There's an ongoing trend oddly combining the world of BookTok, a popular subsection on TikTok dedicated to discussing books, and hockey. The Seattle Kraken caught wind of the unlikely crossover for a marketing campaign, but the team did not predict that one of its players would be on the receiving end of many lewd comments and endless harassment.
Within the BookTok community is a smaller one dedicated to discussing hockey romance novels. While the books are entirely fictional, fans have taken it upon themselves to liken the main characters of these books to the Kraken centre Alex Wennberg.
The Kraken noticed Wennberg's suddenly burgeoning popularity on BookTok and decided to take part in it and take advantage of the free promotion. The team posted (and subsequently deleted) a video to TikTok with a suited-up Wennberg walking in slow-motion with a caption that read, "When you accidentally become a BookTok account & now that's all you can post."
The post began as harmless fun, but it took a turn for the worst when Wennberg's wife, Felicia Wennberg, posted a series of Instagram stories asking people to tone down the thirsty comments and bouts of sexual harassment.
"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," Felicia Wennberg wrote.
"For someone who wrote my final dissertation on sexual consent and what's crossing a line this has been especially interesting because there seem [sic] to be a different threshold of what is considered ok only because the 'victims' of peoples' desires are male hockey players. I don't like that double standard. I feel that women who have experienced catcalling, getting involuntarily filmed in exposed situations (like a groin stretch at their job) should hold ourselves to a higher standard. You can be sex-positive without exploiting others," she continued.
Alex Wennberg then took to Instagram to voice his disappointment.
"Over the last couple of days, me and especially my wife, have been getting lots of criticism about speaking up on sexually [sic] harassment on TikTok," he wrote. "As someone who's been media trained my whole career I've been taught to bite my tongue and 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. The reason my wife said something and not me is simply she does it better and more bravely than me."
"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. It has turned into daily and weekly comments on our personal social media. This is not something we support or want our child to grow up with. All we ask for is a little respect and common sense moving forward."
Kierra Lewis, a TikToker with over one million followers, responded to Felicia Wennberg's comments and called her out along with the Kraken's marketing team.
Lewis shared a screenshot of her apology to Wennberg but she never responded. She then said centred herself as the victim in this situation because of Wennberg's initial post where she posted a screenshot of one of Lewis' older videos.
Felicia Wennberg then posted another statement and apologized for indirectly making Lewis out to be the main perpetrator of the controversy before doubling down on her unease with people objectifying her husband.
Following the controversy, the Kraken has largely turned away from BookTok content on its social media channels by deleting most of the content attached to the crossover.
