerge within particular SNS to congeal as genres” (Gibbs et al., 2015, p. 256). The term may have been applied retroactively to describe existing communities on the app, by communities themselves. In addition to the examples listed by Kaye et al (2022), scholars have also examined PetTok (pet TikTok), DocTok (doctor TikTok), GriefTok (grief and mourning TikTok), TeachTok (Teacher TikTok), and JewTok (Jewish TikTok), among others (Divon & Ebbrecht-Hartmann, 2022; Krutrök, 2021; Maddox, 2023; Stein et al., 2022; Vizcaíno-Verdú & Abidin, 2023).

While these portmanteaus are useful platform vernaculars to frame how communities see themselves, the idea has been taken as a given. What does the term “side” mean, and what are the sociocultural implications of its use? Furthermore, how do sides of TikTok come to be constructed by community cultural practices, as well as platform features? In defining sides of TikTok, the term has either been understood as a platform vernacular (Kaye et al., 2022), a way to describe community formation and identity (Boffone, 2022), or also known as “rabbit holes,” “silos,” and “subcultures” (Krutrök, 2021; Lee et al., 2022). Sides of TikTok can, and should, be understood as all the above, but this is also just a starting point.

“Sides of TikTok” is a platform vernacular created and adopted by users to describe their experiences engaging with algorithmically curated, similar types of content, as well as the subsequent collectives forming around them. But what are the practices tethering a side of TikTok together, and how does the app itself play a role? This phrase is not literal, but metaphorical. Metaphor theory, as noted by Katrin Tiidenberg (2020), operates from “the (deceptively) simple premise that the way we talk about certain things shapes the way we think about them” (p. 15). The discursive power of words in online practice is well established (Gillespie, 2018; John, 2022; Tiidenberg, 2020), and interrogating side’s construction and implications means paying attention to how this term gives TikTok communities form and legitimacy, while simultaneously obscuring other aspects. According to Kaye et al (2022), “To think of TikTok as a platform also requires us to investigate how its technological features, functions, and logic, interplay with, and respond to, different social and cultural practices” (p. 5). Our study follows this call, specifically as the interplay of technology, culture, users, and platform applies to TikTok sides.

To answer these questions, we interrogate sides of TikTok through a case study of BookTok (TikTok’s book fandom collective). This approach is akin to the one by Kaye et al. (2022) in using JazzTok to explore larger TikTok community-building themes. However, unlike the interviews buttressing their analysis, we approach side of TikTok through critical textual analysis of the top 150 TikTok videos hashtagged #BookTok (collected in September 2022), in which we analyze videos not just for the content but the content and the way TikTok superimposes features on videos via the interface. Through analyzing both content and technology, we show how sides of TikTok are sustained by user practice and app interface. Some of these aspects are user created (hashtags, trending audio, etc.), but some are superimposed by TikTok itself (such as search bars on a video with present recommendation search terms). This does not negate user agency, but shows how sides of TikTok exist at the intersection of culture and technology. Unpacking the construction and implications of this metaphor matters because it shows the distinctive and exclusionary work done by the term side, not just across TikTok but within collectives.

Literature Review

Contextualizing BookTok

Before continuing, defining our case is necessary. BookTok is a TikTok subculture, a home by and for book lovers. At the time of writing, the hashtag #BookTok has accumulated 87.4 billion views, and has been credited for increasing digital literacies (Jerasa & Boffone, 2021). Creators typically skew younger and identify as “Generation Z,” or the individuals born between 1197 and 2012 (Flood, 2021). As this age group presently constitutes “young adults,” it is unsurprising that young adult fiction print sales increased by 30.7% from 2020 to 2021, concomitant with BookTok’s rise (NPD Bookscan, 2022). It is becoming increasingly common to enter bookstores and see tables advertising books that are “popular on BookTok,” (Chaudhry, 2022). BookTok’s cultural practices have material implications in the offline. This is not a return to an online/offline binary but related to larger trends using social media content for marketing fodder and vice versa (Leaver et al., 2020).

