By Grace Gardener
I would consider myself part of the online book community. This community is on many platforms, like YouTube, TikTok, Tumblr, and obviously Goodreads. The people in this book community come from all over the world and from lots of different backgrounds. However, there are certain trends in the book community that most people are part of. For example, the author Colleen Hoover has been read and liked by almost all of the romance fans. For the fantasy fans, Sara J. Maas’ books are almost a must-read. And there we already see the thing I want to talk about: readers and smut.
For some reason, readers are obsessed with sex in their books. This is mostly the fantasy, adventure and romance genres, but since most book lovers belong in those categories, the trope is still everywhere. These people – usually still teenagers – will read a book solely for the porn. And they post about it. A lot.
Something that I thought was very interesting when looking into this is how open teenagers are about it. They don’t really hide anything, no matter how raunchy it would look to outsiders. Whereas I would be very embarrassed to admit it if I ever read a book about werewolf sex, the fans of these books – who are mostly girls – will not only admit it, but also tell you how hot they think it is that the man has a tail. The smut lovers also freely admit the negative consequences of reading so much smut, but we’ll get to that later.
There are various different types of posts you’ll see. The first type is simply people talking about their spicy recommendations. They will recommend books solely based on how good the smut was. Then we have the videos where people describe their favourite tropes and types of sex. I won’t burden you with further information. There’s the videos about fooling parents into thinking you’re a very accomplished, avid reader when actually you are a porn addict. And, of course, the posts where the readers straight-up admit that the men they fall for are evil and disgusting. This is an interesting trend in general, and although I won’t say too much about it now, it’s very noticeable that the majority of book readers dislike good characters. Another noticeable tendency is that while everybody loves reading about sex, they seem to absolutely hate it when women in their books get pregnant. Gratification without taking responsibility for your actions is still in, I guess.
Now you might be thinking: well, that’s just a small side group within the wider book community. But it’s not. I challenge any one of you to go on YouTube and find a booktok compilation without any mention of smut. It’s nigh on impossible. The bad content is everywhere. Any book group that is not strictly Christian – and even some that are – has numerous readers excitedly discussing books that have explicit content. This is not restricted to an older age range: children as young as 13 are reading and discussing these books, and it’s very hard to get around them.
If you go to the Goodreads page for Throne of Glass, the first book in a pornographic fantasy series for young people, it is featured in 1563 lists, there are 427 discussions about the book going, and 5442 discussions mention the book. This means that if a young teenager joins pretty much any teen reading group, he or she will almost certainly be confronted with this book and many like it various times. For some reason, discussions about a specific book almost never actually mention the smut. People talk about smut in general; when it comes to singular books, you usually don’t find out about the content until you try the book out for yourself.
Up to now, most research about porn and its effects on people has focused on watching it, so I wasn’t able to find anything about reading erotica. That doesn’t mean I don’t think it has some serious consequences, though.
First problem: addiction. Once again, I don’t know of any studies done on the effects of reading erotica on the brain. However, it seems from what the people in the book community themselves are saying that reading smut can be addicting. And that would make sense. After all, even more is possible on paper than on screen. And reading – as I can attest – is a very immersive experience for book lovers. You’re not just staring at words on a paper, you are imagining a world that is partly made by the author and partly your own imagination. The emotions characters feel can be transferred to yourself if you are reading intently enough. So if people read erotica, they’re not just reading about other people’s gratification; they’re being gratified themselves.
The second problem: not being able to function in real life and depression due to ridiculously high standards. Once again, as a book reader, I can tell you the experience can sometimes be really sad. You’ll really live in a book, imagining yourself in it, having fun, and then it ends and you realise: I will never live there. This right here – my room, my house, my city – is my life. And I will never have swordfighting adventures or become a princess, etc. Usually, this wears off after a few days. After all, you may not live in a fantasy world, but instead of moping about it you can make the real world as exciting as you can. For readers who like erotica, however, there’s a much wider array of emotions at play. Like I said, reading erotica makes you feel very aroused if you choose to let it affect you. So once you finish the book, the hangover is gonna be huge, which, of course, adds to the addiction effect.
The third problem is tied in to this, and it’s just plain and simple: smut readers have a hard time being “normal” in day-to-day life because not only are they seeing innuendos and possibilities everywhere, their image of men has also been affected greatly by books full of muscular mafioso and growling werewolves. As they themselves admit, this makes it rather hard to relate to men as other than sexual toys that might kidnap you and do kinky stuff in their basement.
So there you have it: just because some teenagers would rather read than watch movies, it doesn’t mean they aren’t exposed to very dangerous and graphic ideas. Not only that, it’s very easy for them to fall into the trap of pornography: everyone’s doing it, and you don’t really know it’s coming until you read the book yourself. Remember: young teens don’t really have a very refined filter yet, so books that immediately stand out to me as suspicious seem fine to them. And since everyone’s reading the books and doesn’t seem to make a big deal out of it, girls and boys – well, mostly girls – keep reading as well. Then they find others who, like them, have to hide this kind of stuff from their parents and a kind of cameraderie is formed. It is now cool and fun to read smut in public places without getting caught. The game is on, and the young reader is on the path to severe disappointment later on.