I went and looked at the Tiktoks. As far as I can see from the few videos I've watched it's not so much "criticism" as "plot overview, small background details, and what I liked about it".
It's kind of weird it's being framed as a tiktok sensation when there's nothing to really differenciate him from other booktokers? Other than perhaps more subscribers than usual.
Also, per the article:
> Edwards champions BookTok and also defends it...
Kind of interesting to note given his video saying he doesn't like booktok books[1]. I suppose he knows not to piss in the pond he drinks from.
I've seen a few of his videos over the years and remembered them similarly to your description, but watching that video you linked to I think he does do a proper critique. Goes into what makes the writing weak, plot drag, links books to other books, and even has a deep understanding of an authors' body of works to be able to compare and provide insight.
And in the beginning of the video he gives quite a lot of praise to BookTok, so I reckon the title is more tongue-in-cheek hyperbole, with a dash of clickbait!
You misunderstand the nature of newspapers. Playing devil's advocate just a little here, I absolutely can see the financial benefit of an author taking a single epitome out of a group of near clones, even a random one among them at that, and placing him right on top of a pedestal positioned just before a podium. The more details the audience drowns in, no matter how truthful, the more you simply clutter your narrative with unfortunate facts and drown out the whole point. I'm not saying the author is lying, nor advocating it. But sometimes a slice of the truth is more useful than the whole pi of it in a given moment for a given story.
With a recommendation algorithm that shows you new content from various "literary critics", with an emphasis on a good exploration/exploitation tradeoff that shows you content from influencers you haven't seen before as well as familiar content? And maybe a reasonable system that allows content creators to reply to other creator's takes?
If you're looking for literary criticism and exploration that's a bit more leftfield and nuanced, highly recommend Sam Pulham's video essays https://www.youtube.com/@SherdsTube - I've discovered some brilliant writers through him that I would otherwise never have encountered.
> Can't they figure out what books to get without being told?
Probably not? People are not "being told" what to read, they are given some opinionated advice which they can then decide to follow or not.
According to Wikipedia, 275,000 books are published each year in the US alone [0]. Most people (even excluding the many that don't read) will read well under 0.01% of that. Deciding which books to read without taking advice from someone more informed would not be optimal.
Sometimes it makes a lot more sense to rely of expert advice than to just make all decisions on your own.
> The very fact people think they need to read (fiction) books released this year more than ones released before is baffling.
Do they really?
I was comparing rates of production vs consumption. It doesn't follow that what is being consumed on a given year is this year's production.
My guess is that most of the books written are read by hardly anyone. A few authors have a faithful following that will read their books as soon as it's out (which isn't too baffling). Reviewers and critics may indeed be more likely to review new books, which might impact people's decisions (again, not necessarily baffling). Book shops also put new books forward, but all those books tend to be the ones by trendy authors.
Other than the few fashionable books that come out each year you'll find reviewers like the one described in the article who don't seem to focus on new books (e.g. they talk about Dostoïevski), so it is not obvious that people feel that compelled to read new books.
> the backlog of books spread across millennia, not a century.
How much I agree with this! Plus, time does such a great job at filtering out the good from the bad (or the exceptional from the mundane). That's where lists of books entering the public domain, like this one [0], are important. Or the reviews [1].
Ultimately, the fact that there is more available to read than is possible even to the most voracious of readers means that most people will rely on guidance on what to read.
I acknowledge his expertise in literature. I find his approach to non-fiction sometimes less insightful and note a recent shift toward following popular book trends but it’s still great to see his videos.
How good is the book he successfully sold to HarperCollins, The Uni-Verse? Either he's pretty good, or he was quite lucky, or he had some inside track.
> His next major growth spurt came when his university career ended. When Oxford University rejected his master’s application in 2020, Edwards posted a video of himself crying, entitled “oxford university rejected my masters application… (sorry this video is sad)”. Social media rewards confession. Authenticity, sincerity and vulnerability were important – more important than orthodox intellectual baubles.
It's literally pathetic.
pathetic
/pəˈθɛtɪk/
arousing pity, especially through vulnerability or sadness.
