Twitter. The Twitterverse. The land of mountain bikers with no sense of community, dominated by talk of Brexit and the inevitable close-passing of cars when riding down the road. Often, Twitter is a place where people go to complain, talk football or protest about politics. In fact, there’s a fair few folk who have actually jumped onto Twitter to moan about people moaning on Twitter. You know who you are.
But none of that matters because, with this pure stroke of genius (if I dare take a second to blow my own trumpet), I’ve created a moment – a 45 minute moment – to celebrate the thing that unites and pleases us most: the mountain bike.
Back in 2015, I discovered the online world of mountain biking and it was a bit of a revelation. The likes of Pinkbike sharing news; YouTube growing with evermore mountain biking content; and even the bike shots on Instagram. Twitter seemed to have several mountain bikers who I immediately dedicated time to following, but there didn’t seem to be a lot of discussion on the platform about bikes, despite the obvious opportunity being there. That’s when I struck up #MTBTalk and began chatting to a bunch of riders from around the country, and even around the world.
As set of regulars tuned in each week to see what the content of the three random questions would be, more and more people started to find the discussion and get stuck in. It grew and grew for over a year with more and more people replying and chatting until I decided to pull the plug because it was becoming too hard to think of new questions each time.
After that, it got more and more obvious that #MTBTalk has a place on Twitter. A dedicated time to talk bikes, gear, trails and other mountain biking goodness. So, 3 weeks ago, I decided to bring back #MTBTalk with the same familiar 3 question format and open discussion. Needless to say, the regulars are back and my timeline is overrun with biking goodness – just the way I like it.
Could #MTBTalk be the best ever hashtag? I think so.