The Performance of Fandom : A Farewell to #SWTWT

I’ve spent a long time on Star Wars Twitter.

Long enough to remember when it actually felt fun.

Long enough to remember when fan campaigns felt grassroots instead of strategic. When podcasts were just people talking passionately about a thing they loved. When disagreements didn’t immediately become morality plays. When “community” wasn’t code for “pick a side.”

I’ve made some of my best friends through Star Wars fandom. I’ve hosted podcasts, livestreams, charity events, and conversations I’m genuinely proud of. We’ve helped raise tens of thousands of dollars for Make-A-Wish. I wrote a book about fandom because, at one point, I truly believed this space mattered.

Part of me still does.

But somewhere along the way, Star Wars discourse stopped being about Star Wars.

It became performance.

On one side, you have outrage merchants farming clicks from people convinced Kathleen Kennedy personally destroyed their childhood. Every thumbnail is red lasers and angry faces. Every conversation somehow becomes “wokeness,” Disney, or the death of masculinity. Entire careers built on convincing people to stay angry forever.

And honestly? Those people were never the exhausting part.

They were obvious.

The more disappointing side was the crowd pretending to be above all of that while quietly playing the exact same game — just with cleaner branding and better lighting.

The access culture.

The performative positivity.

The subtle social climbing disguised as morality.

The people terrified to criticize anything because maybe there’s a swag box, a premiere invite, or a Lucasfilm interaction hanging in the balance.

Somewhere along the line, fandom became networking.

And if you existed in the middle — if you praised what you loved, criticized what you didn’t, called out bad behavior regardless of tribe — you became dangerous to everybody.

I learned very quickly that honesty makes people uncomfortable online.

I’ve watched private misunderstandings become public mythology because ambiguity performs better than nuance. I’ve watched creators who once stood shoulder to shoulder suddenly discover “professional distance” the moment controversy appeared. I’ve watched people pretend not to know me publicly while privately admitting they understood exactly what was happening.

I’ve seen entire narratives invented in real time because someone needed a villain for the day.

One tweet turned into over a million impressions because a celebrity decided outrage was easier than conversation. Suddenly strangers who had never spoken to me knew exactly who I was, what I believed, and what kind of person I must be. That’s social media now: context dies first.

I’ve had people accuse me of things that were demonstrably false while others amplified it because it fit their preferred storyline. Nobody asks for receipts once the algorithm decides who the hero and villain are supposed to be.

And maybe the strangest realization of all is this:

The anti-Disney rage accounts never made me hate Star Wars social media.

It was the people who insisted they were better than that.

The ones who turned fandom into a hierarchy. The ones who built identities around appearing morally or intellectually superior to other fans. The ones who weaponized “positivity” as social currency while privately engaging in the same clique behavior, whisper campaigns, and tribal politics they claimed to oppose.

Everyone online wants to be the Rebel Alliance.

Most people are just auditioning for a seat in the Imperial Senate.

And before anyone mistakes this for bitterness, let me say this clearly: I’m not innocent in all of this either.

I’ve been stubborn. I’ve held grudges. I’ve tweeted emotionally. I’ve let myself get pulled into discourse I should have ignored. I’ve cared too much about people who only saw fandom as leverage. That’s part of being online for this long. Eventually the machine gets a piece of everybody.

But I also know who I am.

I know what I contributed.

I know the people I helped.

I know the friendships that were real.

I know the conversations that mattered.

And I know that despite everything, I never fully joined a tribe.

That probably cost me opportunities. It probably cost me relationships. But I can live with that more comfortably than pretending to believe things for approval.

The best part of this story is that after all these years arguing about Star Wars online, I still love Star Wars.

I love the mythology.

I love the imagination.

I love what it meant to me as a kid and what it still occasionally means to me now.

I love it when it starts real conversations with strangers I meet IRL.

What I don’t love anymore is the ecosystem surrounding it.

A platform where outrage is profitable, access is currency, and authenticity is often punished faster than dishonesty.

Maybe that’s not just Star Wars Twitter. Maybe that’s social media in general. Star Wars was simply the lens where I happened to watch it happen in real time.

Either way, I think I’m done participating in it.

Not because I lost the argument.

Not because I got “canceled.”

Not because the trolls won.

But because I’m tired.

Tired of performance masquerading as community.

Tired of people confusing followers with wisdom.

Tired of watching fandom become content instead of connection.

The best part of Star Wars was never the discourse.

It was the people I met before the discourse consumed them.