It has recently come to my attention that a new member of the #Tolkien twitter community has deleted their account after having their choice of David Day books as reading material belittled by gatekeepers.
A THREAD
1/13
13
1
I'll resume my normal quietude now and my break from social medial, a place I went to and am staying because I'm so sick of seeing this BS behaviour.
12/13
I'll say it simply then. STOP THIS BS TOLKIEN GATEKEEPING BEHAVIOUR. It is actually damaging to people and does absolutely no good whatsoever. An ill-considered tweet can have a huge negative impact.
11/13
So hey, Tolkien gatekeepers. Remember when you didn't know much? Remember when you were taking those first excited steps into the wider world beyond Hobbit & LOTR? I'm forced to conclude that you don't remember.
10/13
1
Instead, @CollectTolkien gets regularly attacked - and because of this exposes the people that they're retweeting to those attacks - by gatekeepers. THIS BS HAS TO STOP.
9/13
1
The Tolkien community has always been a broad church, even more so since the movies. Accounts like @CollectTolkien work really hard to reflect that broad church and range of interests and should be applauded for it
8/13
1
What they are, however, is well presented, easily accessible and easy reading and if people are excited about reading them then they have every damn right to tweet about them and not get dumped on by gatekeepers out to prove that they're "more Tolkien"
7/13
2
Of course those books are flawed and factually incorrect in places. Of course they're recycled. Of course they don't hold a candle to HoME or reading Letters or anything by Shippey as a better step into Tolkien reading.
6/13
I've seen every excuse given by gatekeepers, that they're "helping" people by dumping on their excitement about having some new books to read about their favourite stories.
5/13
Are David Day books great scholarship? Of course they're not and that they are essentially recycled versions of earlier books is cynical publishing, of course. Are they actually damaging, however?
4/13
This gatekeeper behaviour in the community absolutely has to stop. It is not in any way productive, it is not in any way helpful and its potential to do harm far outweighs any "service" those gatekeepers feel that they are doing to the wider community.
3/13
I'm not going to name names or point to the tweets. They know who they are. I absolutely do not want to make this worse by compounding bad behaviour with more bad behaviour. However,
2/13
T. B. Folk retweeted
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T. B. Folk retweeted
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