So, I did a little bit of digging, because I distinctly remember Rian Johnson saying a lot of inflammatory stuff back in 2018 and getting mired in Twitter arguments at the time. It does look like he deleted quite a bit, so I had to do some looking on some more unsavory clickbait sites.

I found this article talking about it:

https://boundingintocomics.com/2018/06/13/rian-johnson-and-john-boyega-attack-star-wars-fans-and-consumers-at-their-own-risk/

I don’t think any of Rian’s Tweets shown here are particularly bad, but the fact that this article even got published is a reminder of how well known Rian’s back-and-forth with fans was at the time. Looking back, I can sympathize with him, and I can see he was getting understandably frustrated dealing with angry people on social media. And to his credit, he did apologize afterwards for making fun of Mike Zeroh:

https://mobile.twitter.com/rianjohnson/status/1036812353990324224

But it was still a mistake of him to stoop to insults, even if the people he was insulting did often deserve it. And while he claims his insults were only directed toward people who harassed those involved in the movie, he really seemed to fall into the trap of conflating a wide range of people as all being “haters” and “trolls.” I remember a lot of the Lucasfilm writers “clapping back” at “toxic fans” on Twitter back in 2018. It was always treated as justified because they were “owning” the “trolls” who supposedly deserved it. But their definition of “troll” seemed to be pretty wide, at times.

Of course, I don’t know how you justify something like this:

pic.twitter.com/FAr1g1CQQ6

And Rian was never nearly as bad as Chuck Wendig, whom I was reminded of by this other article:

https://boundingintocomics.com/2018/06/06/star-wars-author-chuck-wendig-breaks-down-after-calling-star-wars-fans-white-supremacists/#utm_source=boundingintocomics.com&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=bic&utm_term=internal

Just really, really unhinged seeming. Some of his later Tweets were worse than this, and he ended up getting really vitriolic.

And there’s also some of Pablo Hidalgo’s Twitter antics, like making fun of StarWarsTheory. But, I’m getting off topic, so I’ll leave it at that. The point is, Lucasfilm’s social media presence in general has been needlessly aggressive and fractious the past few years. And that’s done far more to drive me away from Star Wars than the quality of the franchise itself has.