IT IS A truth universally acknowledged that medievalists give good Twitter. Where to find the medieval(ist) party? Check out #MedievalTwitter. This was solid advice for the best part of a decade. At a purely practical level, the hashtag worked as others do. It’s a tag attached to tweets to flag that the content is directly addressing, or broadly relevant to, “the Medieval” (i.e., about the Middle Ages, and/or medievalists). In this way, it was a signpost directing you to the party location. At the same time, the hashtag carved out a digital space for medievalists to come together, while also providing a reason to hang out in the first place. Acting as a technological beacon, a community coalesces around the hashtag. It’s not just where the party happens logistically, or the reason the party is being thrown. It’s also the substance of the party itself. When we talk about #MedievalTwitter, we’re not just talking about “medieval stuff shared online,” or even “discussions about medieval stuff amongst experts”—though these things could, and did, happen on the hashtag. We’re talking about the ongoing creation of a meaningful, authentic collective built by its members, one hashtagged tweet at a time. It’s about medievalists as people as much as the medieval objects of our study.

This chapter is a deep dive into #MedievalTwitter, an exploration of what the hashtag—and the community—meant to its members and to the broader Twitter userbase, and what it could yet mean on whatever platform we next call home. First, I examine the origins of the hashtag and the way in which the community which formed around it is inextricable from its politics.