First impressions matter, and while your physical appearance can say a lot, so can your bookshelf and the books you have on it. During the pandemic, many individuals appearing on videos chose to sit or stand in front of their collections of books, and the Bookcase Credibility Twitter account started rating the quality of that reading material. A trend took off, and the account now boasts more than 115,000 followers. The term bookcase credibility even appeared in the New York Times article "The New Language of the Office, From al Desko Dining to Zoombies," which explores new lexicon that has emerged as so many people work from home.

So what's the fascination with other people's books? In the Times article "The 'Credibility Bookcase' Is the Quarantine's Hottest Accessory," Amanda Hess explains that "The bookcase offers both a visually pleasing surface and a gesture at intellectual depth." But that doesn't mean you should rearrange your home office to display your books or even stock your shelves with bestsellers. "Treating a book as a purely aesthetic object is often seen as an affront to intellectual credibility," Hess adds. As such, decorate with care.