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Why readers on TikTok love this sentimental slop
Last year, in a piece titled "How Crying on TikTok Sells Books," the New York Times tracked how the social media app was ushering readers into the Age of the Ugly Cry: clusters of videos dedicated to "books that will make you sob" have reached millions of views and were having, according to publishing-industry insiders, a seismic effect on sales. Years-old novels about domestic violence (It Ends With Us), childhood sexual abuse (A Little Life), bisexual yearning in Old Hollywood (The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo), and getting your favourite twink killed in the Trojan war (The Song of Achilles) have experienced massive, ongoing increases in sales, largely based on videos that promise they will make you "sob until you can't breathe" or will leave you "heartbroken and shattered for days." Your local bookshop probably has a TikTok table; at least half the books on it will be designed to make you weep into your breakfast muffin, if you're a breakfast muffin person.
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'Times are bad. Children no longer obey their parents and everyone is writing a book.'
circa 43 BC