BookTok’s style is informed by its digital reading culture predecessors, Bookstagram, (Book Instagram), and BookTube (Book YouTube). Even earlier, these spaces had their antecedents as book clubs and zines (Reddan, 2022). However, there are differences in content creation among these reading communities. On BookTube, creators review books but also adopt other genres popular on YouTuber like challenges, vlogs, hauls, or tags (Tomasena, 2019). BookTubers use

audience engagement activities that seek to produce feelings of belongings and connection among followers. Examples include asking questions about what books people read, responding to comments on their videos, and sharing personal information about their own lives in Q&A videos. (Reddan, 2022, p. 4)

As Tomasena (2019) notes, the social capital offered by creators in these communities is valuable to the publishing industry, as book creators have a deep sense of audience interest, making these spaces useful for assessing popular trends. This is powerful as,

trends are interesting because of how they influence and are believed to influence social life—how they inform us about and encourage us to follow what other people are doing. For business, staying atop trends can mean not just beating the competition but also having the ability to shape how culture unfolds in the first place. (Powers, 2019, pp. 6–7)

By paying attention to these spaces as Tomasena (2019) posits, and by seeing “popular on BookTok” tables in bookstores, publishers use these social media reading cultures as predictive tools harness already existing audience interests. While influencers, including book influencers, are important pillars to analyze in charting sides of TikTok to focus on marketing and political economy, that is outside the scope of this article and warranted in future research.

Bookstagram relies on the “bookish aesthetic,” which “is developed in posts that feature beautifully styled books and objects as well as posts that celebrate reading as a desirable activity” (Reddan, 2022, p. 6). Bookstagram uses Instagram’s larger glamorous iconography (Marwick, 2015): The hashtag Bookstagram is

applied to content such as images of books (flat lays, book collections, bookstacks, colour displays, cover reveals and TBR [To Be Read] piles). #Bookstagram is also applied to posts featuring objects and scenes associated with reading, the most recognisable being images of bookshelves, “shelfies,” and people holding and reading books (Reddan, 2022, p. 6).

While Instagram has a video option, the platform still largely coalesces around images (Leaver et al., 2020), which makes dialogue with audiences more difficult. Creators may direct followers to leave thoughts and opinions in the comment section (Reddan, 2022), but video remains dialogic than images (Maddox & Creech, 2020).

The most recent iteration of these networked reading communities is BookTok. According to Bronwyn Reddan (2022), “BookTok videos reflect the playful, unrehearsed aesthetic of TikTok. They are short, fast, and loud, most often filmed and viewed in vertical view on a smartphone, with the creator in close up focus” (p. 9). This reflects larger initial differences between TikTok and Instagram, where creators eschew a glamorous life in favor of entertaining, relatable, and raw content (see Abidin, 2020). On BookTok this may manifest in videos showing reactions to books (Reddan, 2022).

Metaphors and Online Culture

Metaphors can be applied to technology in numerous ways. They can be grassroots and vernaculars, as users describe their experiences (Kaye et al., 2022). They can be adopted by platforms themselves to strategically position an app (Gillespie, 2018). They can also be suggestive to indicate how “proper” practice should be done on their sites (John, 2022). According to Annette Markham (2020), “the metaphors we use to frame our experiences of the internet. . .matter; in that they can construct both the enabling and limiting features of our technologies” (p. 9). Metaphor shape realities, and the reference points use to promote meanings stick (Tiidenberg, 2020).

We assess these reference points in terms of TikTok sides. According to the Oxford English Dictionary (n.d.), the word “side” has multiple meanings, ¹ but contemporary usage has four predominant definitions. We condensed these like Gillespie (2018) did in his grouping of the meanings of “platform.” “Sides” categories are as follows:

• • Noun, as related to the body: The right or left part of a person or animal’s body, and related senses; also include regions immediately around a person not physically on the body.

• • Noun, as related to boundaries and shapes: An object’s surface or edge, and related senses; is also used to contrast front and back, left and right; also, the sloping hills of mountains.

• • Noun, as related to positionality: A direction, position, or area relative to the center or to another direction, position, area, and related senses; used to specify a specific object that is also a boundary or shape; also meant to denote two contrasting states, conditions, or periods.

• • Noun or verb, as pertaining to relations: One thing, group, or point of view contrasted with or in relation to another; refers to genealogy; also refer to a person’s attitudes or actions or set of people in relation to others, as well as differing views or opponents (i.e., “taking a side”).

The bodily aside, themes among these definitions refer to relations between things, staking out boundaries, understanding position, and differentiating oneself. For community formation, the term “side” is apt; it is a new metaphor to describe online spaces.

