On performative readers, stolen privacy, and the vanishing intimacy of reading in public

Not long ago, reading on the subway felt like slipping into a private room, even while surrounded by strangers. With the rise of performative readers and Instagram-friendly accounts like Hot Dudes Reading, the once-private act of reading in public now feels strangely intimate. Reading in Public is yet another account designed to romanticize what it frames as a lost art, salvaging quiet moments from the chaos of technology. But at times, it feels less like an homage and more like an intrusion.

One photo shows a boy reading on what looks like a school bus. Another, a woman pressed to the far edge of a booth, shoulder to the wall, wearing earphones. Her face is buried in her book. Every signal indicates that she wants to be alone.

These pages have had the opposite effect for many readers, one of them being me. They unsettle me. They make me wonder if I will ever be the subject if I stop being on alert. I scroll on my feed and find photos taken in metro seats, on park benches, in town squares. The comment sections rarely dwell on the reader’s focus or presence. Instead, they pick apart the book covers as though it were indicative of good taste, and debates spark on whether the subject is a “true reader.”

Reading in public felt like the last pocket of privacy in an otherwise exposed world. Now, it feels vulnerable.

I feel as exposed as when I cry during my commute home after a long day, unwilling to wait until I am back in my apartment. It does not happen often, but when it does, I feel more integrated into society than I ever have, because there’s always someone looking. It feels less like being seen and more like being watched.

Now, if I know I will be reading outside the house, I choose my Kindle over a physical book. It is not comfort so much as a shield, as if my reading choice were an inherent aspect of my character that strangers need to decipher. It is a small issue, hardly a tragedy, but something that once grounded me has started to feel like a performance. And being a woman already comes with its own performances and expectations.

We often question why life as we know it has diminished in public spaces, yet deny our own active role in the outcome. We state that teenagers do not wander around the streets anymore, but if they do, we assume it is trouble. We lament the loss of third spaces, but avoid spending money in them, once affordable and free from the pressure to be Instagram-worthy. We judge society as if it were its own entity, apart from ourselves, and blame the “chronically online” culture for keeping us indoors. But it is the erosion of privacy that has made us cautious and hyper-aware, no matter what we do. 

In 2017, the UK-based Online Spy Shop surveyed 1,000 adults and found that one in four had secretly photographed a stranger and shared it online, most often on social media. Nearly 40 percent admitted to doing it on public transport. And while many defended it as a way to document criminal behavior, they state that “22 percent confessed to feeling anxious about being photographed without their consent.”

From the UK to the US, we are learning the gap between what’s legal and what’s moral. The ACLU of Southern California says, “taking photographs of things that are plainly visible from public spaces is a constitutional right.”

We notice how we look sitting in a café and what we wear to the supermarket if it is two blocks away. We postpone plans if our appearance is not up to par with our own standards. And it is not out of respect for appearances, it is because it might land us on someone’s feed. Judgment is everywhere: within us, around us, and now online for engagement. 

The act of reading in personal spaces remains a private practice, but the meaning of “privacy” has simply changed. As author Alberto Manguel states, “To read is to withdraw. To make the world disappear,” so let reading remain a quiet corner of a bustling city or a slow-paced town. Let rest and moments of leisure exist in public without becoming content. Do not let reading become what every leisurely activity has turned into.

It should never have been deemed a performance, and it should continue to be unspectacular. It should, at the very least, remain one of the last private things we do in public.