The Seattle Kraken have taken down videos aimed at a hockey community on TikTok after criticism by Alex Wennberg and his wife of objectification and users’ “predatory” comments, according to ESPN and The Hockey News on Tuesday.
The videos, aimed at the “#BookTok” community on TikTok that focuses on hockey romance novels, were leaning into the appeal for some in that subset of substituting fictional characters for real NHL players (called “face claiming”). Wennberg, 28, a forward with the Kraken, was one of those players.
After months of initially embracing the inclusion, the Wennbergs recently felt the content “crossed the line of what it means to fancy someone and when it actually sounds pretty predatory and exploiting,” according to a social media post by Felicia Wennberg.
“What doesn’t sit with me is when your desires come with sexual harassment, inappropriate comments and the fact that, with the Internet, we can normalize behavior that would never be OK if we flipped the genders around to a guy doing this to a female athlete,” Felicia Wennberg wrote.
The comments in the subset eventually included racier language in posts and, at one point, on a photo of the Wennbergs’ child.
“I’ve been taught to bite my tongue and to leave it instead of making a statement. But it has gone too far for me to stay quiet when people post vile comments on my wife’s Instagram and on photos of our child,” Alex Wennberg stated on social media. “I’m all for the BookTok community to write books and fiction about hockey, but the aggressive language about real-life players is too much. … This is not something we support or want our child to grow up with. All we ask for is a little respect and common sense regarding moving forward. … Enough of sexual harassment, and harassment of our character and our relationship.”
As of Monday, the Kraken had removed or archived any association with the BookTok subset on their social media accounts.
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