Seattle Kraken's Alex Wennberg Was The Target Of A Bunch Of Egregiously Horny BookTok Users Who Want Him To "Krack Their Back"
Steph Chambers. Getty Images.NBC -- Over the weekend, Alexander Wennberg and his wife, Felicia, took to Instagram to plead with the Kraken fanbase to stop posting sexual comments, calling it harassment. “Enough of sexual harassment, and harassment of our character and our relationship,” the hockey star wrote.
Their public request came amid a rise in social media content surrounding Wennberg and his Kraken teammates, who have become viral heartthrobs on TikTok. Hockey romances have become a popular subgenre within BookTok, a huge community of book lovers on TikTok, and in recent months many have translated their love for these books – romance stories centered around the sport – into an interest in professional hockey.
Videos showing Kraken players doing groin stretches and walking in slow motion gained popularity, with many using a catchphrase, “Krack my back,” to sexualize them. Even the Kraken team leaned into the fervor, inviting creator Kierra Lewis, who is credited for being among the first to cultivate the crossover fandom of hockey and BookTok, to one of their games.
Before we even get started here, clearly we need to do a quick briefing on just what the frick is going on. I'll be honest--I saw this headline over the weekend and the moment I saw the phrase "BookTok", I knew I was in way over my head. But as a guy who almost thought about going to journalism school one time, I knew it was my duty to sink my teeth into this one and do some proper research. So if you're 31-years-old and completely out of the loop with social media these days like I am, then here's the run down.
BookTok is a subgenre on TikTok. I think in it's most basic sense, it's just a bunch of people who like books. Seems pretty harmless, right? Just like an online book club on TikTok. But like most things on the internet, what starts off as something basic and harmless enough eventually devolves into people being aggressively horny. There's literally never been anything on the internet that people don't turn into a sex thing sooner or later. So BookTok then turned into a bunch of people getting all horned up over fictional characters in books. Then I guess what happened from there is there's another subgenre of BookTok that focuses on hockey romance novels. I'm assuming those books are just like 50 Shades Of Grey but the main character goes by "Greysy". And then everybody on BookTok just talks about wanting to fuck that character's brains out.
Is it weird? Absolutely. But I'm not here to judge anybody on what gets them off. If fictional characters in a book does it for you, then do you. Regardless of how strange it may be, it again seems relatively harmless. Where things take a turn in this story is when the horn dogs on BookTok decided to take their thirst from the fictional characters in book to actual players on the ice. And they set their focus on Seattle Kraken forward Alex Wennberg.
Now listen--Alex Wennberg is for sure a certified man rocket. Great hair, strong jawline, beautiful eyes. Total stallion. So I don't fault people for getting a little charged up over him. However…this might qualify as a little more than simply charged up.
This is Kierra Lewis. Apparently she's a big deal in the BookTok community, and that's a phrase I never thought I'd ever say just 24 hours ago. But she has over a million followers on TikTok. So when she's going all out saying she wants Alex Wennberg to assist his teammates in scoring in all 3 of her holes, wanting Alex Wennberg to glide on her, and to Krack her back? Well then all of her minions are going to end up following suit and saying the same shit in the comments of the Kraken's posts on social, Alex Wennberg's posts on social, and even his wife, Felicia's, posts on social.
I don't even want to get into what the reaction would be if the genders were reversed here. Because while the outrage would be out of this world in today's climate, I know that female athletes have been sexually harassed by men for YEARS leading up to this. So the whole "what if this was a man saying this about a female athlete" argument isn't the strongest one to build here in order to stop the harassment. You want to know what IS a great argument, however? The fact that Alex Wennberg and his wife have both come out saying that it makes them uncomfortable and would like it to stop.
Both seem like incredibly appropriate responses and requests to me. Felicia Wennberg says she gets it. She knows her husband is hot. And while she doesn't mind other women finding him to be a total stallion, she just doesn't appreciate when the line gets crossed and has a thousand people DM'ing her husband to Krack their back.
Alex Wennberg defends his wife, says he has not problem taking some funny jokes or comments from time to time, but just doesn't want his child to grow up in a world where every comment under their posts on social media have a bunch of criminally horny BookTok users telling Alex Wennberg to stuff their 5-hole.
Both good, strong responses that don't attack the other side or anything like that, but just want the harassment to stop. What's crazy to me, however, is that the Wennberg's seem to be alone on this one. You would think the Seattle Kraken would come out with something defending one of their players and his family in this situation, especially considering they played a huge roll in all of this.
ESPN -- Last winter, the Kraken's social media team embraced the hockey BookTok community's interest in their players. The Kraken changed their TikTok bio to "Mostly BookTok" and began publishing videos that targeted that audience. Some featured players like Wennberg and defenseman Vince Dunn walking in slow motion before games while wearing business suits, with captions like "when you accidentally become a BookTok account and now that's all you can post."
…Teams like the Chicago Blackhawks dabbled in BookTok social media outreach too, but not to the level of the Kraken. In May, Seattle invited influencer Kierra Lewis -- who has 1.1 million followers on TikTok -- to attend a second-round Stanley Cup playoff game against the Dallas Stars. They flew her to Seattle, provided her with tickets and gifted her a customized Kraken jersey with "BookTok" on the nameplate.
Wait a minute. Did I just read that right? Are you fucking kidding me? The woman from the video above got flown out by the Kraken to a Stanley Cup Playoff game?
They flew her to Seattle, gave her tickets and a jersey, and this was the content she provided? What a bunch of fucking idiots.
I've long held the belief that one of the worst things to ever happen in sports are team social accounts. They're all the worst. But the Seattle Kraken's social team clearly takes the cake on this one. Call it a miscalculation, call it a blunder, call it whatever you want. They literally flew a wildly horny woman out to a game just so she could get herself off along the glass during warmups. That's after the fact that they leaned all the way in on the BookTok shit earlier in the season. There's no coming back from that decision making. But you'd think they could at least try to make good with a statement or anything of their own to defend Alex Wennberg and his family. So far it's just been a bunch of no comments.
ESPN - When reached by ESPN, the Kraken had no comment on the matter, pointing instead to the statements posted by the Wennberg family.
NBC - Representatives for the team did not respond to a request for comment. The NHL did not respond to a request for comment.
Rolling Stone - Neither the Kraken nor Lewis responded to a request for comment.
Tough look for the team there. I get there might be some legal reasons to go silent on this one, but still pretty shitty to basically pimp your players out on social for months and then have nothing to say once it gets out of hand.
At the end of the day, the BookTok users are certainly to blame here for getting way too horny. Lines were crossed and that's a fact. But I really think the biggest scumbags in this entire situation are the Kraken and their social team for doing absolutely everything in their power to feed into it and make it seem like those BookTok users were completely normal in their behavior. Might just want to stick to posting the final scores of games and nothing else.