The drama between BookTok and a professional athlete has come to a head after a group within the fandom community spent months turning fantasy into an opportunity to sexually harass an NHL player.
BookTok, which is the subcommunity of TikTok dedicated to readers and book lovers, made 28-year-old Seattle Kraken center Alex Wennberg “the face” of leads in hockey romance novels, which are popular in the community.
The crossover allegedly was started by Kierra Lewis, a BookToker with over 1 million followers, who read Pucking Around by Emily Rath, an adult romance novel about the hockey world. Lewis is credited as one of the first people to start posting Wennberg as the face of BookTok’s hockey romance leads, and she started to create more content around other players she found attractive.
A few days after finishing Pucking Around, Lewis started posting about buying ESPN on her TV and tuning in to Seattle Kraken games. In one video from April 27, the Seattle Kraken’s official TikTok account commented, “Energy is unmatched.”
“Omg I’m about to faint,” Lewis replied. “Tell my men good luck tonight.”
On April 28, Lewis started using the phrase “Krack some backs,” which the Seattle Kraken’s official TikTok account also seemingly encouraged with the comment “LET’S GOOOOOOO.”
In May, the Seattle Kraken flew Lewis out to see a playoff game and gifted her a jersey with “BookTok” on the back after her posts about the team were racking up hundreds of thousands of views. The Seattle Kraken is a relatively new NHL team, having been founded in 2021, so it doesn’t have as strong a fanbase as more established teams. Lewis’s interest in hockey also aligned with the team’s “surprising” playoff run in early 2023.
In a video recapping the drama, Marines Alvarez, a self-identified member of BookTok, included some since deleted TikToks Lewis had posted that were more sexually explicit and specifically about Wennberg.
“This takes off with lots of people in the comments saying that Kierra has introduced them to hockey, to the Seattle Kraken specifically,” Alvarez explained. “As Kierra is creating this content, people are consistently tagging the Seattle Kraken into the comments.”
Alvarez added that in addition to commenting on Lewis’s posts, the Seattle Kraken changed its TikTok bio to mention something about “BookTok” and start posting videos that were player-focused and playing into the romance novel angle.
The Seattle Kraken’s videos have since been deleted, but some TikTokers who duetted the posts still have clips that were posted of players, like Wennberg, walking in slow motion and referencing BookTok.
One of the clips Alvarez included, which was filmed by Lewis while she was at the playoff game, features more sexual commentary while she zoomed in on Wennberg warming up before the game.
“This boy is a f***ing Ken doll,” Lewis says in the video. “Damn, trying to be in between his legs.”
Alvarez continued to explain that as the Seattle Kraken lost in the playoffs and Lewis moved on with other books on her account, Lewis posted three videos about Vince Dunn, a defenseman on the Seattle Kraken, on July 21.
Then, on July 27, Wennberg’s wife, Felicia, posted an Instagram story saying some “crossed the line” about her husband.
“The reason I struggled to navigate This is while i’m all for Female empowerment and especially around sex there has been videos and comments made that has crossed the line of what it means to fancy someone and when it actually sounds pretty predatory and exploiting,” she wrote.
“There seem to be a different threshold of What is considered ok only because the ‘victims’ of peoples desires are male hockey players,” she continued. “I don’t like that double standard.”
Another screenshot Alvarez shares from Felicia’s Instagram story features a comment on one of Lewis’s videos. While Lewis’s comment is blocked out, in the screenshot she is credited as “Creator,” which means it’s her video.
“What doesn’t sit with me is when your desires come with sexual harassment, inappropriate comments and the fact that with the internet we can normalize behavior that would never be ok if we flipped the genders around to a guy doing this to a female athlete,” Felicia wrote. “I mean no hate on the booktook community just a little request for people to think twice about their comments/videos.”
Lewis posted her own screenshots, saying she replied to Felicia’s Instagram story saying she “never meant any harm” and “never messaged him or anyone.”
“I am truly sorry and will delete any and all videos if you’d like,” she wrote. “I’m so confused on what’s going on? I haven’t made kraken videos since the playoffs? I even stopped making videos about him when I found out he was married? I am truly so sorry.”
On July 28, Lewis posted a number of videos addressing the backlash to her “Krack my back” saying, as well as Felicia’s Instagram stories.
“The whole reason why this generation is on TikTok is for entertainment,” she said in one video. “To see my name being dragged with all these false accusations, it’s f***ing — it’s blowing my mind. … I’ve had other celebrities repost my reactions thinking it was funny, their girlfriends, hell, their even moms were sending it to them.”
In another video from the same day, Lewis said she noticed that the Seattle Kraken had unfollowed her, saying, “all because someone literally was just feeding into the whole BookTok thing, ‘Oh, yeah my husband, BookTok loves him’ … now is switching sides and saying, ‘Oh, because of this video from four months ago I’m not a fan, I don’t like it.'”