Annette Markham (1998) found that internet metaphors can be categorized in three ways: a tool, a place, and a way of being. In mapping our categorization of sides to Markham’s (1998) typology, we see overlaps between the denotations of side harkening to boundaries, relations, and spaces, and the idea of internet spaces as places and (relational) ways of being. The bodily aspect does not immediately seem applicable. These overlaps, however, are not exact, and do not account for specifics of how these communities are created and maintained. Since TikTok sides distinguish subgroups from one another, the relational, positionality, and boundary definitions are striking. Following these denotations, these connotations invoke place and (allegedly) spatial distinction. While there is overlap, the positional work done by the phrase “sides of TikTok” operates relationally: This is BookTok, meaning this is the TikTok side for books and reading, not for, say, music, plants, or films. We are this, therefore we are not that, and this is where we come together.

Spatial metaphors are popular in describing internet practice (Lingel, 2020). They are useful organizing tools to make sense of the vast spaces and amounts of information online (Vaisman, 2022). The internet has been thought of as a third place, distinct from home and work (Baym, 2015), and spatial metaphors help further distinguish this. On TikTok, Corinne Jones (2023) found “people often conceive of TikTok in spatial terms . . . like maps” (p. 11). Although sides of TikTok are thought of in spatial terms, assessing if, and to what extent, Markham’s (1998) typology of internet metaphors including tools and ways of being are present. As Crystal Abidin (2020) notes, these vernaculars are often “comically esoteric” (p. 88) and understood mainly by participants. The term “side” and the iteration for each community functions cohesively, indicating the group is meant to be situated together. In thinking through sides of TikTok, publics and imagined communities are also important.

Publics, Imaginaries, and Communities Online

Benedict Anderson’s (1983/2016) work on imagined communities has been a useful framing for scholars interested in how collectives form online (boyd, 2010; Litt & Hargittai, 2016). In an imagined community, members will never know all, or even most, of their counterparts, but they can envision themselves as a community through the circulation of texts (Anderson, 1983/2016). For Anderson (1983/2016), it was the daily newspaper circulation that allowed individuals to envision others interacting with the same media object and receiving similar information. With this in mind, we return to our starting definition of sides of TikTok: a platform vernacular created and adopted by users to describe their experiences engaging with algorithmically curated, similar content, as well as the subsequent collectives forming around them. Sides of TikTok are imagined. Users will never encounter every single other community member, but they can envision themselves as a part of the collective. Using BookTok as an example, this is due to seeing the same content (i.e., the same exact videos) and the same type of content (i.e., all book-related content even if specific videos are different) and identifying as part of the BookTok totality. Following the OED categorial definitions, this relationality is key to community formation to describe individual relations to one another within a community, but also against other communities.

Imagined communities overlap with publics (boyd, 2010; Warner, 2002). danah boyd (2010) posits online publics are networked: “Publics that are restructured by networked technologies; they are simultaneously a space and a collection of people” (boyd, 2010, p. 41). For boyd (2010), networked publics are structured by affordances that “shape publics and how people negotiate them” (p. 45). The bits compromising online spaces constrain possibilities of expression, but they do not foreclose them; users learn to make spaces their own and even resist these features. The content creation strategies undergirding expression on TikTok form imitation publics (Zulli & Zulli, 2020). Here, new content is based on the strategies of successful content before it.

While much scholarly attention has been paid to the TikTok algorithm as community and identity formation (Cotter et al., 2022; Jones, 2023), there are other features at work. It is also important to note how the algorithm invokes feelings of closeness or relationality, and Jones’s (2023) work helps to suture technologies more clearly to texts, imagined communities, and audiences. The feeling users experience within these algorithmically driven imagined communities has been referred to as “algorithmic closeness,” in which users feel bonded together due to content pushed to them via the algorithm (Krutrök, 2021), as well as the “for you feeling” (Schellewald, 2021), in which individuals see themselves reflected back via the algorithm. These are “algorithmically imagined audiences” (Jones, 2023) that view themselves as relational to fellow community members through the algorithm in addition to texts. It is almost important to recognize users are not the only ones who imagine audiences and communities. Platforms themselves engage in online fixity, or beliefs that the typical user falls into a narrow subset of demographics; these demographics are typically white, male, and cisgender (Brock, 2012). Therefore, sides are constructed by how users see themselves, and if users also only see themselves in content being pushed back to them by the site, we can assess an alignment in imagined demographics by user and platform. Sides, like many other publics online, such as Black Twitter, are ad hoc, created out of communal or identity necessity (Florini, 2014).

