Man Carrying Thing argues that Joomi Kim’s anti-woke book video is poorly reasoned, vaguely defined, and based on reading marketing copy instead of books. Here is where several of those arguments break down.
THE TITLE CLAIM: “The Rise of Woke Books – a Response”
Man Carrying Thing correctly shows that Kim defines “woke” inconsistently and judges books she has not read. But his own response accepts the premise that contemporary literary fiction is mostly bad without doing the work to show it isn’t.
The critique lands on Kim’s framing but leaves the underlying claim, that publishing is producing less quality, largely unchallenged.
VIDEO SCORECARD
This video uses a classic move: take a genuinely weak target, land clean hits on it, then let the emotional momentum carry you past the points you never actually proved.
Watch the original video, then read why the argument doesn’t hold up.
This is the video being critiqued. Watch it to judge the quotes for yourself.
HOW TO READ THIS TABLE
- Completely Unfounded The conclusion is logically invalid regardless of whether the facts are true.
- Deliberately Misleading The facts cited are real but are used to create a false impression.
- Exaggerated There is truth here but the conclusion goes further than the evidence allows.
THE QUICK VERDICT
| Argument Made | Fallacy Used | Verdict |
|---|---|---|
| Genre fiction like thrillers and romances is just cheap entertainment, not real literature | Overgeneralization (treating a partial pattern as a universal rule) | Exaggerated |
| Kim’s woke book list proves publishers are pushing an agenda on readers | Strawman Fallacy (misrepresenting the other side’s argument) | Completely Unfounded |
| Five out of six National Book Award winners being woke proves a publishing problem | Cherry-Picking (picking only the examples that support the point) | Deliberately Misleading |
| Kim’s complaint about Sally Rooney shows she can’t imagine left-leaning writers making non-preachy art | Misleading Framing (true facts arranged to create a false impression) | Exaggerated |
| Publishers are a business and woke marketing just targets a willing audience, so there’s no agenda | Single-Cause Fallacy (one cause assigned to something with many causes) | Exaggerated |
| The upmarket fiction table is not highbrow literature, so Kim’s complaint is misdirected | Equivocation (switching the meaning of a word mid-argument) | Exaggerated |
| MFA culture limits voices in publishing, but writers shouldn’t be blamed personally | Misleading Framing (true facts arranged to create a false impression) | Exaggerated |
Man Carrying Thing responds to Joomi Kim’s viral video, “Why I hate most contemporary novels,” which argues that award-winning literary fiction has become dominated by woke themes and college-educated liberal ideology. Kim’s video covers bad writing, Sally Rooney, National Book Award winners, and MFA culture. Man Carrying Thing picks apart Kim’s logic, fact-checks her book list, and pushes back on the anti-woke framing.
The video makes some genuinely strong moves. Man Carrying Thing reads one of the books Kim dismisses from her description alone, actually finding it mediocre but not for ideological reasons. He points out books Kim ignored on the same “woke table” that had nothing to do with identity politics. These are fair, grounded critiques.
But a few of the core arguments don’t prove what they claim to prove. And those gaps matter.
[[2:05]] Genre fiction deserves respect, but the point goes further than it should
“Are the works of Dashell Hammett and Raymond Chandler just cheap thrillers? Is Lonesome Dove a book everyone expects to be bad? Some of the most impressive writers today work in genre fiction.”
Man Carrying Thing, 2:11
FALLACY DETECTED
Treating a partial pattern as a universal rule
(Overgeneralization)
This fallacy takes a few strong examples and uses them to make a broad claim about a whole category.
How it appears here: Man Carrying Thing cites Hammett, Chandler, and S.A. Cosby to argue Kim is wrong to dismiss genre fiction. But Kim was making a narrow claim about books she excludes from her critique. Proving that great genre fiction exists doesn’t prove her framing was wrong. It proves exceptions exist.
Man Carrying Thing is right that genre fiction contains serious literary work. The examples are well chosen. Hammett’s prose influenced hard-boiled fiction for decades. S.A. Cosby is genuinely excellent.
But Kim’s actual claim was that she wasn’t talking about genre books at all. She was scoping her complaint to award-winning literary fiction. Man Carrying Thing is rebutting a position Kim explicitly carved out of her argument.
This matters because it sets up Man Carrying Thing as more generous than Kim, without actually landing a point against Kim’s thesis. The concession costs him nothing to make.
Bottom line: great genre fiction exists. That doesn’t show Kim’s definition of the target was wrong. She wasn’t criticizing genre books.
