What Was Literary Twitter?: A Guide and Bracket Challenge
What Was Literary Twitter? The BracketOR, WE USED TO HAVE FUN ONLINE
We are gathered here to celebrate the brief, bright, Roman Candle life of Literary Twitter, a mesmerizing and maddening place where the most talented writers used to rub shoulders with the most unbalanced shitposters.
If you’ve ever had to stop a conversation to explain Kidney Gate to a confused loved one or quoted a Joyce Carol Oates banger in a group chat, welcome. This bracket is for you.
Does a version of this community still exist on X, in some corner? Or on Bluesky with the joke scolds, or on Mastodon with the Linux hackers, or on Threads with the voice-forward brands? Perhaps. But the particular microblogging alchemy of Literary Twitter of the late 2000s to early 2020s will probably never again exist. Where else were so many opinionated readers and writers sloshing in the same warm pool water, where the frenzied, silly posting merged real life stakes with absolute, terrifying chaos? Where else could award winning writers pop off about nothing at all, and nobodies could rattle the ivory towers? Literary Twitter was a horrible, beautiful place. And now, for better or for worse, it’s gone.
In an attempt to reclaim some of the fun (?) we used to have on this here internet, we at Literary Hub have plumbed the depths of our scrolling rotted brains to put together a list of the weirdest and most consequential posts, conversations, and personalities from those halcyonline years. (In the spirit of this thing, I’m sure you’ll let us know what we missed.)
RIP Lit Twitter, we loudly knew thee.
Click here to see the full bracket
I have been following this over the last few days, Here is the voting schedule with links to the results where applicable:
Round of 64 Character Limit: Results
Round of “dang, only 32 likes?”: Results
Round of “sweet, 16 new followers”: Results
The Retweeted 8: Voting open Thursday, November 20th from 10:00 AM – 7:00 PM EST
The Quarter Finals: Voting open Friday, November 21st from 10:00 AM, until Sunday November 23rd at 7:00 PM EST
The Finals: Voting open Monday, November 24th from 10:00 AM – 7:00 PM EST
People have been voting on each round in a new post each day. So for example, here is the Day Four post from yesterday. You can scroll down and see results for every round previous.
Today the Quarter Finals will open and you have all weekend to vote.
But it is not just the voting and the winners vs losers that are fun here. What I also love is that each round is its own story about recent literary history, news, and controversies. It is a great way take a big picture view of the larger book and publishing conversation over recent history.
So fun and learning for this Friday as we lead into the Holiday Season beginning in earnest.
Scheduling Note: next week, I will have 3 days of Attack of the Best Lists posts before taking Thursday and Friday off.
