Film Twitter Needs a New Home

Twitter is over. After declining for months (at least) the sudden, undignified way in which the rug was pulled out from under developers of popular, revolutionary apps seals it. If you haven’t found your new home online yet, the time has come.

For me, I’m going to make a space for myself on Mastodon. After lurking around a few instances I finally joined up this week and have quickly found it to be an active community hellbent on getting short, public posts right. I feel like it’s 2009 again: I’m having fun on the web.

Though there’s a growing community of cinephiles1 using Mastodon, it pales in comparison to the undefined but vocal group that has come to be known, lovingly and disparagingly, as Film Twitter. The folks who post classic Hollywood photos, who eulogize actors and filmmakers in long threads, who walk out of a screening to share a gut reaction no matter how unpolished, who debate to no end in defense of Kael or Sarris or neither. Critics, filmmakers, bloggers, randoms. They all made up this…thing.

And it’s all going away.

So I think it’s time to find a new home for movie chatter online (an idea I’ve been pondering for some time). Mastodon is the easiest answer right now, but I realize it can seem daunting. My advice is to stop overthinking it and just give it a try. Find an instance and sign up. You can even use my invite to mastodon.social if it helps get you up and running faster.

Twitter is going away, but conversations about cinema never will. I hope everyone who wants to can find a space to keep the discussion going.


  1. A good starting point is the #cinemastodon hashtag. ↩︎