[[5:21]] Kim said books are being “pushed on us” and Man Carrying Thing treats this as the real claim
“All right. So this is a pretty significant claim that these gay books are being pushed on us.”
Man Carrying Thing, 5:21
FALLACY DETECTED
Misrepresenting the other side’s argument
(Strawman Fallacy)
A strawman takes the weakest version of someone’s argument and attacks that instead of what they actually said.
How it appears here: Kim said books with LGBTQ themes make up a higher percentage than she’d expect. Man Carrying Thing locks onto “pushed on us” as if it’s a conspiracy claim. But Kim’s actual point, that identity themes dominate display tables, is a claim about publishing priorities, not a claim about a coordinated agenda. The stronger version of Kim’s argument gets dropped.
Man Carrying Thing does usefully show that Kim’s “woke” definition is inconsistent. She counts a queer love story as woke, but not a book with a gay protagonist because “the gay thing doesn’t seem like a big factor.” That inconsistency is real and it’s a fair hit.
But by framing Kim’s concern as a conspiracy theory about “big woke book,” Man Carrying Thing sidesteps the narrower, testable version of her claim. Is LGBTQ+ content overrepresented in promoted new releases relative to its share of published fiction? That question goes unasked.
You can believe Kim’s framing is sloppy without believing her observation is false. The video never checks.
Bottom line: Kim’s book-counting method is weak. That doesn’t prove her underlying observation about what gets promoted is wrong.
[[12:34]] The National Book Award check is dismissed without a serious alternative
“Five out of the six were explicitly woke themed. Did she read the books? Oh, no.”
Man Carrying Thing, 12:47
FALLACY DETECTED
Picking only the examples that support the point
(Cherry-Picking / Selective Evidence)
This fallacy focuses only on the evidence that supports one side, ignoring evidence that doesn’t.
How it appears here: Man Carrying Thing correctly notes Kim didn’t read the books. But then he also hasn’t read most of them. He calls out the method as bad, then uses the same method himself: reading descriptions to argue the books are more interesting than Kim says. He picks the most defensible books on the list and ignores the ones that might support Kim’s point.
Man Carrying Thing makes a legitimate observation. Kim judges books she hasn’t read by their marketing copy, then declares them woke. That’s not a serious literary argument.
But Man Carrying Thing also quotes literary critic William H. Gass’s 1985 essay to dismiss literary prizes in general, then uses the same prize list as evidence that interesting books are being awarded. He can’t have it both ways. Either the National Book Award reflects genuine quality, in which case the list is worth examining seriously, or the prize reflects “popular taste,” in which case it proves nothing about what’s actually being published.
He also admits he hasn’t read *James* by Percival Everett, one of the most prominent books on the list. His own critique is that Kim judges unread books. He does the same.
Bottom line: Kim’s method is bad. But dismissing the bad method doesn’t answer whether the pattern she noticed in the prize list is real.
[[19:45]] The charge that Kim can’t imagine non-preachy left-wing art overstates what Kim said
“It just seems to me that Joomi wouldn’t mind a didactic novel as long as the message the novel preaches is conservative. I find didacticism annoying from every angle.”
Man Carrying Thing, 18:42
FALLACY DETECTED
True facts arranged to create a false impression
(Misleading Framing)
This fallacy uses accurate observations to imply a conclusion the evidence doesn’t fully support.
How it appears here: Man Carrying Thing implies Kim would welcome a conservative didactic novel. But Kim never says that. She says the problem is writers confined to a narrow worldview. Man Carrying Thing reads in a motive Kim didn’t state. That’s a reasonable suspicion, but it’s presented as a conclusion.
Man Carrying Thing’s point about Torrey Peters is genuinely strong. He’s read Peters’ work. He knows the book is thorny and unsentimental about trans experience. Kim dismisses it based on the phrase “pushes the limits of trans writing” in a description. That’s a fair call-out.
But the move from “Kim dismisses left-wing books based on identity content” to “Kim secretly wants right-wing preaching” is a jump. Kim’s stated position is that she wants books that question assumptions across the board. Whether she means it or not is another question, but it’s the stated position.
You can reasonably doubt Kim’s sincerity. You can’t treat your doubt as proof.
Bottom line: Kim may hold a double standard. The video assumes she does without proving it.
[[11:51]] “Publishers just want to sell books” explains away a real question
“If publishers could find a way to sell the next big upmarket anti-woke book club book, you know, they would, but it doesn’t make sense to do that.”