The phrase “side of TikTok” does structuring legwork to define communities and differentiate them from others. It is a metaphor describing collective experiences and positions a community in relation to others. TikTok sides are networked and imaginative; users form collectives based on shared interests even though they will never know other community members; these interactions and imaginaries take form based on TikTok’s networked technologies.

Method

To examine how sides of TikTok are constructed and maintained by users and technology, we use BookTok as a case study. The case study approach “is used to generate an in-depth, multifaceted understanding of a complex issue in its real-life context” (Crowe et al., 2011, p. 1). While we summarily chart the BookTok terrain within this analysis, “the case is of secondary interest, it plays a supportive role, and it facilitates our understanding of something else” (Stake, 2007, p. 137). This case is an instrumental one seeking insights into broader phenomena. Instrumental case study analysis may be necessarily descriptive at times (Odell, 2001), as the goal is “lessons learned” (Yin, 2014).

Because case studies are not “methodological choice[s] but . . . choice[s] of what is to be studied” (Stake, 2007, p. 136), we used methods within this and turned to content itself. Our reasons were twofold: One, because extant TikTok research notes the app is “content-centric, rather than network-centric” (Kaye et al., 2022, p. 19), there would be creation practices, platform vernaculars, and imitative strategies present that would show how a community sees itself through shared practices; we aimed to identify these. Two, previous scholarship on TikTok’s technological features shows how these intertwine with these cultural practices (Zulli & Zulli, 2020). Looking at content did not just mean looking at what the users had created, it also meant looking at what the app superimposes on videos and how they appear via the interface. This is aligned with how Stuart Hall (1975) advocates for textual analysis, by looking at the content itself and the ways in which that content is positioned relative to, in his argument, the broader newspaper—in our case, TikTok. Businesses (newspapers or platforms) make decisions in presenting content, and this technological influence should not be ignored in social media textual analysis.

We created a new TikTok account so as to not have any past interactions influence the search. This aligned with our research questions, because in looking at how sides are constructed and sustained, it would also be useful to see what TikTok itself thinks of sides. The content pushed to new users offers insights into what TikTok thinks about specific communities, as well as who is seeking it out. Because textual analysis is a useful method for understanding hegemony (Phillipov, 2013), TikTok’s superimposed features, as well as what videos would be pushed to new users, demonstrate hegemony. From there, we searched the hashtag #BookTok via the site’s search feature and collected the top 150 videos. Our videos came from the Top tab, which, according to TikTok, demonstrates the most relevant results.

We are aware this approach may be controversial given that TikTok’s recommendation algorithm via the For You Page is one of the main ways people receive content. But scholars (Bishop, 2019; Crawford, 2016; Schellewald, 2021) caution against fetishizing the algorithm. While algorithms and the For You Page are important, they should not be prioritized to the detriment of the app’s other content interaction systems. Therefore, we were cautious of an algorithmic-driven search for three reasons. First, according to Andreas Schellewald (2021):

What the “For You” page and other recommender systems do is reinforce past viewing habits. Therefore, a conscious approach and field navigation strategies are necessary to avoid feedback loops that emerge during “personalization.” Such strategies can be pragmatic, like avoiding the For You Page and accessing content through hashtags. (p. 1441)

By creating a new account and seeking out BookTok content through search, we enacted such strategies to avoid these feedback loops. This is related to reason two, which even scholarship on the TikTok algorithm acknowledges is not the only way users find content (Cotter et al., 2022; Jones, 2023; Schellewald, 2021). By only seeking out content via the For You Page, scholars ignore users who want to find communities on TikTok after they have signed up. As Kaye et al. (2022) address, TikTok encourages new users to select topics that interest them, but the things someone may want to see might not be present, or it may not exist yet (i.e., a new movie, book, viral trend, etc.). Social media users are dynamic and constantly developing new interests, and methods should account for this. And finally, who TikTok thinks is a new user seeking out the said content matters. Because platforms engage in online fixity (Brock, 2012), we can learn about how platforms imagine their new users to be. The content TikTok selects from a “side” to push via search says something about who TikTok thinks is on the other end. While someone with a pre-existing TikTok account would see different content based on past searches, in considering our research questions of how the app influences side construction, this approach was appropriate.

