I wish I could say it was close, dear reader, but with 72.6% of the vote, Joyce Carol Oates won our bracket by a wide margin. We sensed that this was coming watching the returns—JCO was putting up huge numbers in every match up. As Jared Pechaček said on Bluesky about the final poll, “I just don’t see how you can go with the single discourse over the most reliable generator of conversation in the entire space.” A lot of you agreed.

And how could we argue? As I wrote yesterday, Oates is Literary Twitter’s queen, a fully realized master of the form. Crucially for me, she chooses the life of the poster—she doesn’t need any of this. So many of us rationalize social media as something shameful, a harmful addiction we’re trying to break, or a career necessity, a place we have to be for “our brand.” But with a long and successful career, Oates has probably transcended any opportunistic need to post. She’s just in it for the love of the game, for the challenge of writing briefly and pithily, and for the opportunity to chop it up with anyone and everyone who’s Tweeting too. Her love of the Tweet is a celebration of the adaptability of language and how fun it is to write funny, smart, insane things for a way too big audience.

It’s fitting that Oates is donning the Bracket Crown, not only as a true master of the short post, but as someone whose dedication to being online validates the entire project of Literary Twitter, whatever it was. Maybe if someone so talented and so celebrated is also So Logged On, there’s hope for the rest of us too.

Congratulations to Joyce Carol Oates for winning our bracket! And thanks to all of you for voting, following along, and posting this past week!

Behold, the final Bracket:

[Click to enlarge]

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Rules

Now that Literary Twitter is dead, we’re asking, “What was it?” In this bracket, we’re seeking the Most Literary Twitter moment, discourse, or personage. What has been stuck in your mind, who sent you running to your group chat, what kept you scrolling for longer than you should have? What are you still bringing up in conversation today and having to explain to people with normal brains? In short, what most exemplified whatever the hell Literary Twitter was?

We’ve sorted all of the contenders (that we can remember) into four categories: Existential Crises, Matters of Taste, Bad Behavior, and Reading Comprehension. Each quadrant’s winner will face off on Friday, before the final head-to-head on Monday, November 24th to crown our winner.

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Voting Schedule

Round of 64 Character Limit: Voting open now until tonight at 7:00 PM EST (Check out the results from the first round here)

Round of “dang, only 32 likes?”: Voting open Tuesday, November 18th from 10:00 AM – 7:00 PM EST (Round two results are here)

Round of “sweet, 16 new followers”: Voting open Wednesday, November 19th from 10:00 AM – 7:00 PM EST (Results from this round, here)

The Retweeted 8: Voting open Thursday, November 20th from 10:00 AM – 7:00 PM EST (Round four’s results)

The Quarter Finals: Voting open Friday, November 21st from 10:00 AM, until Sunday November 23rd at 7:00 PM EST (See the results)

The Finals: Voting open Monday, November 24th from 10:00 AM – 7:00 PM EST (The last poll result)

joyce carol oates (2)

joyce carol oates (2)

Trending Because: Joyce Carol Oates is the demigod of Literary Twitter. This is a woman so prolific she writes a book a year and still has time to tweet about everything under the sun, the takes ranging from terrible to excellent to head-scratching to hilarious to the picture of her foot.

As Eric Thurm put it on this very website: “Like your mythical uncle, Joyce Carol Oates is, at heart, a troll. Prolific across all mediums, it is not difficult to imagine Oates delighting in the act of tweeting, of tossing thoughts into the world, both for the enjoyment of the craft and to see what happens, like tiny crystalline bombs. Joyce Carol Oates is very bad at Twitter, which is also to say she’s very good at Twitter.”

Also: the woman is 87! She just tweeted 3 minutes ago. All hail.

Retweeted by: Wan little husks

Thanks for playing with us! See you next bracket!