POLITICS OF TASTE

Let’s set the scene: you’re at a Third Wave coffee shop, the lighting is immaculate, your oat milk latte is overpriced, and you’ve just pulled a crisp paperback out of a canvas tote bag to snap a photo for your story. It looks great, but then you feel it, the spiritual “bombastic side-eye” from the universe, the lingering accusation that you are performing intellect rather than possessing it. Welcome to the discourse, bestie. We are currently living through what many are calling the “Return of the Literary Snob” – a pushback against BookTok, “sad beige” bookshelves, and the commodification of reading. But here is the hot take that a lot of people miss while they’re busy fighting in the Goodreads comment section: The Literary Snob didn’t “return.” They never left. They just swapped their monocle for a burner Twitter account.

There is a pervasive, romanticized narrative right now that implies “back in the day,” people read purely for the enrichment of the soul, and that social media has ruined the sanctity of literature by turning it into an aesthetic. 

Let’s do a quick vibe check on history, because if you think gatekeeping is a modern invention created by algorithmic trends, you are sorely mistaken. In the 18th and 19th centuries, the “Literary Snobs” were absolutely losing their minds over the rise of the novel. The very books we now assign as high-brow homework, Jane Austen, the Brontës, Dickens, were once considered “trashy” pop culture. Scholarly dudes in smoking jackets genuinely believed that reading novels would rot the brains of young women and make them hysterical. It’s the exact same energy as the 40-year-old critic complaining about teenage girls reading Colleen Hoover today. The medium changes, but the elitism stays the same; the snobs of 1850 were gatekeeping the concept of fiction itself, claiming that if you weren’t reading philosophy or sermons, you weren’t “really” reading.

So, how does this ancient tradition of hater-ation manifest today? It’s evolved, disguising itself as a concern for “culture.” It’s the person who says audiobooks “don’t count” (ableist, much?), or the disdain for color-coordinated bookshelves. It’s the idea that if you bought a book because the cover matched your outfit, you are personally responsible for the downfall of Western civilization. We see it in the way genres are policed, where Literary Fiction is treated as the “Main Character” while Romance, Sci-Fi, and YA are treated like NPCs. But here is the POV that the snobs miss: aesthetics have always been part of the reading experience. In the 1920s, having a well-stocked library was a massive status symbol, a flex to show your guests you were wealthy and educated. People bought leather-bound sets by the yard just to fill shelves. Today, we post a “Book Haul” reel on Instagram. It is literally the same behavior, just digitized.

Here is the irony that brings me the most joy: the snobs actually need the “aesthetic” readers. The publishing industry, the machine that prints the high-brow, obscure literary fiction that the snobs worship, is largely funded by the “cringe” bestsellers they hate. Those viral BookTok sensations and the aesthetic girlies buying five special editions of the same fantasy series are keeping the lights on at the publishing houses. They are the economic engine allowing the niche, experimental stuff to exist. So, when a literary snob looks down on “consumerist reading culture,” they are biting the hand that feeds their very specific taste.

Let’s stop pretending that “performative reading” is a new sin or that we are living in some dystopian decline of intellect. Humans are social creatures; we like to share what we love, we like things to look pretty, and we like to belong to a tribe, whether that tribe is “Dark Academia” or “Smutty Rom-Com.” Gatekeeping reading is the antithesis of what books are supposed to do. Books are empathy machines. If you’re using them to make yourself feel superior to a teenager reading a vampire novel, you missed the plot entirely. So, buy the book because the cover is pretty. Read the “trashy” bestseller. Romanticize your life. If the Victorian snobs couldn’t stop the rise of the novel, the modern snobs certainly can’t stop the rise of the reader. Read what you want… the snobs are just mad they aren’t having as much fun as us.