The Summer That Broke BookTok
Slate Books
Slate Podcasts
3.8 • 546 Ratings
🗓️ 27 August 2025
⏱️ 41 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On today’s episode, host Candice Lim tells Kate Lindsay about two recent BookTok conventions that went off the rails. While the first convention become known as the “Fyre Fest” of BookTok, the other faced troubling allegations of sexual assault against an employee. Is BookTok or social media to blame for how often attempts to bring a fandom together end up shattering the community apart?
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This podcast is produced by Daisy Rosario, Vic Whitley-Berry, Candice Lim, and Kate Lindsay.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey, I'm Candace Lim. |
| 0:15.0 | And I'm Kate Lindsay. |
| 0:16.5 | And you're listening to I see why am I. |
| 0:18.5 | In case you missed it. |
| 0:20.3 | Slate's podcast about internet culture. And Kate, hey, not to call you out. In fact, I'm proud of you, but I heard from a little bird that you took a bit of like a summer Friday last week, which I think is really cute. I would love to know just from like a coworker perspective. Like, where'd you go? What'd you do? |
| 0:46.9 | Yes, I went to the event of the season, as we're all, we all know, the event of this summer was my sister's wedding. |
| 0:54.8 | She is my younger sister. |
| 0:56.5 | She got married over the weekend. |
| 0:57.7 | It was lovely. |
| 1:06.4 | Most importantly, there was a cat that was on the farm of the venue that she was having the ceremony in. |
| 1:10.5 | And the cat was so friendly and so sweet. |
| 1:11.7 | Let me pick her up. |
| 1:12.6 | Her name is Snowball. |
| 1:16.0 | And that is the highlight of the weekend. |
| 1:17.8 | And I think my sister would understand me saying that. |
| 1:20.4 | Now, Cat came with the venue? |
| 1:21.2 | Yes. |
| 1:24.3 | So apparently Snowball lives on this farm. |
| 1:26.0 | No one owns her. |
| 1:26.4 | Oh. But you can tell that every weekend she just flirts with whoever |
| 1:32.0 | happens to be there, whatever bride and groom and their families, because that cat eats human food. |
| 1:39.9 | We gave her bagels. We gave her crackers. Apparently she ran off with a slice of pizza. I missed that. Someone was feeding her chicken in the reception. She was a whole other guest. We loved her so much. But like, but because this day was like basically what everything and our lives had been leading up to for months. Now that it's over, it's like, |
... |
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