Man Carrying Thing, 11:44
FALLACY DETECTED
One cause assigned to something with many causes
(Single-Cause Fallacy)
This fallacy picks one explanation for something that has several causes working together.
How it appears here: Man Carrying Thing says publishers promote woke-coded books because it sells to the audience already buying literary fiction. That’s a real dynamic. But it doesn’t explain acquisition, prize culture, MFA pipeline, or editorial taste at big houses. Market demand is one factor. It’s not the whole story.
The argument that publishing is just a business and book tables reflect their audience is accurate as far as it goes. The “Read with Jenna” crowd is real and publishers serve them. Man Carrying Thing is right that there’s no grand conspiracy.
But earlier in the same video, he notes that small presses like Fitzcarraldo publish challenging fiction that isn’t catering to book-club tastes, and that this fiction shows up at his local bookstore. That suggests market logic doesn’t fully explain what gets published or promoted.
The business argument is used to dismiss Kim’s concern about what’s prioritized. But it only explains the demand side. Who decides what gets the full publisher rollout is a separate question.
Bottom line: publishers do chase markets. That doesn’t prove the market is the only thing shaping what gets published or awarded.
[[11:03]] Calling it “upmarket fiction” doesn’t answer Kim’s concern
“This stuff, the stuff on this table is not highbrow literature. This is by and large upmarket fiction, aka book club fiction.”
Man Carrying Thing, 11:11
FALLACY DETECTED
Switching the meaning of a word mid-argument
(Equivocation)
This fallacy quietly changes what a key word means to make an argument work.
How it appears here: Kim said award-winning literary fiction is bad. Man Carrying Thing responds by saying the books on the table aren’t highbrow, they’re “upmarket fiction.” But Kim’s complaint included the National Book Award winners, which are not book-club fiction. The category swap lets Man Carrying Thing dodge the harder part of Kim’s argument.
The distinction between “upmarket fiction” and “highbrow literary fiction” is real and worth making. Man Carrying Thing is correct that the Barnes & Noble new-release table is not the same as the avant-garde literary tradition. These are different publishing tiers.
But Kim’s complaint explicitly included National Book Award finalists and Pulitzer winners, not just Barnes & Noble display tables. Sorting the table books into a lower category doesn’t address what Kim said about prize culture.
The relabeling moves the goalposts. Kim said the highbrow tier is bad. Man Carrying Thing answers: the table books aren’t really highbrow. That’s a non-answer to the original claim.
Bottom line: the upmarket/highbrow distinction is real. It doesn’t address what Kim said about prizes and award culture.
[[16:19]] Blaming economic conditions for the homogeneity of literary voices is incomplete
“It’s no wonder why typically the most privileged, the already wealthy, have the free time and flexibility to pursue the arts.”
Man Carrying Thing, 16:03
FALLACY DETECTED
True facts arranged to create a false impression
(Misleading Framing)
This fallacy uses accurate observations to imply a conclusion the evidence doesn’t fully support.
How it appears here: Man Carrying Thing says economic privilege explains why literary voices skew toward a narrow worldview. That’s partly true. But it implies that if publishing were more economically diverse, the ideological narrowness would disappear. That leap isn’t supported. Economic diversity and ideological diversity are not the same thing.
The point about economic barriers to pursuing writing is fair. MFA programs cost money. The people who can afford to write literary novels for years without income tend to come from a particular class. This does shape the field.
But Man Carrying Thing uses this to deflect from the writers themselves, saying “you can’t always blame the writers.” That move lets him agree with Kim’s observation while denying any individual responsibility. It explains the problem without identifying a mechanism for change.
Kim’s source video actually makes a similar point about MFA culture and writers being confined to small worlds. Man Carrying Thing agrees with her here but frames it as a rebuttal.
Bottom line: economic barriers shape who becomes a published writer. That explains how the narrowness happens. It doesn’t excuse the quality problems Kim identifies.
To Be Fair
FAIR POINT
Kim judges books she hasn’t read based on marketing copy
Man Carrying Thing actually reads one of the “woke” books from Kim’s table, Greenwich by Kate Brod, and gives it an honest mixed review. He’s right that Kim’s method of reading back-cover blurbs to declare a book woke or not is not literary criticism. It’s pattern-matching on keywords.
FAIR POINT
Kim ignores several non-identity-themed books on the same table
Man Carrying Thing points out that the very same Barnes & Noble table Kim uses as proof of woke dominance also includes new work by John Sayles, Dan Chaon, and Jonathan Lethem, none of which are identity-coded. Kim didn’t mention these. That selective framing is a real problem in Kim’s video.
