Breana Newton, a authorized coordinator in Princeton, N.J., who posts repeatedly about books on TikTok, was one of many individuals who responded to Ms. Blalock’s video. “I’m going to point out you bookshelf wealth,” Ms. Newton, 33, says in a video of her personal. “Prepared?”

She then provides viewers a quick tour of her residence, displaying books in all places — on cabinets, in overflow piles right here and there, and strewed throughout the mattress. Absent is the sense that the rooms have been staged, or that the books have been purchased with the consideration of how they’d look on Instagram.

In an interview, Ms. Newton mentioned that she anxious tendencies like bookshelf wealth encourage overconsumption. This yr, she added, she is making an attempt to not purchase any new books.

One other critic of the pattern, Keila Tirado-Leist, mentioned in a response video: “Who does it profit to consistently have to call and qualify and connect wealth to any sort of fashion or home-décor aesthetic?”

Ms. Tirado-Leist, a way of life content material creator in Madison, Wis., likened bookshelf wealth to “quiet luxurious” and “stealth wealth,” kinds which have not too long ago made social media waves.

Nonetheless, she was understanding that what drives a home-décor pattern like this one is a want to create a house that feels, properly, homey. In one other video, she described the concept of layering — that’s, slowly buying items and constructing as much as a completed look, slightly than making an attempt to purchase a bunch of issues suddenly in an effort to chase a pattern.

“Styling a house takes time,” Ms. Tirado-Leist mentioned.

One other TikTok consumer put it extra bluntly in a response to Ms. Blalock’s video: “Bookshelf wealth doesn’t imply you’ve got books. It means you’ve got built-ins.”