After video selection, each author viewed and re-viewed each video, paying attention to interface, features, hashtags, captions, accounts tagged, recurring audio, recurring memetic and imitative trends, recurring content creation strategies, and recurring themes. We did not look at comments for this study, but future studies should examine this. Then, the authors came together to discuss their findings, using Steiner’s (2016) approach that the “analysis” in textual analysis is registering these occurrences in their contextual settings. Our findings largely coalesce around one type of video using imitative memetics: The recommendation video. We group our findings by looking at the recommendation video via content creation strategies, then recommendation videos and how TikTok’s features are superimposed on them, and finally, we conclude with an analysis of aesthetics and culture, and how they form bind communities together.

Analysis

The Recommendation Video—Creator Features

The most popular video type in our corpus was the recommendation video. This is unsurprising, given that recommendation and product review videos are staples on Bookstagram and BookTube (Tomasena, 2019). Known as “recs,” these provide insight into BookTok creators’ favorite (and least favorite) reads. Figures 1 and 2 demonstrate typical “rec” videos. The recommendations being made are positive (i.e., books I would love to read again, best books I’ve ever read), and show how one purpose of this TikTok side is to give suggestions. In imagined communities and networked publics, individuals make connections to form collectives. It is not just that individuals watch the same videos to build community, they discuss shared interests and like specific books to strengthen their bonds. Potentially watching the same videos as others binds a side of TikTok together, but with BookTok, the hyper-specific objects serve as micro-binds and further points of connection. Regarding the OED definitions of sides, the recommendation video underscores relationality. This most aligns to “side” in terms of attitudes and “takes a side” that the book in questions is good. On BookTok, the recommendation video ubiquity shows “sides” functions on two levels: It curates attitudes toward objects, and is simultaneously use to position itself as a part of TikTok for books, not other items, issues, or identities.

Figure 1.

A typical BookTok recommendation video.

Figure 2.

A typical BookTok recommendation video.

Creators curate community while trying to promote viewership. Figure 2 exemplifies this. According to TikTok (n.d.) “the creator playlist feature . . . allows creators to categorize their public videos to help viewers watch relevant videos in a series.” If a viewer was interested in Figure 2’s content, they could click on the superimposed “Playlist—Taylor Swift Book Recs” to be taken to a video list made up of books inspired by American musical artist Taylor Swift’s songs. We classify this as a creator feature because the creator must make the content and assemble it in a playlist. Only then can TikTok aid in the construction of sides by making it easier for viewers to stay in a subculture and receive relevant content.

Other creator features include hashtags and tagging accounts. In our corpus, there were many commonly used hashtags such as #bookish, #bookrecs, and #BookTok. Strategic hashtags make sure one’s content meets the right audiences (Kaye et al., 2022). TikTok is no exception, and specifically using the portmanteau for a TikTok side is an attempt to make sure content stays within the subculture. On TikTok, “hashtags are important mediators for visibility” (Kaye et al., 2022, p. 74), though they cannot guarantee it. Hashtags serve a crucial function in constructing TikTok sides, as using the hashtag denotes which TikTok side the content belongs to.

Figure 3 shows a creator understanding community nuances and strategically engaging with hashtags to attempt increased visibility. In Figure 3’s video, the creator mentions multiple books by different authors, but the creator only hashtags one author—Colleen Hoover. Colleen Hoover is an American New Adult romance author who is referred to as “the Queen of BookTok” (McNeal, 2022) due to how popular her books are on the app. Given the creator of Figure 3 only hashtags her instead of all the authors they mention indicates a recognition of Hoover’s TikTok popularity. Figure 4 also recommends Colleen Hoover book, but this creator tags Colleen Hoover’s TikTok account in an attempt for visibility—either by the app, BookTok, or Colleen Hoover herself. The tagging feature functions similarly to the previously mentioned hashtagging feature—by tagging notable BookTok individuals, users attempt visibility but also make sure their content stays on their side. Figure 5 attempts increased visibility in another way, through using #covid. There is nothing in this video mentioning the pandemic. However, using #covid can be understood as an attempt to hijack visibility (Jackson & Welles, 2015) of other conversations and increase viewership. This is a strategy counter to side cohesion and shows visibility strategies are at odds with side of TikTok formation.

