Do no longer help me find great Tolkienists on Twitter (was Revisited: Help me find great Tolkienists on Twitter)

This is one of the posts that has become invalid in the course of time. First published in 2014 when my main account used to be the Macrobee – deleted in 2018 – I was always on the lookout for amazing people on Twitter, my favourite social media space for more than ten years. Then Shmeelon Stopplepus happened. In one of the biggest branding and design disasters in history Twitter has been renamed X and it will never recover from that, given Stopplepus’ past and present. Or to put it differently – it will never be the social networking service it used to be until 2022. It has effectively become a nexus of right-wing wet dreams. As it used to be my favourite online place for many years I will linger on for now and try to share all things Tolkienian but will refrain from the level of interaction I used to have with Twitter. I will keep this piece online as a relic of bygone times, a piece of contemporary history and for transparency reasons.

[If you want to know more about the upkeep of this Twitter list visit Revisited: Help me find great Tolkienists on Twitter - this piece will be changed accordingly but gives you a look behind the curtain how much work went into this.

---

Almost six years ago I shared a post with this blog titled Help me find great Tolkienists on Twitter. Today it feels a bit like the “early days social media”; I had joined on April 26, 2012, that is for @The_Tolkienist account. Before that, in July 2009, I had entered the social media fray with my then account Macrobee (please don’t ask, it is a long story to get that nickname) but realised that the original curation concept for Macrobee did not work out as well as I wished and decided to concentrate on @The_Tolkienist. So in 2012 I opened that account and quite obviously I am still using it today. In fact, it has become my favourite social media channel and that was the reason, back then, that I wanted to create a Twitter list to get fellow Tolkienists together. And this is how The Tolkienists was born. In that blog post of 2014 I happily notified interested readers:

At the time of writing the Tolkienists’ twitter list has 56 members. I hope we’ll soon have more.

And then ages of the world passed. I had continued to add interesting Twitter accounts to the list. The reasoning for me to add someone was with a heavy emphasis on smaller accounts, often run by volunteer-organised Tolkien societies, smials, and special interest groups. Yes, TheOneRing.net is on this list, too, but they certainly do not need the “help” of being on such a list – if I added someone it was to promote their efforts where others would not do this. Community does these things, even if it is only a small thing in a much bigger world. Anyway, in recent weeks I received several suggestions on who to add to the list and when James Tauber with his most excellent Digital Tolkien Project wrote this:

We’ve finally made it! We’re on @The_Tolkienist’s twitter list!

— Digital Tolkien Project (@DigitalTolkien) June 27, 2020

I knew I had to do something about it.

Revisiting the Tolkienist’s Tolkienists’ Twitter List: Basics

On August 8th, 2020, I checked on my list and it had 183 members. I was very happy to see that its membership had tripled since my blog post in 2014 and was looking forward to adding many new ones. I had given a basic idea of who I would add to the list in this answering tweet to James:

I am so sorry – I’ll spend this weekend going through the list (again!) 😁

Minimum requirements: – activity in the last three months – if out of your last 20 tweets only 1 is on #Tolkien, I’ll raise an eyebrow – if you’ve posted a gazillion on #Tolkien before them, I’m fine 😅 — Marcel Aubron-Bülles 🇪🇺 (@The_Tolkienist) June 27, 2020

And then, eleven hours later, the list had shrunk to 114, according to these preferences listed. Now, I am not 100% tough on these ‘rules and regulations’ and when in doubt I kept the account on the list instead of removing them but with many things they were very clear, indeed:

• Inactive since Sept 2019.
• Inactive since Mar 2019.
• Inactive since Sep 2014.
• Inactive since Jan 2017.
• Inactive since Dec 2012.
• inactive since Dec 2016.
• Inactive since Nov 2018.

There were some discernible changes pertaining to the Hobbit film trilogy by Peter Jackson. Either accounts were started shortly before, during, or directly after it – or went inactive on about the same times. The rather short but obvious media frenzy surrounding the December releases of the films are mirrored, at least in a chronological manner, with some of these accounts going inactive. With some life got in the way – work, moving house, changing subjects and/or interests, disinterest in Twitter. In one case a Tolkien Society left Twitter, lost possession of its blog (or simply discontinued it) and fully moved to Facebook where it is incredibly active to this day. I was devastated. From many years in volunteer-run fandom I knew very well that these things happen – some people are incredibly active, become the pillar of a local community, help out and inspire and then one day they basically disappear because life. So there is nothing new to this but I still felt dispirited at the lost opportunites and chances these individuals represent. However, I had promised to update the list and I know there are many wonderful, new members to the community and I will update this post in the next couple of days to show you are out there! So, when I will have published this post I will have started from 114 members to the list. And I will simply reiterate what I said in 2014 *g*

Let people know about great Tolkienists on #FollowFriday

What is Follow Friday? Well, if you want know how not to do it please have a look at this amazing Oatmeal comic strip. Aaron Lee has a pretty good description of how to do it properly: it is about recommending great friends doing something outstandingly interesting and let your followers know about them. And that’s what I would like to do with the Tolkienist every friday because let’s be honest: With so many things happening all over the world it is sometimes difficult to stay up to date! In recent months I have been trying to show as many great people as possible but I think it’d be better to actively support upcoming events, publications, ventures with a Tolkienian link to it – and a Twitter list is a great thing to do just that. Your help is greatly appreciated!

How can you help in building this list?

Easy and simple – use the comment section below to send suggestions you think are great for this list – there is no language barrier, by the way! If you can tell me in English, French or German (or my rather rudimentary) Spanish in a line or two why someone should be included I’ll do so! However, please keep in mind this list is supposed to help those who can use the help – societies, smials, individual bloggers, writers. Weta Workshop are amazing but they don’t really need our help in spreading the word 🙂 Please do keep in mind I reserve the right not to include someone into the list without explanation. Right now I can’t think of anyone off the top of my hat but there is always a lot of work involved with such social media ventures and I can’t take the extra time to explain why someone doesn’t get to be on the list.