In 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in a global health crisis, the Cottagecore aesthetic gained popularity. This online aesthetic community is inspired by cottage living and draws inspiration from the pastoral – but is also concerned with social issues related to for example colonialism or capitalism. The thesis investigates how the aesthetic community represents “the good life” (Lauren Berlant, 2011; Sara Ahmed 2010), while simultaneously navigating flows of precarity in the contemporary Western neoliberal society and asks if its representation is conformist or subversive. The analysis is conducted by applying a multimodal textual analysis on content on TikTok, focusing on five different Cottagecore influencers and a total of nine videos. The textual analysis’ theoretical framework is within the field of theories on precarity and critical affect studies. It consists of Isabell Lorey’s (2015) “three dimensions of precarity”, Lauren Berlant’s (2011) theories on “cruel optimism”, “the good life” and “the impasse”, and Sara Ahmed’s (2010) theories on “the good life” and happiness. The analysis is structured around four different forms of attachments that are identified in the Cottagecore content: Attachments to being a Cottagecore influencer, Attachments to place, Attachments to clothing and Attachments to romanticization. The most prominent findings of the analysis are that the Cottagecore idea of “the good life” emphasises the dream of the cottage, which is an attachment to a future object – but also the romanticizing of life as an attachment to objects of the present. The study concludes that the romanticization of life can be interpreted as subversive, as it enables fully absorbing the present and its many possibilities, but the attachments also show complexities. Suggestions of further research are interviewing individuals from the community and to conduct research on intersections of the Cottagecore community. 

The thesis focuses on bookfluencers – content creators that create content about books

and reading. The study explores how they perceive the gifted books they receive from

book publishers and other actors, which they are expected to create content about –

often unpaid. The aim of the thesis is to investigate the aspirations behind

bookfluencers’ content about gifted books and their experiences of reading them.

Furthermore, it explores unpaid labour on social media platforms and attachment to art

as an aspiration. How do bookfluencers on social media differ from literary critics in

traditional media? The study’s methodology is semi-structured interviews with 10

Swedish bookfluencers. The theoretical framework consists of the concepts of

“affective labor” (Hardt, 1999, p. 89; Hardt & Negri, 2004, p. 108), “aspirational

labour” (Duffy, 2015, p. 443), “attunement” (Felski, 2020, p. 41) and “work-net”

(Felski, 2020, p. 144). The analysis emphasizes on the labour behind creating content

about gifted books, how bookfluencers position themselves and their content in relation

to literary criticism, and the processes of attunement to books that they are gifted. Main

findings are that seeing reading as an aspiration behind content gives bookfluencers a

certain power to negotiate, despite collaborators’ demands. Defining themselves as

book recommenders rather than literary critics may imply other expectations on their

labour. Further, expectations from collaborators can affect bookfluencers’ reading

experiences: the need to adapt their content to the book market can be seen as a form of

affective labour. In the last section, the thesis discusses different processes that affect

the reading experience of a gifted book, and how bookfluencers imagine getting paid for

their work in the future. It problematizes how social media platforms do not pay their

content creators. Thus, possible future research topics can explore bookfluencers’

relations to social media platforms and book streaming platforms further.