"she looked so pathetic that I bent down to comfort her"
I really have a hard time understanding why people post videos of themselves crying. Maybe I'm already old in my 30s, but it's hard for me to wrap my head around it.
Like, I get that at some level it's fishing for sympathy and pity, but your real friends are going to be there whether they have a video of you crying or not. Everyone else just... doesn't matter that much?
I think it's an interesting relationship between influencers, especially young ones, and their followers.
Young influencers of this nature get a following because of their authenticity. They're genuine, honest, about their experiences, and the comments reflect it. People in the comments open up about their own problems and insecurities and issues. It creates an "illusion of community" as Edwards says in the article.
Now couple with that the complication of making money. An influencer indirectly makes money from their followers. I could easily see how someone who makes that authenticity part of their brand/identity feeling an obligation to their followers to continue to be honest even on subjects of high emotion. These people who are responsible for your success, your lifestyle, how could you be anything but brutally honest with them?
And just like in real relationship where showing vulnerability can strengthen bonds, it has the same effect on the influencer-follower relationship -- despite in reality being parasocial. And strengthening that bond also results in more faithful followers, which is financially beneficial.
Now, whether a given influencer is being vulnerable due to obligation or due to financial incentives, is unclear. For many it seems more obviously financial. But for others it does seem like a bit of a complicated mixture of the two.
Edit: Here's the video in question: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8J8fWCNqCI . Personally this feels more genuine than financially motivated, but that's me. And to be fair there is no actual crying in the video! Seems like a bit of a dishonest wording by the author of the article to claim as such.
I disagree others don't matter that much. Attention means influence. If your tears garner attention, you prove your influence. Those seeking to influence to their benefit will see your proof and react accordingly.
(I felt the same way when I read this paragraph and the one about Jack being a target of abuse but I couldn’t resist an opportunity to ‘dang’ a ‘dang’ thread. At the same time it is touching how Jack has forged some semblance of a real world community out of this. I still can’t take what he does serious as a whole and I’m not warm to the idea that the “World’s most powerful literary critic is on TikTok” and I do have a sort of apathy toward the cultural intrigue borne from people in their twenties today. Like dang I was expecting a hit piece and was no less impressed to find it the opposite—fluff. Both poignant in some ways and pathetic in most per my own sensibilities.)
Echoing another commenter: poignant? Reading the article, for me it was poignant, only mildly, in the archaic sense of the word (sorry! But seriously—dystopian is the first word I'd use.)
I'm interested in your interpretation and what you took away from reading that. Can you elaborate?
For me it was poignant as the story of a young man who has for his entire life been keen on reading, writing, and communicating, who has in a way achieved what he was looking to achieve, and unknowingly created a set of shackles from his own success/fame that he's struggling to reason with and untangle. I can't imagine the pressure of loving to critique books, but then being slapped with labels like “#1 most read on GoodReads” . How could you make fun critique videos knowing that an honest negative critique could tank an author's career? It seems like a lot of pressure.
His quote about internet "community" also especially struck me as poignant: “You have this illusion of community when we’re really very alone.” There are loads of young people who I imagine have an over-emphasis in their lives on online "community", and I really do think it is an illusion. I've been toying with the idea whether community can really even exist if you can't see each other in person.
I'd be curious as to your interpretation that led to you finding the article poignant in the archaic sense (sharp or pungent in taste or smell) or dystopian.
I read what you're saying. I don't want to go into detail about all the things in the article that rubbed me the wrong way, although saying that makes me feel like I owe that, so, sorry about that.
I will say: I don't know who _you_ are, but I feel like _the average Joe_ would love to be this guy and would love to have his problems instead of Joe's.
Succumbing to the pressure of knowing "an honest negative critique could tank an author's career" sounds like a skill issue, as the young folk say. If that's your worry, you are not this Joe's reviewer! I want an _honest_ critique! That that's a lot to ask of my number one TikTok bookfluencer is dystopian!
How interesting. I thought booktok was an aggregated list of the books people were most talking about on TikTok or something. Turns out it’s just one guy making recommendations.
