I mean, officially it’s all canon. But you know it’s not.
Officially, it’s all make-believe.
I’ve never understood the power people hand over to Lucasfilm\Disney. Watch what you like, ignore the rest.For the record, I’m not addressing you specifically. Just a general statement on how some people really struggle to reconcile the stories Lucas, Lucasfilm, and Disney, and various authors have created over the years.
It’s a universal thing - not specific to Lucasfilm. The idea of “canonical” stories versus apocryphal “fan-fiction” goes back to the Bible. In that case, “canonical content” implied official approval of the Church, as opposed to the Disney/Lucasfilm story-group - but it’s the same idea. Whether it be religious adherents, Tolkien fans, or Star Wars fans, people care about “canon” because they care about experiencing a shared (fictional) reality that other fans/followers can agree is “valid” and actually “happened” as part of the larger on-going story. If you throw out canon, you’re left with something bordering on solipsism - isolated individual fandoms.
Of course, I actually agree with you. The concept of “canon”, especially as applied to something everyone agrees is fictional, is kind of stupid. It helps in terms of creating a shared experience that has agreed-upon boundaries for the purpose of fan enjoyment and discussion. But the downside is that really shitty content always ends up in the canon. For me, I like to consider the OT as canonical, and Andor as “deutero-canonical” (to borrow a stupid term from the Catholic Church). Everything else is pseudepigrapha and fan-fiction.