Lewis also said Felicia never responded to her DMs and said she thought it was “slick” that in the two screenshots Felicia uploaded, only Lewis’s name could be seen.
“Let’s talk about me being an adult and messaging Felicia Wennberg yesterday when I saw her make a story about me and BookTok,” Lewis continued, including a screenshot of her DMs. “You literally kept my name on there, trying to send whoever — you and your little goons — to come after me.”
“Why didn’t you DM me?” Lewis asked, addressing Felicia. “I’d literally be like, ‘Girl, say f***ing less, let’s delete the video.'”
Wennberg himself made a statement on his Instagram story sometime around July 29. It’s not immediately clear whether his post was in solidarity with his wife’s or in response to Lewis’s TikToks.
“Over the last couple of days, me and especially my wife, have been getting lots of criticism about speaking up on sexually harassment on TikTok,” he wrote. “I’ve been taught to bite my tongue and to leave it instead of making a statement. But it has gone too far for me to stay quiet when people post vile comments on my wife’s instagram and on photos of our child.”
“I’m all for the booktok community to write books and fiction about hockey but the aggressive language about real life players is too much,” he continued. “It has turned into daily and weekly comments on our personal social media.”
One comment on Felicia’s Instagram from July 10, on a photo of her holding her and Wennberg’s young son, reads: “you also dwelled into the bs when you called him ‘booktok panty dropper’ stop trying to make a black woman look like a ‘sexual harasser’; to be honest you’re one, you exploited your husband.”
In her most recent Instagram, one person sarcastically wrote, “Imagine dating someone famous and being mad they have fans.”
Kierra Lewis has made multiple videos now where she takes 0 accountability for her content, calls Weeran a "delusional bitch," and seems to think sexual harassment is okay if it's "a joke." This is Weeran's Instagram comments rn. https://t.co/ijQVXVQkci pic.twitter.com/m6tR4AKalo
— marines (@mynameismarines) July 28, 2023
In another post, Felicia apologized that Lewis interpreted her Instagram stories “as a direct attack on her.”
“While the creator is hung up on it being 4 months since she posted the video she and her following seems to be unable to grasp that the video continued to show up in our life on a daily basis,” Felicia explained. “I will continue to post pictures with my incredible husband and call him all the weird, cringey, inside joke nick names I want cause he is MY husband and I know he consent to my wording, my affection and posts.”
Felicia has addressed her comments further in a way she didn’t need to. anyone who still has ill intent towards her or Alex or their family can kick rocks. pic.twitter.com/zln5kgNrSU
— feli wennberg’s defense attorney (@shadyladycakes) July 29, 2023
Rath, the author of Pucking Around, told ESPN she did not endorse any harassment toward the Wennberg family and stood up for the BookTok community not involved in the bullying.
“There’s been all this rhetoric that BookTok has been sexually harassing Alex Wennberg, and that’s not correct. It’s not even about hockey romance readers, either, because 99% of them are just normal people that found a love for the game and a community,” she said. “What we’re having is this very odd situation where a fandom was created around Alex Wennberg and they took it too far.”
Some of Lewis’s followers don’t see it this way. According to some of their comments, they felt the Seattle Kraken “encouraged it and profited from it” and then “did a 180.”
the mob coming from “booktok” to comment on felicia wennberg’s posts and the kraken’s posts are such a good example of the toxicity of fandoms honestly
— male wife collector (@male_wife) July 29, 2023
BookTok and the NHL are by no means the first fandoms to turn toxic.
There are certainly benefits to being part of a fandom, as Lynn Zubernis, a licensed psychologist, writes for Psychology Today. She describes these communities as being great for mental health, exploring identity and even simply taking a break from stressful everyday life. There’s a sense of belonging and acceptance that comes with being part of a group whose members all love the same thing.
“Fandoms are not inherently toxic,” culture writer Brandon Moore explained in an Agents of Fandom article. “Toxic fandoms arise due to negative choices made by people within them.”
In this case, it didn’t help that the Seattle Kraken joined BookTok — as if legitimizing what the fandom was posting in the first place, according to an expert.
Jessica Maddox, an assistant professor of digital media technology at the University of Alabama, told NBC News that “anytime a corporation messes with a fan community in a way they don’t fully understand, you’re creating a scenario in which things can be taken to the next level very quickly.”
“They were rewarding this kind of content creation and feeding the hype and feeding the frenzy,” Maddox added. “Then as soon as it started not going well for them, they dropped the whole situation and pretended that it never happened.”
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The post What is the BookTok drama with NHL player Alex Wennberg and his wife? appeared first on In The Know.
What is the BookTok drama with NHL player Alex Wennberg and his wife?
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