Alex Wennberg and family caught up in social media nightmare

Seattle Kraken forward Alex Wennberg and wife Felicia Wennberg have been the victims of systematic harassment by a group of individuals on the social media app TikTok and, in particular, in a sub-section of TikTok users known as 'BookTok'.

Honestly... as someone who doesn't use TikTok, it's all a bit convoluted to me. But here's the story in a nutshell:

In TikTok there's a community called 'BookTok' where users essentially discuss various novels and break down the characters and plots within. Within this community there's the ultra-niche community of 'hockey romance novel' BookTokers. Still with me? These BookTokers also use something called 'Faceclaiming' where essentially they assign a real life person to a book character. In the case of Wennberg, he was 'faceclaimed' by the community for a particularly sexy character in a book.

From here, things devolved quickly and these 'BookTokers' have jammed up the Kraken's social media feeds and Wennberg's and Mrs. Wennberg's social media feeds with over the top sexual innuendo and borderline harassment.

Finally, things boiled over to the point where Alex and Felicia have had to make statements. They claim that the messages that they're receiving are too sexually charged and are bordering on criminal.

Kraken forward Alex Wennberg, and his wife Felicia, are getting systematically harassed by a group of people on social media website Tiktok because Felicia asked a certain group of users on Tiktok to stop oversexualizing and objectifying her husband on her Instagram. This certain group of users have spent the last three days harassing the Tiktok comment section of the Kraken, and Alex and Felicia’s instagram pages in response.

A post from Felicia:

That post set off a firestorm in the BookTok community with people now coming directly at Felicia.

She clarified her position:

“I really wanted my post to be one statement and be taken for what it was; a request for accountability, respect, boundaries, and for people to educate themselves on sexual harassment, consent, and the double standard I see online.“

“…I understand that people are confused by the timing of my statement but while the creator is hung up on it being 4 months since she posted the video she and her following do not seem to grasp that the video has continued to show up in our lives on a daily basis. We get sent this video and other videos of Alex on a weekly if not daily basis. Every game I’ve been to and talked to fans I get in my head if these are genuine hockey fans or the people who comment that they masturbate with his jersey on. Everyone we meet talks to us about it so it makes it really hard to continue to hope this would calm down on it’s own. While I really want to believe a lot of it is innocent comments, I think the behavior I’ve seen since my post has proven my original point…“

- Felicia Wennberg

That post didn't help cool things down, it only ramped up this toxic community even more prompting Alex himself to address the issue:

“Over the last couple of days, me and especially my wife, have been getting lots of criticism for speaking up about sexual harassment on Tiktok.

As someone who’s been media trained my whole life, I’ve been taught to bite my tongue and leave it instead of making a statement. But it has gone too far for me to stay quiet when people are posting vile comments on my wife’s Instagram and on photos of our child. The reason my wife said something and not me is because she simply does it better and more bravely than me.

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. It has turned into daily and weekly comments on our personal social media. 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.

Thank you for your understanding. “

- Alex Wennberg

I think we can all understand as hockey fans that these BookTokers have crossed the line. It's one thing to cheer on a particular player because you find them attractive, it's quite another to harass them and their family online because you can't get over your obsession. My suggestion: Go outside. Call a friend. Drink a glass of water. Breathe some fresh air. All of those are much more productive and fulfilling things than terrorizing some NHL player's wife because you want to sleep with her husband. Good grief...