Second definition of power on Google: "the capacity or ability to direct or influence the behavior of others or the course of events." Influence is a reasonable part of the definition.
Influence ~= power seems fine to me. Both measure your ability to change the world, and most mechanisms for power can be accurately described as influence
The disconnect is that influence is not accurately measured in views. Peter Thiel is very influential despite barely maintaining his (known) social media accounts
Yeah, I think you have to enable a couple extra filter lists to get rid of cookie banners and some of the other annoying popups that aren't strictly "ads"
They filter based on HTML IDs/classes, so it doesn't catch every single thing, but it does catch most, and UBO offers an easy way of selecting ads/banners/etc and blocking them
Sort of an aside, but what's next now that Tiktok is deeply into end-stage enshittification? It'd dead now, a formerly fun app morphed into grotesque eyeball milking system owned by one of the worst people on the planet. I deleted the app this week after the feed ramped ad content up to being an ad every other video, frequently with ads back to back to back.
What's next is Sora and Sora-likes. The same thing but 100% created by AI. Tik Tok will probably move to that model eventually, kinda like Instagram pivoted to Stories.
I went and looked at the Tiktoks. As far as I can see from the few videos I've watched it's not so much "criticism" as "plot overview, small background details, and what I liked about it".
It's kind of weird it's being framed as a tiktok sensation when there's nothing to really differenciate him from other booktokers? Other than perhaps more subscribers than usual.
Also, per the article:
> Edwards champions BookTok and also defends it...
Kind of interesting to note given his video saying he doesn't like booktok books[1]. I suppose he knows not to piss in the pond he drinks from.
[1] https://youtu.be/AuEipfQbHrU
I've seen a few of his videos over the years and remembered them similarly to your description, but watching that video you linked to I think he does do a proper critique. Goes into what makes the writing weak, plot drag, links books to other books, and even has a deep understanding of an authors' body of works to be able to compare and provide insight.
And in the beginning of the video he gives quite a lot of praise to BookTok, so I reckon the title is more tongue-in-cheek hyperbole, with a dash of clickbait!
You misunderstand the nature of newspapers. Playing devil's advocate just a little here, I absolutely can see the financial benefit of an author taking a single epitome out of a group of near clones, even a random one among them at that, and placing him right on top of a pedestal positioned just before a podium. The more details the audience drowns in, no matter how truthful, the more you simply clutter your narrative with unfortunate facts and drown out the whole point. I'm not saying the author is lying, nor advocating it. But sometimes a slice of the truth is more useful than the whole pi of it in a given moment for a given story.
If you’re not on TikTok yet, and are curious, just don’t. Your life will be so much better if you just stay away.
I wish we had more plurality. Not just convergence on one ultra influencer for books, but an ecosystem, with offerings tailored to audiences.
With a recommendation algorithm that shows you new content from various "literary critics", with an emphasis on a good exploration/exploitation tradeoff that shows you content from influencers you haven't seen before as well as familiar content? And maybe a reasonable system that allows content creators to reply to other creator's takes?
That's TikTok
What do you mean? Aren't there thousands of "booktok" influencers?
If you're looking for literary criticism and exploration that's a bit more leftfield and nuanced, highly recommend Sam Pulham's video essays https://www.youtube.com/@SherdsTube - I've discovered some brilliant writers through him that I would otherwise never have encountered.
Why are all these institutions so susceptible to bring led by so few people? Can't they figure out what books to get without being told?
> Can't they figure out what books to get without being told?
Probably not? People are not "being told" what to read, they are given some opinionated advice which they can then decide to follow or not.
According to Wikipedia, 275,000 books are published each year in the US alone [0]. Most people (even excluding the many that don't read) will read well under 0.01% of that. Deciding which books to read without taking advice from someone more informed would not be optimal.
Sometimes it makes a lot more sense to rely of expert advice than to just make all decisions on your own.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Books_published_per_country_pe...
The very fact people think they need to read (fiction) books released this year more than ones released before is baffling.
Much like film you could say, but the backlog of books spread across millennia, not a century.
