If you’ve been on any short-form content platform in the past five years, it’s difficult to have avoided BookTok. It’s a space saturated with clickbait-y, over-simplified literary reviews that fast-track to whether or not the book in question contains any “spice” within the first ten seconds, disregarding any genuine literary discussion with the age-old mantra that sex will indeed always sell. 

Recently, BookTok has taken a liking to a very particular subgenre of literature: dark romance, a genre that covers a broad spectrum of tropes, ranging from slightly scandalous (good girl/bad boy, “I can fix him”) to straight up illegal (kidnapping, trafficking, you get the gist), all whilst juggling a refined balance between the alluring and the disturbing.

Would you like to take a guess at which end of the spectrum BookTok algorithms have veered towards? 

If you guessed “straight up illegal,” congratulations. And my condolences

Unfortunately, the trend is very telling — not only of BookTok’s grave misunderstanding of the dark romance subgenre’s intentions — but also of the concerning interpretations surrounding sex, power, and relationships present nowadays. 

Let’s just make one thing clear: I am not here to shame enjoyers of dark romance (especially considering I had cleared half of Wattpad’s anime mafia au fics by seventh grade). 

However… With the genre running rampant in predominantly adolescent online spaces, it’s becoming increasingly difficult for people to draw the line between harbouring a healthy appreciation for its craft , and buying into the dangerous delusions of what its contents portray.

As I write this article, the quote above comes to mind almost instantly. Although the final season of Netflix’s You was filled with many flaws, Madeline Brewer’s character, Bronte, spits her strongest line in a fight for her life against the infamous Joe Goldberg. And it sums up what lies at the heart of dark romance — it's a means to safely explore the intense, sometimes downright horrifying emotions and intentions that arise for the sake of love.

The genre is meant to be thought-provoking. It’s meant to be a starting point for some healthy reflections on both the boundaries and limits we draw for ourselves when it comes to our own romantic relationships. 

When something as complex and delicate as dark romance rides the BookTok hype train of “hot, steamy, and dangerous,” it is inevitably watered down to a shallow appreciation for sexually provocative plot lines and not much more. Combine that with the largely teenage audience of BookTok’s wide reach, and you end up with young boys and girls becoming increasingly accepting, and even possibly welcoming, of behaviours and relationship dynamics that are genuinely harmful and potentially dangerous. 

It’s all fun and games and oh-so-hot until tragedy strikes. Until young girls are being killed by their partners, or young boys learn that aggression is a show of love. What we need to realise is that tragedy begins with small steps, like praising the taboo ideals portrayed in many works of dark romance. BookTok never “took the genre too far,” but it’s given too many creators with misguided intentions a platform to openly misinterpret its contents and not quite enough space for nuanced and thoughtful discussions of the genre as a whole.

Asha Chiu is a first-year student studying Mechatronics Engineering. When they’re not grinding out uni assignments or preparing for dance performances, you can find them at a local skatepark, a noodle place, or at the nearest Gong Cha.