I've got a theory that if you are a complete nerd and ignore all fashions, eventually you fall so far behind that you find yourself ahead of the pack - voila, a trendsetter. (That was a 'voila' missing the little line over one of the vowels, BTW. Not a miss-spelled viola.) So is this true of being a Tolkien fan, or do we just come to this website to delude ourselves that we've got friends?

According to USA Today, Tolkien fandom is hip enough that the official LOTR site features in their Web Guide's "Hot Sites" list today.