> The very fact people think they need to read (fiction) books released this year more than ones released before is baffling.
Do they really?
I was comparing rates of production vs consumption. It doesn't follow that what is being consumed on a given year is this year's production.
My guess is that most of the books written are read by hardly anyone. A few authors have a faithful following that will read their books as soon as it's out (which isn't too baffling). Reviewers and critics may indeed be more likely to review new books, which might impact people's decisions (again, not necessarily baffling). Book shops also put new books forward, but all those books tend to be the ones by trendy authors.
Other than the few fashionable books that come out each year you'll find reviewers like the one described in the article who don't seem to focus on new books (e.g. they talk about Dostoïevski), so it is not obvious that people feel that compelled to read new books.
> the backlog of books spread across millennia, not a century.
How much I agree with this! Plus, time does such a great job at filtering out the good from the bad (or the exceptional from the mundane). That's where lists of books entering the public domain, like this one [0], are important. Or the reviews [1].
Ultimately, the fact that there is more available to read than is possible even to the most voracious of readers means that most people will rely on guidance on what to read.
[0] https://standardebooks.org/blog/public-domain-day-2026
[1] https://publicdomainreview.org/
I acknowledge his expertise in literature. I find his approach to non-fiction sometimes less insightful and note a recent shift toward following popular book trends but it’s still great to see his videos.
How good is the book he successfully sold to HarperCollins, The Uni-Verse? Either he's pretty good, or he was quite lucky, or he had some inside track.
I expected that to be a hit job but it's actually rather poignant.
poignant?
> His next major growth spurt came when his university career ended. When Oxford University rejected his master’s application in 2020, Edwards posted a video of himself crying, entitled “oxford university rejected my masters application… (sorry this video is sad)”. Social media rewards confession. Authenticity, sincerity and vulnerability were important – more important than orthodox intellectual baubles.
It's literally pathetic.
I really have a hard time understanding why people post videos of themselves crying. Maybe I'm already old in my 30s, but it's hard for me to wrap my head around it.
Like, I get that at some level it's fishing for sympathy and pity, but your real friends are going to be there whether they have a video of you crying or not. Everyone else just... doesn't matter that much?
I think it's an interesting relationship between influencers, especially young ones, and their followers.
Young influencers of this nature get a following because of their authenticity. They're genuine, honest, about their experiences, and the comments reflect it. People in the comments open up about their own problems and insecurities and issues. It creates an "illusion of community" as Edwards says in the article.
Now couple with that the complication of making money. An influencer indirectly makes money from their followers. I could easily see how someone who makes that authenticity part of their brand/identity feeling an obligation to their followers to continue to be honest even on subjects of high emotion. These people who are responsible for your success, your lifestyle, how could you be anything but brutally honest with them?
And just like in real relationship where showing vulnerability can strengthen bonds, it has the same effect on the influencer-follower relationship -- despite in reality being parasocial. And strengthening that bond also results in more faithful followers, which is financially beneficial.
Now, whether a given influencer is being vulnerable due to obligation or due to financial incentives, is unclear. For many it seems more obviously financial. But for others it does seem like a bit of a complicated mixture of the two.
Edit: Here's the video in question: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8J8fWCNqCI . Personally this feels more genuine than financially motivated, but that's me. And to be fair there is no actual crying in the video! Seems like a bit of a dishonest wording by the author of the article to claim as such.
I disagree others don't matter that much. Attention means influence. If your tears garner attention, you prove your influence. Those seeking to influence to their benefit will see your proof and react accordingly.
Please don't post snark to HN threads. This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
(I felt the same way when I read this paragraph and the one about Jack being a target of abuse but I couldn’t resist an opportunity to ‘dang’ a ‘dang’ thread. At the same time it is touching how Jack has forged some semblance of a real world community out of this. I still can’t take what he does serious as a whole and I’m not warm to the idea that the “World’s most powerful literary critic is on TikTok” and I do have a sort of apathy toward the cultural intrigue borne from people in their twenties today. Like dang I was expecting a hit piece and was no less impressed to find it the opposite—fluff. Both poignant in some ways and pathetic in most per my own sensibilities.)
