There’s a scandal rocking professional ice hockey, and it centres around The Seattle Kraken and their center Alex Wennberg and a TikTok community.
The 28-year-old has been singled out by a wider online audience recently, and his new notoriety has not gone down well with himself or his family.
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But what’s it all about?
The Swedish athlete and his wife Felicia have accused social media users of sexual harassment after he became one of the biggest talking points in TikTok's book community.
Active members of the community, dubbed BookTok, have been using Wennberg as the face of protagonists in their hockey-romance fantasy novels of late.
However, the Wennbergs have claimed that the discourse surrounding the NHL player in the context of romantic fiction has gone too far.
Alex posted a statement about his image being used as BookTok fantasies, writing: “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 [sic] 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."
Writing on social media, Felicia also claimed that the BookTok content featuring “crossed the line” and was “predatory”.
She penned in her Instagram stories: “While I’m all for female empowerment and especially around sex, there have been videos and comments made that have crossed the line of what it means to fancy someone and when it actually sounds pretty predatory and [exploitative].
“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.”
Felicia went on to compare the way her husband had been treated by BookTok to 'sexist catcalling'.
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