Figure 3.

A BookTok hashtag.

Figure 4.

An author username tagging example.

Figure 5.

A BookTok hashtag.

Because of these examples emphasis on side as relationality and positionality, they map to Annette Markham’s (1998) conceptualization of the internet as a tool and the internet as a space. Using sides as tool allows sides to simultaneously be constructed as a space.

The Recommendation Video—TikTok Features

A notable feature in Figures 1 to 3 and 5 is one superimposed by TikTok. We pay particular attention to its potential implications in conjunction with recommendations, as TikTok superimposing a search bar onto videos is a way to ensure one, people stay on the app longer, and two, in theory, show the user relevant content.

Figure 1 shows a search bar with pre-filled text: “Normal People recommendations.” This refers to Normal People by Sally Rooney, which is the first book the creator recommends. This feature supports BookTok’s recommendation culture as a key tether in forming sides of TikTok—if one is watching the video and either likes Normal People or wants to read similar books, they can use this feature to find similar recommendations. Figure 2 demonstrates more generic pre-filled text in the search bar with “find related content.” Since texts are the basis of imagined communities, TikTok offers itself as a cohesive tool to make access to other texts facile. This gives viewers more of the same, functioning as a micro-recommendation system within specific videos. This micro-recommendation system is also relational, nothing that if one liked this they may also like that. This strengthens the bond of an online community through suggesting similar content.

However, this in-app search can make books seem more popular than they actually are. Figures 6 and 7 are from the same video and show how differing opinions work within TikTok sides. The book begins with text on the screen asking, “What’s the worst book you bought because of BookTok?.” This references how sometimes recommendations are not good, and other must warn fellow community members. At the video’s conclusion, the cover is revealed, noting it as Elena Armas’s The Spanish Love Deception. During data collection, we noted every time a book was mentioned. In our corpus, The Spanish Love Deception was the seventh most mentioned book with 11 mentions, but almost every mention was negative. As Meredith Clark (2020) discusses, algorithmic technologies can often provide the illusion of consensus, instead of actual consensus. The in-app search further underscores this illusory consensus. This video’s superimposed search bar simply states The Spanish Love Deception. There’s a juxtaposition—if one disliked a book, they would likely not seek out similar reads. Quality of reading experience and personal opinions cannot be reduced to quantification or predictive algorithms, be it in recommendations or search. While we cannot expect everyone in a TikTok side to agree on everything, The Spanish Love Deception shows one, sides of TikTok bind together over dislikes just as much as likes, and two, superimposed app features cannot account for quality.

Figure 6.

An unpopular book recommendation, Part one.

Figure 7.

An unpopular book recommendation, Part two.

Recommendation culture is important in understanding how technological features reinforce or contradict community. As The Spanish Love Deception example shows, not all recommendations are good recommendations, and the TikTok’s technological features cannot tell the difference.

Hype, Culture, and Esthetics

Technological features are not the only way sides of TikTok are constructed. Platform vernaculars are essential to collective formation and maintenance. One common way themes and vernaculars appear in recommendation videos was through the idea of books “living up to the hype” or “being worth it.”

Specifically, creators refer to books and authors as “worth one’s time” (Figure 8) or “worth the hype” (Figure 9). There is an implicit negative connotation, noting how praised books should not always be trusted or are worth time and money. As Devon Powers (2012) notes, “hype highlights the centrality of promotion, as well as its discontents—the disbelief, cynicism, and backlash that are inherent features of a thoroughly commodified communication environment” (p. 859). This centrality of promotion makes sense since books are bought and sold, but Powers (2012) expands this notion with a key point undergirding hype in sides of TikTok formation. She writes that hype often harkens to a “sense of betrayal a person feels in the face of broken dreams” (p. 857). BookTok’s hype discourse doesn’t just comment on the consumerism inherent in this side of TikTok, they also demonstrate how users look out for another. Members of online subcultures often take care of one another (Maddox, 2021), and through hype discourse, communities become solidified through trying to spare fellow members disappointment. Hype discourse functions in relation to fellow users as a protective tool.

Figure 8.

