Blorbuscon

your presentation sounds fascinating! i know a couple people here have presented about tumblr's classics reception before, so y'all may want to connect.

blorbuscon is an event that i (tumblr user nathanielthecurious) originally organized almost a year ago, when i was an MA student in classics and followed a lot of other classics grad students on tumblr.

shortly after the word "blorbo" first became a tumblr meme, a few people (originally tumblr user catilinas) in my tumblr circle had started an in-joke in which they made up detailed backstories for 2 nonexistent fictional consuls named titus blorbus plinkonensis and quintus aemilius tumblrinus. (if you search through the right people's blog archives from the time, you can find fake inscriptions, analysis of fake sallust passages, and all sorts of other stuff about these guys.)

i thought it would be funny to put out an extremely serious-sounding call for papers for a conference on blorbus. was i disillusioned and mocking classics academia? was i showing off that i was in-the-know about it? was i treading dangerously close to connecting my professional persona and my online persona? did i just want an excuse to zoom with the people i'd known on tumblr for years (a couple of whom i'd already run into at real conferences!)? yes to all of it. everybody liked the idea and submitted a bunch of abstracts so i was like, well i guess this is actually happening.

we held the conference over zoom. if i remember correctly there were about 75 people on the call and 9 people gave papers (which mostly consisted of a combination of made-up ancient rome content and memes); the structure was like an academic conference but with a lively audience that had the vibe of a twitch chat. after a few hours, when all the papers were done, it evolved into a less structured discussion about everything from fandom stuff to the reception of the classics on tumblr. it was all incredibly cringey and hilarious and fun, and a really bizarre time. people's classics knowledge ranged from phd candidates to "wait, is cicero one of your fictional romans?" people's appearances ranged from business casual to history-inspired high fashion to camera off with a homestuck profile picture.

Blorbuscon II – The Mysteries of Mesperyian is only a few short hours away, so here are a few last reminders and infos.

The conference will of course be held tomorrow (1.05.) at 9am PDT / 12pm EDT / 5pm BST.

The program and zoom link can be found here.

Presenters, please upload your presentations, handouts and anything else you might want to provide to the audience here.

Togas are welcome.