There’s an epidemic of people carrying books.
I mean it feels like those clowns who carry around designer handbags, but deep down we know they don’t put much in there so they don’t destroy it.
But the funny thing is that they strategically placing them in coffee shop photos, while also posting aesthetic shots of perfectly arranged reading nooks they never actually use, EVER…
These are the performative readers.
The ones who need everyone to know they’re intellectuals but can’t sit still long enough to finish a chapter without reaching for their phone to scroll TikTok for the fifteenth time in twenty minutes.
They romanticise reading the way others romanticise vintage cameras or vinyl records.
I mean we know they don’t really give a shit about the experience.
It’s all identity projection.
They buy beautiful hardcovers that become props in their carefully curated lifestyle content, which will be plastered across BookTokInstaWtfever.
You’ll find them highlighting random passages not because the words moved them, but because highlighted books look more scholarly on their shelves and if you have cut up post it notes coming out of the pages, oh boy do you get ALL OF THE INTERNET POINTS.
They post quotes they pulled from Goodreads without reading the books they came from.
They talk about authors they’ve never actually read but heard about in a YouTube video essay.
These TikTok parasites have turned literature into content, reading into performance art and it’s pretty wild to witness out in the wild.
They can’t focus on a single page without their dopamine addicted brains demanding the next hit of social media stimulation.
Funny thing is that it happened today while I was heading back home from Manchester.
Some chick gets on the train and sits down next to me. Whips out Bob Mortimer’s – The Long Shoe, cracks open a page. Reads for maybe 30 seconds before popping her phone slap dap right in the middle of the book and starts scrolling Instagram.
I mean, I guess A for effort right?
Anywhore…
Us readers don’t give a shit about any of this performative nonsense.
I mean we read because we have to.
We like stories. The ideas consume us. We read on buses, in bathroom stalls, at 2 AM when we should be sleeping.
We read books with broken spines and dog eared pages. We read unfashionable genres and authors no one’s heard of.
We don’t announce our reading habits or pose with our books or create elaborate reading challenges for social media validation.
We just read. And we don’t care what anyone else thinks about it.
But ironically this email is about readers who perform outside and don’t really get sucked into books.
This is just another one of my soap box rants. I’m going to bed, with a book and that is all.
Stephen Walker.
P.S. That link down there was an interesting read.
Are you an actual book nerd, or are you just ‘performative reading’? – nbc news posted this gem