I used to check twitter at least weekly for some sort of crokinole content and engage with it in some way in an effort to building some more online activity. I did this for probably a decade, and like my recession from crokinole videos, I eventually came to stop. When reports came out months ago that twitter was removing old content I went spelunking trying to remember some of the humourous moments in the past.

Being at the ripe age to have been at the right age for social media’s introduction into everyday human life I observed with twitter the same life cycle you can find on any other platform that had its day in the sun. In the era before the social media platform gets algorithmically spliced into fragments that turns its user-experience into a jaded daily high school-reunion for anyone who doesn’t have anything better to do, there is a period where the platform is fun to be on. For a time the platform can be unpredictable in a good-natured way that encourages a sense of adventure and discovery.

Looking for crokinole occurrences on twitter back in the good days was like looking for bald eagles in Ontario today; quite rare, but usually amazing when it was spotted. I had a pretty fun time looking back through a treasure trove of unusual spottings, so now I shall share this pleasure with anyone still perusing this particular platform that is well past its best days.

In case these posts do disappear, I provide a link and a screenshot to everything below.

PEI Politics

Not just twitter, but I also used to scavenge all depths of the internet for crokinole, and in 2011 found an article from the University of PEI student newspaper where the school President battled a student in a game of crokinole. Years later I’d see a familiar face flash across my TV as the former UPEI President had been elected Premier of PEI. From then on I knew the Premier, Wade MacLauchlan, was a crokinole player. So I wasn’t surprised when in 2016 a reporter tweeted this:

That tweet was followed up days later with a CBC article comically declaring "Premier Wade MacLauchlan rattled in crokinole game". The Premier showcased classic crokinole sportsmanship when he declared, "There’s always tomorrow."

Another prominent politician, Nate Erskine-Smith, has a strong connection to crokinole. He even has, or had depending on when you read this, a custom 20s board for his Ottawa office. Sadly he was unsuccessful in his bid to become Ontario Liberal leader, so we miss out on having a second premier in Canada starting to play competitively.

Some Good Memes

Who doesn’t love a good meme? Well me, usually. They can get old quick. But if you just look at them for a few seconds before scrolling to something else, the way God intended, they can be pretty funny.

And of course I’d be remiss if I didn’t bring up the twitter account dedicated to crokinole memes, aptly called @crokinolememes.

And here is an appreciation post for the person who may or may not be behind the account.

Did this really happen?

When twitter started it was a great place to brag to strangers about stuff that happened in your life. Eventually, given the lack of accountability that prevails on the internet, people realized they could start bragging about things that didn’t happen. These next two might have happened, but I can’t say for sure.

I used to correspond with someone who worked at Dreamworks and ran an office crokinole league. Always wondered what happened to it.

In 2014 there was a flurry of tweets written in Japanese about crokinole. Trying to find them after the fact has been nearly impossible, but one person did reference the episode years later.

The full story is a film about the life of Japanese Emperor Hirohito was released, in which an off-hand remark was made about an unknown game he played in his childhood. Interested people took to the internet to try to discover the identity of the game, and found it to be crokinole.

Whenever I’m in an ice-breaking activity there’s two fun facts about myself that I trot out. The first is the obvious one, that I play crokinole competitively and even have a world championship title to my name. The second is that as a child I used to know Justin Bieber. Which is why I called into question the veracity of this story.

Now I didn’t go to the same elementary school as Bieber, but I rode the country bus with quite a few who did, and who all knew that I played crokinole in those days. And I just feel like during one of those hour-long bus rides home they would have mentioned that their school had an active crokinole scene. And if they did tell me that 20 years ago there’s absolutely no way I would have forgotten because I would have transferred to that school immediately. Case closed.

What were they thinking when they took this photo?

Growing up with the internet it was always good advice to ask yourself what your grandmother would think if she saw what you were posting online. It turns out questioning the motives of some other generation works with both predecessors and ancestors. You look at the photos below and you just wonder what was going through their mind when they took it?

In all fairness I know what they were thinking in this one. The photographer had to tell them to move their chairs to get an open shot of the board. Little did they know they’d give Jon Conrad a new chair placement strategy to adopt.

And this isn’t a photo but it’s a darn good comic.

TV References

You have to wonder what it’s like working in Hollywood in the set department, trying to dress up some scene with props that tell the story of what a character is like. Do these people even know what crokinole is when they slap a board into the background?

Not specifically a TV thing, but this was how I found out someone wrote the game crokinole into an official Star Wars extended universe piece of entertainment.