A BookTok video positively recommending books.

Figure 9.

A BookTok positively recommending books.

All BookTok practices are not equal, and these practices are important as TikTok sides are not monolithic. Users do not all act the same way, and groups are not always harmonious. Practices such as gatekeeping books, reading habits, and fandom function hierarchically in communities. This does not refer to literacy, but rather, BookTok “newbies” are expected to read certain books and eventually move beyond them as they become more seasoned members. The above-mentioned Figure 4 underscored this, noting, “Books I would recommend when you just joined BookTok.” This is also echoed in one creator’s vlog-style video, in which she says,

I’m constantly being asked what are some good books for people who are just getting into reading or just getting back into reading, what are some good beginner books? And I decided I would make a video about the books I am constantly recommending to people as like good beginner books to get you into reading. Disclaimer: If you’re already a big reader you’ve probably already heard of these books, but if you’re a new reader this is probably a good place to start. (Corpus Video #45)

Such a hierarchy also attempts to solidify a monolithic community. Although this is impossible given member diversity, the move is important in performing a hegemonic function in educating and maintaining what is expected of members.

Our final observation is aesthetics on BookTok. While Reddan (2022) notes Bookstagram is more glamorous than BookTok, which focuses on emotive and raw content, our analysis found this is not the case. What we found speaks of something larger than BookTok, which is the confluence of Instagram aesthetics and TikTok vernaculars. Figures 3 through 10 all involve aesthetics aligning with what Reddan (2022) found on Bookstagram, in which carefully curated and glamorous content is privileged. These underscore what creators call a “bookish” aesthetic: a clearly organized color palette, “cozy” signifiers such as beds, comforters, candles, and sweaters, and a large quantity of books displayed. This is one aspect of BookTok as an imitation public; recommendation videos will feature these qualities often because one, other popular videos do, and two, it represents a vernacular that this community has come to understand as related to reading.

Taken together, these figures show how recommendations do not just suggest books, but also a particular lifestyle and aesthetic for the TikTok side. We encourage future studies to be attentive to these aesthetics and how they converge with the glamor Alice Marwick (2015) found on Instagram. While TikTok was once thought of as the place for silly dances, comedic trends, and visceral reactions (Abidin, 2020; Reddan, 2022), our analysis shows a convergence between TikTok form and Instagram aesthetic that future research should explore.

Conversations of culture, aesthetics, and hype on BookTok show that sides of TikTok as a metaphor are not just tools and places. Cultural discourses show sides of TikTok are also ways of being (see Markham, 1998). If we operate from Stuart Hall’s (1992) definition of discourse in that discourse is “a group of statements which provide a language for talking about [and] representing the knowledge about a particular topic at a particular moment” (p. 291), BookTok’s cultural discourse performs a hegemonic function in undergirding how this community should be understood and what is expected of members. Furthermore, with BookTok as a case study, we understand how community discourse sustains that side of TikTok, legitimatizing the collective and presenting the side as cohesive—even if it is not.

Discussion and Conclusion

Through a BookTok case study, we showed how user content, imitative strategies, and app interface construct imagined communities on TikTok. We found TikTok side construction functions simultaneously as tool, space, and way of being (Markham, 1998). Since the most common video in our corpus was the recommendation video, we analyzed cultural tenets and app features in conjunction with these. On BookTok recommendations function relationally, presenting users as falling on different “sides” of an issue or liking a book. Combined with interface, this gives an illusion of consensus, but our analysis reveals cracks. Sides of TikTok are imagined communities, but they are not uniform.

Our intent in creating a new TikTok for analysis was to examine this. By creating a brand-new account, TikTok would make assumptions about what type of user would be doing the search on the other side of the screen. We must note in our corpus that we only had three creators of color (where it was possible to assess skin tone), and only three male-presenting creators. There was no overlap in these groups, so the remaining videos featured creators who presented as white and female. This upholds Brock’s (2012) concept of online fixity, in which one of two possible things was likely occurring: One, users are either so diverse that their origins cannot or should not be dealt with; or (and maybe and) TikTok presumes new app users who are interested in BookTok would only be white women. We can further underscore this point because our corpus came from the “top” video tab in TikTok’s search section, which TikTok itself defines as the most relevant content. In other words, TikTok views white creators as most relevant to BookTok. This underscores existing knowledge of TikTok as hostile to users of color (Boffone, 2022). TikTok plays an active role in constructing sides, and if the app assumes online fixity then it will assume whiteness as a default in community formation. This, ironically, flattens the relationality and positionality we have discussed as it assumes everyone is operating from the same singular perspective. On BookTok specifically, this, combined with the publishing industry’s lack of diversity (Dane, 2023), and our discussion of BookTok as marketing, means TikTok’s online fixity contributes to publishing’s systemic whiteness.

