You have a thread seemingly open to arguments about the best time in Star Wars. (To be fair I know your question there was essentially rhetorical.)
I’m not sure what about the question was rhetorical, and my thread didn’t really have anything to do with the “fandom” or this forum. I don’t care about the concept of “fandom” and don’t personally identify with it. There’s a difference between the content and how the fans respond to it.
It was a thread about the best time in Star Wars, as I said. Or as you titled it, “Is Star Wars ‘Better Than It’s Ever Been’?” I took that in the same sense I’ve been using “Star Wars” to refer to the content and the fan response, the latter referenced several times in your initial post of that thread.
When I think of Star Wars I don’t really think of the fandom at all. The title wasn’t the best “time” in Star Wars, which would potentially imply that, but whether Star Wars is “better than ever,” which in my mind narrows it down to the content. I only talked about fans in my first post insofar as the general popularity of the series and hype pertained to my own excitement. I didn’t say anything about the community, if anything I was talking about how it’s not just an insular “community.”
From my second post in the thread
I’d say it might be if every nerd wasn’t at another’s throat 110% of the time because of it.
That’s a very good point, though I guess I was mainly thinking content-wise. Certainly the internet discourse is probably worse than it’s ever been, though I’ll say my in-person discussions have grown and they’re usually pretty pleasant, even if we’re not always entirely on the same page.
I mean if you want to talk about the “fandom” in that thread that’s fine, but I was definitely coming at it from the perspective of the content, mostly because my own experience with the “fandom” is entirely nonexistent (I have had interactions with other people who like the series of course, but have no involvement whatsoever in the fan “community,” beyond I suppose being a member here, which I wouldn’t count*), and I myself have only been alive for roughly half the saga’s life. It’s hard for me to judge what I didn’t experience, but all the content overtime can be looked at easily.
*this conversation started about the quality of discussion on this forum as whole over time, which I think is only tangentially related to the state of the “fandom” in general at best