Backseat moderation is also against the guidelines.
It's always amusing that you cannot tell people this rule without in fact breaking it yourself.
Oh, the irony.
Echoing another commenter: poignant? Reading the article, for me it was poignant, only mildly, in the archaic sense of the word (sorry! But seriously—dystopian is the first word I'd use.)
I'm interested in your interpretation and what you took away from reading that. Can you elaborate?
For me it was poignant as the story of a young man who has for his entire life been keen on reading, writing, and communicating, who has in a way achieved what he was looking to achieve, and unknowingly created a set of shackles from his own success/fame that he's struggling to reason with and untangle. I can't imagine the pressure of loving to critique books, but then being slapped with labels like “#1 most read on GoodReads” . How could you make fun critique videos knowing that an honest negative critique could tank an author's career? It seems like a lot of pressure.
His quote about internet "community" also especially struck me as poignant: “You have this illusion of community when we’re really very alone.” There are loads of young people who I imagine have an over-emphasis in their lives on online "community", and I really do think it is an illusion. I've been toying with the idea whether community can really even exist if you can't see each other in person.
I'd be curious as to your interpretation that led to you finding the article poignant in the archaic sense (sharp or pungent in taste or smell) or dystopian.
I read what you're saying. I don't want to go into detail about all the things in the article that rubbed me the wrong way, although saying that makes me feel like I owe that, so, sorry about that.
I will say: I don't know who _you_ are, but I feel like _the average Joe_ would love to be this guy and would love to have his problems instead of Joe's.
Succumbing to the pressure of knowing "an honest negative critique could tank an author's career" sounds like a skill issue, as the young folk say. If that's your worry, you are not this Joe's reviewer! I want an _honest_ critique! That that's a lot to ask of my number one TikTok bookfluencer is dystopian!
[flagged]
They said most powerful, not highest quality! These are very different things.
The majority of readers can and will conflate the two, celebrity worship, awards, and popularity contests are rife with similar mixups
How interesting. I thought booktok was an aggregated list of the books people were most talking about on TikTok or something. Turns out it’s just one guy making recommendations.
influence ≠ powerful I admit if you are permanently only this might blend together.
Second definition of power on Google: "the capacity or ability to direct or influence the behavior of others or the course of events." Influence is a reasonable part of the definition.
Influence ~= power seems fine to me. Both measure your ability to change the world, and most mechanisms for power can be accurately described as influence
The disconnect is that influence is not accurately measured in views. Peter Thiel is very influential despite barely maintaining his (known) social media accounts
I had to go through a cookie request, a subscribe to us popup and then had to close another popup telling me I could only read two articles.
Prefix the whole url with `archive.is` e.g. `archive.is/https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/books/2026/01/the-world...`
This will work on most article sites to show you an archived version of it without any of these annoyances
Install uBlock Origin and you won't see any of that
uBlock doesn’t handle euro cookie banners by default
Yeah, I think you have to enable a couple extra filter lists to get rid of cookie banners and some of the other annoying popups that aren't strictly "ads"
Interesting. I'll try that out. Seems like a massively harder technical problem than just blocking ad domains.
They filter based on HTML IDs/classes, so it doesn't catch every single thing, but it does catch most, and UBO offers an easy way of selecting ads/banners/etc and blocking them
Guys, this is an ad.
Sort of an aside, but what's next now that Tiktok is deeply into end-stage enshittification? It'd dead now, a formerly fun app morphed into grotesque eyeball milking system owned by one of the worst people on the planet. I deleted the app this week after the feed ramped ad content up to being an ad every other video, frequently with ads back to back to back.
It's cooked.
What's next is Sora and Sora-likes. The same thing but 100% created by AI. Tik Tok will probably move to that model eventually, kinda like Instagram pivoted to Stories.
Evaporative cooling of the best content, likely, but plenty of social networks with worse ad loads still have plenty of users.
My question is whether Ellison does to it what Elon did to X: revamp the algorithm to support his politics.