Guest Post
As a bunch of you know, #dollchat has been a lively Tonner Doll Twitter community since the autumn of 2011. #dollchat began because a few of us had been trying to have a small group conversation on Twitter one evening, and felt frustrated that our tweets o each other were getting lost and pushed back by the free-for-all that Twitter often is. Kevin von Duuglas-Ittu suggested we use the hashtag #dollchat to keep track of our messages, then we discussed setting a regular time, and #dollchat as we know it began. The Tuesday #dollchat (9:00 pm EST USA!) started with a bang, with messages flying and people connecting, and was an immediate success. Some folks were getting left out, though, because of other concerns on Tuesdays, so we added a second time to accommodate people who can’t make Tuesday evenings–Sunday afternoons (2:00 pm EST USA).
With a few timezone issues Kevin who hosts Tonner’s #dollchat on Tuesdays (9pm EST) could not make the Sunday time. We discussed a few alternate times, but ultimately I volunteered to take the Sunday #dollchat. So I’m the regular Sunday #dollchat host!
The Sunday afternoon #dollchat is always a surprise to me. Some Sundays we only have four or five participants, but the chatter is deeper and more personal. Other Sundays, we have as many as the Tuesday #dollchat and tweets fly fast and furious. On more than a few Sundays, we’ve started out slow and by the half-hour we have a full lively group.
My job as host is to greet everyone who tweets in, which sometimes means scrolling backwards to make sure I saw everyone, and keeping the conversation moving. Sometimes all I need to ask is “What’s new?” and then watch the avalanche of tweets coming in. I do sometimes have to redirect a conversation, as well, if it all strays too far from the topic at hand, which is, of course, dolls. A discussion last week about the miserably hot weather went on for a bit, but it was relevant for the effects that high heat and humidity have on dolls (it’s really not good for them, in case you were wondering). I’m very pleased to say that, as a group and in general, #dollchat tends to stay away from potentially polarizing topics such as politics and religion, and sticks to the main intention of discussing dolls, without external direction. Doll collecting has no demographic lines of demarcation, and we all come #dollchat together to share that interest we all have in common.
Please do come join us, and tell us what’s new in your dolly world!
btw, this is Martie, my dolly BFF. She goes everywhere with me, as you can see by her perch in my bag, and if I leave her at home I feel rather as though I’ve left an arm behind. She’s a Tonner Rapunzel, with a modification: she has blue glass eyes from Jim Dandy, the better to see the world with me! She’s a great companion, is up for any adventure, and doesn’t ask “Are we there yet?”–at least not very often.
♥
Charlie is a founding member of our Twitter #dollchat, and wonderful personal blogger of dolls at Dolls Behaving Badly - if you have never been on a Twitter chat you can join in the conversation by just adding the hashtag #dollchat to anything you tweet, and by watching the tag. If you haven’t been on Twitter yet you can easily follow the conversation here in this #dollchat room.