As a metaphor “side” of TikTok attempts to account for nuance in each collective, but there will always be a tension with the broader app and who it believes its users to be. These beliefs get coded into features, interfaces, and technologies (Sweeney & Brock, 2014). Because metaphors reveal as much as they occlude (Tiidenberg, 2020), the metaphor “sides of TikTok” reveals how users view themselves as imagined communities and put them into practice via everyday content creation strategies, but also obscures exclusionary tactics at work. Stuart Hall (1981) warned “danger arises because we tend to think of cultural forms as whole and coherent: Either wholly corrupt or wholly authentic. Whereas they are deeply contradictory, they play on contradictions” (p. 233). While “sides of TikTok” is a useful metaphor to describe collective formation and maintenance, we can’t forget the contradictions. As Jones (2023) notes regarding how people think of TikTok in spatial terms, the app tends to “erase differences within groups and precludes the possibility of someone occupying multiple positions. Thus, these maps offer one-dimensional, rather than intersectional, analyses” (p. 12). This erasure comes from users and platform. It comes from users who, in saying, I’m on BookTok, inherently establish themselves as being not a part of other communities (even if this is not the case). It comes from the app in that by pushing more of the same, users get what they like, but dissonance and contradiction become less available.

It should be noted that both authors are BookTok fans, and following Henry Jenkins (2006) recognize that our own interest in this TikTok side shapes our understanding of it. While we created a new TikTok account to see what would be pushed to new users to understand the relationship between culture and technology, our own BookTok experiences further underscore BookTok’s online fixity. We know from our own experiences that BookTok is an incredibly diverse place, given sides with the side such as #JewishBookTok, #BlackBookTok, #SapphicBookTok, and more. At times, writing this article was difficult given how what we knew to be true of our own BookTok experiences was at odds with the data in front of us. Sides and reflexivity also present a larger consideration of TikTok research and global positionality. As we were in the United States and browsing TikTok on U.S.-based servers in English-speaking contexts, this also dictated what type of online fixity TikTok would push to a new user seeking BookTok content. Interviews with BookTok creators and deeper ethnographic work of this community (and other sides of TikTok) are necessary to understand TikTok subcultural formation. In addition, we encourage our fellow Global North scholars to acknowledge their positionality in how the technological features they utilize in research necessarily shapes their analysis.

This reflexivity and global positioning inherently tie to our analysis of a predominantly spatial metaphor. As Jessa Lingel (2020) notes, internet spatial metaphors exclude, as they assume everyone has the same frame of reference for understanding the metaphor. Someone who has never seen the ocean will not have the same understanding of a comparison utilizing it compared with someone who has. Extending this to constructing online spaces in conjunction with online fixity, TikTok spatial metaphors work to reify existing divisions where geographical reference points, demographics, and cultural differences intertwine. We are all relational to one another online, and it is prudent to remember this in our ways of constructing and being in communities so as to not fall into solipsism. The experiences scrolling the app can create an environment where a user feels surrounded by a certain theme, no matter how niche, and it is important to not conflate belonging with an overstatement of one’s own experiences. We underscore this by pointing out something every definition of “side” in the OED noted: “and related senses.” The metaphor “side” of TikTok uses the self or community as a starting point to define itself, but related senses harken to more beyond the mere individual and invokes proprioception. Proprioception, or one’s ability to sense the space around them, should not be forgotten when using the metaphor of “sides” of TikTok. When bringing “and related senses” back into the conversation, we can move beyond the potentially solipsistic individual using their own experience as a reference point, and instead move toward the intersectional considerations Jones (2023) calls for. Because sides of TikTok functions as a space, tool, and way of being, moving beyond the self to more intersectional analyses open possibilities within technologies and cultural practices. No matter how these metaphors are made, they share something in common: they are linked through platform’s features, cultures, and user experiences.