BookTokers can no longer turn to Seattle Kraken’s social media pages for their fill of thirsty content about the pro athletes.
The NHL team recently scrubbed its TikTok profile of all of its steamy videos of its players — which was inspired by romance readers’ fandom — after athlete Alex Wennberg and his wife, Felicia Wennberg, slammed the online comments as harassment.
“So I’ve joked before and called my husband booktooks [sic] w*nkb*nk and honestly did not mind,” Felicia, who married the 28-year-old NHL star in August 2022, wrote via her Instagram Story late last month. “I always thought Alex was the most beautiful person in the world and that it just seems the world finally caught up to it. The reason I struggled to navigate this — while I’m all for female empowerment and especially around sex — there has been videos and comments made that has crossed the line of what it means to fancy someone and when it actually sounds pretty predatory and exploiting.”
The onslaught of hockey-set romance novels (such as Hannah Grace’s Icebreaker and Helena Hunting’s Pucked) soon sparked a trend among TikTok’s community of book readers, where users even compared their favorite “book boyfriends” to real-life athletes. According to Felicia, influencers have taken their fandom of Alex and his teammates too far after they started chanting “Krack my back” — a play on the sexual innuendo “break my back” — at games.
“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 — who welcomed son Rio in September 2021 with Alex — added in her message.
Alex later released his own statement two days later, calling out the “aggressive language” that social media users were using to describe him and his teammates. “It has turned into daily and weekly comments on our personal social media,” he wrote. “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 moving forward. We can all take a joke and funny comments but when it turns personal and into something bigger that effects our family, we need to tell you that we’ve had enough. Enough of sexual harassment, and harassment of our character and our relationship.”
Felicia had specifically called out TikToker Kierra Lewis for her comments about Alex, likening her thirsty videos to sexual harassment. Lewis, 27, has since denied the allegations. Lewis claimed in a Saturday, July 29, statement that her posts — and nicknaming Alex “Mr. Pantydropper” — were solely meant to be jokes.
“Once I saw her post, I IMMEDIATELY DM’ed her apologizing and offered a solution of me deleting and ALL videos that mention Alex Wennberg. No response. Yesterday, I get home to find out that Seattle Kracken had unfollowed me and deleted all their ‘thirst trap’ videos,” Lewis claimed, noting that the team had previously gifted her a personalized jersey and invited her to a game.
Lewis had started posting humorous videos about her attraction to the Kraken’s teammates four months earlier — often in reaction to the squad’s own “BookTok” clips.
