Reading the Romance Reader: Booktok, Algorithmic Subjugation, and the Fight for Cultural Legitimacy

This thesis examines the transformation of romance reader identity through the lens of BookTok, investigating how digital platforms grant cultural legitimacy while simultaneously subjugating community practices to algorithmic control. Romance readers historically developed emotional labor practices, counterpublic formation strategies, and fan-driven meaning-making to resist decades of cultural marginalization. Through analysis of TikTok's platform attributes, user behaviors, and the viral Tillie Cole controversy, this study traces how BookTok converts these resistant practices into behavioral data optimized for engagement rather than authentic discourse. The research employs theoretical frameworks including Janice Radway's ethnographic analysis, Shoshana Zuboff's surveillance capitalism, Nick Srnicek's platform capitalism, and Nancy Fraser's counterpublic theory to examine three critical dimensions: first, how romance readers developed emotional labor as cultural resistance; second, how TikTok's technological affordances exploit these historical practices; and third, how platform and surveillance capitalism converge to create an algorithmic hive mind that fragments community solidarity. Findings reveal that while romance readers achieve unprecedented mainstream visibility and influence through BookTok, this cultural legitimacy operates within systems fundamentally indifferent to community welfare. This transformation has broader implications for participatory cultures in digital spaces, revealing how surveillance capitalism can weaponize communities' greatest strengths of emotional authenticity, defensive solidarity, and collective meaning-making into extractable vulnerabilities. The thesis examines how many romance readers navigate tensions between algorithmic visibility and autonomous community practices, arguing that for significant segments of this community, the pursuit of cultural legitimacy has produced not liberation, but new forms of digital containment and subjugation disguised as empowerment.