In the past year, TikTok and Instagram have found a new niche aesthetic, being “disgustingly well- read”. After an X user shared her desire to be “disgustingly well-read”.
“I want to be sitting at tables and speaking of books with names that roll off your tongue like an exotic animal’s name,” the woman wrote about her desire to read philosophy and learn cultural theories.
As an avid reader, I, too, lurk in the shadowy underbelly of Bookstagram. Now and then, I browse social media for book recommendations and chime in on the latest goings on within the literary community — a community that is thriving and ever-growing.
Like most things, online, this thirst for knowledge, too, transformed. And the resulting trend was quickly dissected, delved into and declared as “performative” and “elitist”.
Are you ‘disgustingly well-read’?
The choice of the word “disgustingly” is irksome; it diminishes the intent behind the desire to read more.
After trends such as dark academia, goth girl, and sad girl reads, along with books and articles that claim to alter the reader’s brain chemistry, “disgustingly well-read” was supposed to be the balm to the social media chaos; it was meant to make people more aware, knowledgeable and learned.
But the question of what makes one “disgustingly well-read” remains. What is the set number of books that declare any reader to be a “disgustingly well-read”? And who decides which books to read to achieve this aspiration?
According to Instagram how-tos, a person is “disgustingly well-read” if they read the so-called Western classics. Like most social media aesthetics, this, too, follows a set pattern and format, leaving no room for change or alteration.
But when online spaces are filled with similar content—men and women seen reading in Victorian settings, with leather-bound books, perfect lighting and whatnot—reading gets reduced to a mere thumbnail. To an aesthetic rather than a hobby, or as personal improvement.
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Is it a hot take or a sound argument?
Like most social media trends, the “disgustingly well-read” trend, too, is without a doubt problematic, performative, and for some, perfunctory. But lost in the midst of this is a sound argument for self-betterment and an increase in literacy. Sadly, social media did what it does best: it turned a perfectly logical argument and desire into a “hot take”.
Suddenly, the word “disgustingly” matters more than it seems. The word signals excess in a culture that is no longer curious. In an era of curated certainty, it has become an urgent need for people to be knowledgeable about history, reason, and culture. By being well-read, the trend suggests that it will add to one’s personality and overall aura.
Beyond the trend, there is an aspiration to self-educate, to read across subjects, and to broaden one’s horizons.
With the recent rise of the analogue aesthetic, to read is to opt out of algorithms, to be more present.
But credit where credit is due: while it may have started with a rigid format for classifying as “disgustingly well-read”, it also encourages people to read South Asian, Middle-Eastern and Japanese literature once they finish their prescribed social media curriculum.
Even as reels, how-tos and checklists flood one’s social media, it cannot do the actual reading for you.
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Have you got the “disgustingly well-read” curriculum?
The trend around self-education and personal curricula is another limb of the well-read trend. For many adults, creating a curriculum is a redressal of the topics, authors, and works they missed out in schools.
Lately, Instagram and YouTube creators can be seen jotting down their targets to learn a new language, hobby, skill, or read across genres that they wish to master over the next year. The idea behind this is to learn diversely at a pace that does not feel competitive. They are creating their own adult classrooms without the pressure or the judgment.
Most of us in India were schooled in a way that made studying boring and tiring. Everything was a race, one we often lost. We learnt a curriculum that considered reading for pleasure a sin or perhaps lost time that could have been utilised by mathematics. Schools failed to provide an education that extended beyond textbooks and previous year papers; the curriculum trend comes with a hunger to learn.
Whether it’s performative or not, as long as one reads, it is a small step in the fight against our collective depleting attention spans that awards depth over scrolling. A person sitting with a 100-page book instead of looking at their phone is a silent but real choice. What lies beneath is the desire to be less ignorant as the day goes by.
While the “disgustingly well-read” trend may have started as a way of looking intelligent, if it actually makes knowledge and depth fashionable, then so be it. Even if a person is reading trashy Insta-romances or Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar, to know about the Instagram-famous fig tree analogy, it’s a win.
Read the book, post it, don’t post it, let disgust chime in later.
Amrin Rajpal is an alum of ThePrint School of Journalism, currently interning with ThePrint
Views are personal.
(Edited by Insha Jalil Waziri)