The BookTok controversy with Seattle Kraken hockey player Alex Wennberg, explained

2025-04-27 12:32:09admin

TikTok's drama of the moment is truly a doozy.

For the uninformed, the combination of BookTok and hockey might sound like a Mad Libs. But these two cultural forces have become thoroughly intertwined as of late, spawning a controversy that touches on fandom, sexual harassment, and the responsibility of creators.

Why does BookTok love hockey?

BookTok is a huge community — the tag boasts more than 162 billion views — that contains a number of smaller groupings focusing on specific genres or styles. One subset devotes themselves to smutty romance novels, including the surprisingly popular subgenre of steamy books about hockey players. These novels have titles like Trying to Score, Pucking Around, and Empty Net. In quite the crossover event, hockey smut enthusiasts have transferred their love of the novels to real-life hockey teams.Fans make videos fan-casting players as fictional characters in the books. Seeking even further immersion in all things hockey, some ended up becoming hockey fans in real life.

Here's where the Seattle Kraken come in. Last year, the NHL team's TikTok embraced BookTok, and started posting content aimed at that audience. One of its earliest videos mentioning BookTok posted by the team featured Alex Wennberg drinking water it read, "what is booktok and why do they like wenny so much?"

The Swedish center became a sensation, and the subject of major thirst in the hockey x BookTok community. The Kraken TikTok account fed into the obsession by posting videos of Wennberg geared towards romance fans and changed its bio to "mostly booktok." It also engaged with fans by commenting on their Kraken videos.

Mashable Top Stories Stay connected with the hottest stories of the day and the latest entertainment news. Sign up for Mashable's Top Stories newsletter By clicking Sign Me Up, you confirm you are 16+ and agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Thanks for signing up!

Who is Kierra Lewis?

One fervent fan that the Kraken repeatedly engaged with is the popular BookTokker creator Kierra Lewis. Lewis posted incessantly about hockey players and devoted much of her content to making lewd videos about the players. In a since-deleted video about Wennberg, Lewis says, "I may not got five holes, but I've got three and since you're so good at assisting why don't you assist your teammates at scoring in all three of my holes."

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

The team went as far as to pay for her tickets to a Stanley Cup game and gift her with a custom Kraken jersey with BookTok written in place of a last name. At the game she posted a video (also deleted) yelling, "yeah, I like that" while the players did their groin stretches and said "I'd like to be in-between his legs" in reference to Wennberg.

What happened?

Last week Wennberg's wife Felicia made a statement on her Instagram story condemning the sexual harassment of her husband and other hockey players. Earlier, Felicia had played along with BookTok's obsession referring to her husband as "booktok's w*nkb*nk." But now Felicia feels fans have taken things too far. On Friday (July 28) she wrote, "there has been videos and comments made that has crossed the line of what it means to fancy someone." She described the comments as "predatory and exploiting." Later in the post she said, "I feel that women who have experienced catcalling, getting filmed in exposed situations (like a groin stretch at their job) should hold ourselves to a higher standard."