Also not TV, but someone went to the effort of making fanart for the game Overwatch, and put crokinole into it.

Yet another celebrity look-a-like in the world of crokinole.

Mennonite Humour

Just as people would be surprised by how much crokinole content exists on the internet, I was constantly surprised by how much mennonite-based humour exists.

The Freundschaft Photo account was one of my favourites.

I like this one for the fact that it is annoying The Crokinole Movie isn’t on Netflix.

And I always love a reference to Punkeydoodles Corners.

There also used to be a bunch of tweets from another Mennonite humour account called The Daily Bonnet. The account has since been removed and rolled under an account called The Unger Review but all of the satire news stories about crokinole can be found here. Some of the best jokes are just in the titles, like "New Regulations Force Female Crokinole Players to Wear Short Skirts" and "LeBron James Quits Basketball to Take on New Challenge: Crokinole".

Fan Appreciation

On twitter it was really common to see people have a passing interest in the game. Usually the least expected posts were when some stranger actually expressed genuine interest in a deep knowledge of the competitive scene.

Garret Tracey introduced me as "the man, the myth, the legend behind CrokinoleCentre" on a video recently, but I think I prefer being known as the Spanish version of "Idol and reference of the crokinole." ¿Estas conmigo?

This guy is such a big fan of Jason Beierling he’s declaring his two finals appearances in Hamilton as good enough to be proclaimed as "damn near every year."

If you are dog-lover you should click through the link to see the short video in this tweet.

Okay, and now one earnest compliment.

Okay, two.

Miscellaneous

My big hope with crokinole on twitter is that some famous people would tweet about it and spark some interest. The closest we got to that was SungWon Cho who is a pretty famous YouTuber and actor (he was in the Blackberry movie).

An astute observation from Zeus.

A $100 idea.

You’ve heard of some people being clue-less about crokinole, how about someone being cue-less.

And if you are a curling fan, take the 38 seconds to watch this clip of a professional curler experimenting with the concept of drag effect in crokinole.

Life without hockey.

Ok I’m going to be pedantic here. This is not an edge case from a crokinole rules perspective.

Never knew this about Brian Cook.

I know the feeling.

And I don’t what to say about this, but it looks cool.

Crokinole where?

One of the joys of constantly surveying twitter for crokinole mentions was being quick to learn of events and clubs happening in places where organized crokinole was unknown,

A prime example was finding out about the club in Japan that brought us Ryotaro Fukuda.

I don’t know anything about this tournament that happened in Manitoba, but the organizer sure has the gist of how it works.

Back in 2015 a pub in Toronto pioneered the act of playing crokinole with alcohol in the vicinity.

Sault Ste Marie draws a big crowd for championship matches.

Before they scored a top 4 finish at the Worlds, we knew there was a group of players from Harvard thanks to their lab sending out practice updates on a regular basis.

Honestly, I respect this attitude following an Alberta tournament.

Tom Thomson

In addition to looking for crokinole content, I also liked to use twitter to briefly experience Canadian art. It is not rare on twitter to have accounts specializing in fandom of particular actors, singers or athletes. It should not be considered too strange that for years someone has been operating an account to showcase the works of Canada’s most famous painter, Tom Thomson.

What was a little strange was when the twitter account pretended to be Thomson living his final days in Algonquin Park before his tragic death. Rather than painting, he was apparently playing a lot of crokinole.

That being said if he was playing a lot of crokinole that could bring new meaning to the Tragically Hip lyrics about Thomson, "He said, "bring on the brand new renaissance / 'Cause I think I'm ready / When I was shaking all night long / But my hands were steady." We all wish our hands were steady on the crokinole board.

Centre Wellington District High School

Now here’s a school I wish I went to.

Gaming Conventions

Twitter was also a fun place to check in on major events that you weren’t attending. It sure made it seem like a great time.

Crokinole Manga

One frequently astonishing occurrence on twitter was to see comic strips detailing an action-based story of crokinole with Japanese dialogue.

I was left who was making these and what the story was about. I’m still wondering, but the full collection of the work can be found here for those interested.

Hutchinson

Always good for a laugh or to tie in some other sport into the crokinole world was Andrew Hutchinson before he quit social media.

Zone of Vanity

Back in the day I definitely held the title for most crokinole tweets, so I’m going to take a victory lap to admire some of my best posts.

The origin of twitter limited posts to 140 characters. This legend only needed 10 to show us the way.