In the shallow world of BookTok, being ‘a reader’ is more important than actually reading | British GQ

It became my latest obsession in much the same way that one might become obsessed with sticking your tongue in plug sockets. But there was just something about watching the same twenty books being flaunted again and again; people openly confessing to owning hundreds of unread books; the flagrant abuse of sticky tabs in novels that absolutely do not require that much citation; bookshelves that are so perfect that arouse suspicion; people calling themselves "certified bookworms" but, like, entirely earnestly; frequent references to people's "yearly reading goals"; something called New Adult? It was like entering a parallel universe where reading wasn't just something that someone did for fun, it was a lifestyle, an aesthetic, people were "readers" like Lorraine Kelly is "Lorraine Kelly". But one thing just wouldn't leave my head as I scrolled endlessly through this cursed landscape: I think I'm responsible for this.