The Seattle Kraken have eliminated all their TikTok movies created for the hockey “BookTok” neighborhood after Alex Wennberg and spouse Felicia publicly condemned those that have objectified NHL gamers.
“BookTok” is a neighborhood throughout the in style social media platform TikTok, a gaggle of content material creators who evaluation and promote varied books. Inside that neighborhood, a hockey romance novel group fashioned, and that led followers to start out evaluating NHL gamers to the fiction they have been studying.
The Kraken caught on to the development, and Wennberg and his teammate Vince Dunn have been amongst these seen as real-life counterparts to characters within the books.
Nonetheless, some followers went too far within the eyes of the 28-year-old ahead and his spouse, who took to their very own social media to push again on the content material.
CLICK HERE FOR MORE SPORTS COVERAGE ON FOXNEWS.COM
The Seattle Kraken brand on a jersey throughout a recreation between the Seattle Kraken and Montreal Canadiens Jan. 9, 2023, at Bell Centre in Montreal. (David Kirouac/Icon Sportswire by way of Getty Pictures)
“What does not sit with me is when your needs include sexual harassment, inappropriate feedback and the truth that, with the Web, we are able to normalize habits that might by no means be OK if we flipped the genders round to a man doing this to a feminine athlete,” Felicia Wennberg wrote.
She added that feedback about her husband “crossed the road of what it means to fancy somebody.”
Due to her response — followers identified that Felicia Wennberg joked round about followers’ fixating on her husband prior to now — feedback beneath her social media posts have been aggressive.
That’s when Alex Wennberg stepped in along with his personal assertion on the matter.
STARS HOLD OFF KRAKEN IN GAME 7 TO ADVANCE TO WESTERN CONFERENCE FINALS
“The aggressive language about actual life gamers is an excessive amount of,” he wrote. “It has became day by day and weekly feedback on our private social media. This isn’t one thing we assist or need our youngster to develop up with. All we ask for is slightly respect and customary sense shifting ahead.
“We will all take a joke and humorous feedback, however when it turns private and into one thing larger that results our household, we have to let you know that we have had sufficient. Sufficient of sexual harassment, and harassment of our character and our relationship. Thanks on your understanding.”
An ice resurfacing machine travels close to the Seattle Kraken brand at middle ice earlier than a recreation between the Arizona Coyotes and the Seattle Kraken at Local weather Pledge Area Feb. 9, 2022, in Seattle. (Christopher Mast/NHLI by way of Getty Pictures)
ESPN identified that, as of Monday, all Kraken “BookTok” movies and posts on all social media pages had been archived with hyperlinks to Wennberg movies on TikTok leading to error messages.
Seattle absolutely embraced the development on its TikTok web page final season, even going so far as to have its bio say “Largely BookTok” because it put out a number of movies for the neighborhood.
A lot of these movies have been of gamers strolling in sluggish movement with their pregame enterprise swimsuit apparel and captions referencing BookTok. Whereas it was a success in the neighborhood, it clearly bought too far for the Wennbergs.
BRUINS LEGEND PATRICE BERGERON HAPPY TO BE THE ‘UBER DRIVER FOR THE FAMILY’ IN RETIREMENT
On the opposite aspect of it, the hockey romance novel subcommunity of BookTok hasn’t preferred the notion that has now been created.
“BookTok is a hashtag that is been utilized by a billion customers,” Emily Rath instructed ESPN.
Rath is a hockey romance e book creator whose Jacksonville Rays fictional hockey workforce has been a success within the BookTok neighborhood.
“There’s been all this rhetoric that BookTok has been sexually harassing Alex Wennberg, and that is not right,” Rath added. “It isn’t even about hockey romance readers, both, as a result of 99% of them are simply regular people who discovered a love for the sport and a neighborhood. These books have opened the door [to hockey].
Alex Wennberg of the Seattle Kraken earlier than Recreation 6 of the second spherical of the 2023 Stanley Cup Playoffs towards the Dallas Stars at Local weather Pledge Area Could 13, 2023, in Seattle. (Steph Chambers/Getty Pictures)
“What we’re having is that this very odd state of affairs the place a fandom was created round Alex Wennberg, they usually took it too far. They weren’t treating him like a hockey participant and even like a fictional boyfriend. You simply noticed them sexually fantasizing about him in crass and inappropriate methods in a public discussion board.”
Rath recommended the NHL — there have been different groups concerned within the BookTok development along with the Kraken — was fallacious to feed into the BookTok neighborhood the best way it did.
CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP
“These NHL groups can’t summary their gamers the best way that followers do,” she argued. “They will deal with them like characters in books or deal with them as in the event that they’re fictional after they’re not. However when your individual firm is doing that to you, that is the place I drew the road.”
Rath stated she reached out to Seattle to cease making content material about Wennberg, viewing it as objectifying him. A day later, the Kraken posted a Wennberg TikTok that referenced her remark as a shot again at her.
It took the Wennbergs’ public scrutiny of the content material for the Kraken to wipe away any traces of BookTok from its social media.