SOURCE FAIR POINT
The past had just as much slop, we only remember the good stuff
Joomi Kim, the source video creator, makes the honest observation that the classics we compare modern books to are survivors. The bad books of 1920 are forgotten. This is a real epistemic problem with all “golden age” arguments about literary quality, and Man Carrying Thing agrees with it.
Man Carrying Thing’s main claim is that Joomi Kim’s video mistakes a vague feeling about identity themes in publishing for a real argument about literary quality. That critique is fair. Kim does not define wokeness. She does judge books by their covers. She does inconsistently apply the label.
But Man Carrying Thing’s own response accepts one of Kim’s core premises without challenge: that contemporary literary fiction is mostly bad. He says so himself early in the video, agreeing that bookstore tables are full of books that aren’t very challenging. He then spends most of the video correcting Kim’s framing rather than asking whether the premise itself is wrong.
The stronger move would be to ask: compared to what? If the Pulitzer Prize overlooked Gravity’s Rainbow in 1974, and literary prizes have always been bad predictors of quality, then the prize list being imperfect now isn’t evidence of a new woke problem. It’s evidence of a permanent institutional problem. That’s a much more interesting argument. The video gets close to it with the William H. Gass quote, then walks away.
Man Carrying Thing also shares Kim’s complaint that writers in MFA bubbles write narrow, insular fiction. He shares her frustration that contemporary novels don’t grapple with hyperpartisanship, economic precarity, or the fall of American empire. These are Kim’s complaints too, minus the word “woke.” The disagreement is thinner than the video suggests.
WHAT THE VIDEO LEFT OUT
- Kim’s actual reading list contradicts the thesis. Kim mentions loving Anna Karenina, Pride and Prejudice, and Crime and Punishment, books about adultery, class anxiety, and murder written by writers with strong political views, which undermines the claim that writers with ideologies produce bad fiction.
- The #OwnVoices trend Man Carrying Thing mentions has already reversed. He says the neurotic policing of who could write what “has fallen by the wayside”, but never asks whether that means the woke homogeneity Kim describes is already receding on its own.
- Small presses are doing exactly what both creators want. Man Carrying Thing name-drops Fitzcarraldo and Donkey Archive as publishing challenging, non-commercial fiction, but never asks why neither creator engages with that tier of publishing instead of debating Barnes & Noble tables.
- The “college-educated liberal” bubble applies to conservative literary critics too. Almost every person in this discourse, Kim, Man Carrying Thing, the authors they cite, is university-educated. The bubble critique applies across the conversation, not just to the writers being criticized.
- Kim’s source video makes the same literary quality argument Man Carrying Thing does. Kim says she wants writing that shows “fresh perspectives” and questions assumptions. Man Carrying Thing says the same thing. Their actual disagreement is about whether wokeness is the cause, not about what good literature looks like.
- Upmarket fiction has always been ideologically coded. The “women’s book club” tier Kim and Man Carrying Thing both dismiss has historically reflected whatever the educated middle class valued, temperance novels, inspirational religious fiction, second-wave feminist messaging. The current coding isn’t new.
- Neither creator names a contemporary novel they think is excellent. Man Carrying Thing mentions Torrey Peters and a Tony Tulathimutte short story collection, but never makes a full case for any recent novel being genuinely great. Without a positive example, the “contemporary fiction is bad” premise floats untested on both sides.
The Bottom Line
This video used these logical fallacies to try to make you believe that Joomy Kim’s anti-woke book critique is thoroughly wrong:
- Treating strong exceptions as if they disprove a general claim (genre fiction examples)
- Misrepresenting the source’s argument as a conspiracy theory about “big woke book”
- Picking only the most defensible National Book Award books and calling the list refuted
- Using “publishers chase markets” as if it explains everything about what gets published and promoted
- Relabeling book-table fiction as “upmarket” to dodge Kim’s actual argument about prize culture
- Implying Kim wants conservative preaching without proving she said or believes that
- Using economic explanations to shift responsibility away from individual writers and publishers
What to listen for next time: when a response video agrees with its target’s premise, that literary quality is declining, that MFA culture narrows voices, that writers write in bubbles, but still frames itself as a full rebuttal, notice what’s actually being contested. Man Carrying Thing and Joomi Kim want the same thing from contemporary fiction. The fight is over which word to blame. That’s a much smaller disagreement than either video makes it look.
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