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

Time to find even more great Tolkienists
Time to find even more great Tolkienists

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.

The social media have become the most important channel of spreading the word about almost everything including, of course, all things related to J.R.R. Tolkien and Middle-earth. Help me find great active tweeters spreading the word on events, publications, insightful blog posts and more furthering interest in the life and works of JRRT and other interesting related topics. Use the comment section to let me know who I should add to my Ultimate Tolkienist Twitter List.

Ever since I started this blog it was my intention to promote interest in the life and works of J.R.R. Tolkien, author of The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, The Silmarillion and many other stories besides. One thing that is especially important to me is to support your Tolkienist ventures via social media – your society, your regulars’ table, your smial or special interest group: If you do something interesting, entertaining, thoughtful or simply fun related to Tolkien’s invented worlds and his other works I’ll be happy to share it, write about it, interview you… And one of the most important channels obviously is Twitter. So if you are active on Twitter spreading the word on JRRT or know of someone doing just that – help me build the Ultimate Tolkienist Twitter List to let others know about on Follow Friday.

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.

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

Marcel R. Bülles

Marcel R. Bülles is the author of thetolkienist.com, a specialist blog centering on worldwide Tolkien fandom, geekdom and research. He works as a freelance translator, journalist and writer and is the founder of the German Tolkien Society as well as a co-founder to RingCon, Europe's formerly biggest fantasy film convention. You can find him in cafés all over the world sipping an espresso blogging, writing, reading. At one point he was married to an extremely lovely French lady by the nickname of Sauron. Yes, that Sauron. He is also active with the International Tolkien Fellowship on Facebook and the Tolkien Folk on Instagram.