The rise of “BookTok”: 7 second emo sells books (nytimes)

Another sign of the times: older books getting a resurgence in sales from fans posting emotional reactions on TikTok.

Hmm. It seems that one can quickly change minds (and behavior!) on a population scale with super-short emotional appeal.

The good: Shows that Daniel Kahneman’s “Thinking, Fast and Slow” is an important pillar of modern online technology: emotions and story change more minds than just data. (link is to a blog post on The Undoing Project about Kahneman’s life and work).

The bad: Shows that Nicholas Carr’s book “The Shallows: what the internet is doing to our brains” is also right — we don’t have patience to read long-form fiction, except maybe when TikTok tells us to. (link to my mindfulness blog series, and a review of Carr’s book).

How ironic.

Author: CT Lin

CMIO, UCHealth (Colorado); Professor, University of Colorado School of Medicine

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