Trolls Don’t Understand Star Wars (And Never Will)
By: Walter Johndad
Tags: Trolls, Film, Diversity, Bullying, Star Wars

“Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.” — Yoda

In advance of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, I thought it’d be good to get in front of the Star Wars trolls.

They’re out there right now, like a bunch of stupid Storm Troopers, preparing to invade the internet and obliterate all the conversations you and I want to have discussing this movie. So to get ahead of them, I think it’s important to understand the trolls, and how, even though they may claim they’re the “real” fans, they don’t understand Star Wars at all. Let’s dive in.

When I was a kid, probably 10 or 11, I had my first encounter with a Star Wars troll.

I was on a cruise with my family. My parents had signed me up for the kids’ club, which organized stuff for kids to do around the ship while parents presumably went off to rediscover what life is like without children.

In the kids’ club, there was this one kid, I forget his name, but he was sort of chubby and had spiky hair. I didn’t know much about him, but he was a Star Wars fan, and we bonded over this.

One day, we were swimming in the pool, and he asks if I want to play Star Wars trivia. We’ll quiz each other. I said sure. He goes first. He asks how many Kyber crystals are in a lightsaber. Immediately, I was like, shit, what the fuck is a Kyber crystal? I didn’t want to appear stupid, so I took a guess. “Two?”

“It’s one, you idiot!” he squawked, before giving me a painful purple nurple and dunking me under water. I had no idea these were the terms of our trivia game. I emerged gasping for air with the bitter realization: this kid is a bully. He punished me! He punished me for not knowing something that, at the time, was knowledge only found in comics and novels of the Star Wars expanded universe. Not the movies. And I’d only seen the movies.

Also, why did I need to know how many Kyber crystals were in a light saber? I still don’t understand why this is important. A light saber is pretty self explanatory.

This whole interaction confused the hell out of me. Worse, it sent me the message people will punish you for not knowing trivial things about a movie franchise, which is a real lesson, but a stupid lesson, because it doesn’t have to happen.

For the rest of the cruise, I avoided that kid. He ended our Star Wars camaraderie. I didn’t learn what a Kyber crystal was for over a decade.

This kid wasn’t an online troll, back then the internet was just a baby, but in effect, this encounter did the same thing as online trolling: it silenced a conversation by derailing it.

Trolling is a serious issue in literally every corner of the internet and beyond. It’s extremely destructive. Even Ahmed Best, the actor who depicted Jar Jar Binks, was nearly driven to suicide because of the death threats and racist screeds he received after depicting the controversial character.

Trolling is notoriously hard to combat. It’s nearly impossible to reason with a troll. They won’t listen to you and they’ll laugh off your rage. And they can do this because of their self-mythologizing.

Trolls do not see trolling as bullying, even though it is.

Unlike your school yard bullies, they have an inflated sense of purpose, a mission. They organize and gang up on individuals. And they rationalize their behavior by telling themselves they’re badass chaos agents who are disrupting the status quo by demonstrating how little they care about anything.

When asked to defend why they’re spouting hateful filth, trolls say something like they’re “exposing you to the truth of a hard and cruel reality that doesn’t care what you think.” Most trolls harbor the racist or sexist prejudices they use, though they may not understand this about themselves, and they’ll try and defend their hateful trolling as “ironic” or “reverse racist.”

In reality, trolls have close to zero self-awareness. They do not understand or take the time to think about the fact that they cause actual emotional harm to people. They’re protected from this self-realization by their ‘don’t-give-a-fuck’ armor and the security blanket of a screen name.

But more often than not, trolls actually do care deeply. They are people who feel bad for themselves and sad about their lives. They’re uncertain about their place in this world, but don’t want to admit it, because they fear looking weak. And like all bullies, trolls resort to trolling because it’s an easy fix for their ego. It makes them feel temporarily in control of their lives. Temporarily powerful. They write or say or do something extremely offensive, knowing you’ll have a strong reaction. And when you do have that strong reaction, they tell themselves they predicted you’d react this way, which feeds into their illusion of superiority — even though a first grader could predict people will act defensively toward racism.

And of course, this feeling of power and control never lasts long. So they troll and prod and troll again and ultimately what ends up happening is good, productive conversations wilt. People who have something genuinely interesting to say, people with a fresh or new perspective, or worse, people entering the conversation for the very first time — are silenced.

We must never forget actress Kelly Marie Tran, who, after depicting her role Rose Tico in The Last Jedi received so much online and offline harassment she had to deactivate her social media accounts and feared for her safety. It took an extreme psychological toll on her. She was attacked by trolls for being a woman, for being Asian, for not conforming to America’s Barbie-doll standard of beauty. She was threatened with rape, torture, murder…you name it. And what happened? She left social media. She was silenced. Her fans lost access to her, robbed of an exciting role model.

Now, is there room for disagreement, even disapproval of the character Rose Tico and her role in Last Jedi? Of course there is. You could argue that much of Rose Tico and Finn’s plot in Last Jedi is extraneous and unnecessary, a complicated waste of time that could’ve been resolved by giving Rose Tico the skills of Benicio Del Toro’s character, DJ.

But viciously attacking Kelly Marie Tran, someone who’s helping bring our galaxy far far away to life? Going after her for who she is as a private citizen and a human being? That’s despicable. That’s cowardice. No matter how hilariously “ironic” a troll thinks his racism is.

In net effect, what Star Wars trolling does is not only hurt and scare off fans, it hurts the legacy of Star Wars itself. These trolls, who I have to assume love Star Wars in some deep way, are ensuring its eventual cultural irrelevancy.

That’s a travesty.

Think about your first encounter with Star Wars. Everyone has a first Star Wars memory. I remember mine clearly. It’s emblazoned in my mind. I must’ve been five or six. Some family friends were watching Empire Strikes Back. I was half paying attention, and then…enter Darth Vader. He storms into Echo Base on Hoth, this imposing robot man dressed in black, marching through the white snow tunnels. I didn’t know who he was. But I was terrified. Also thrilled. And there were humans trying to escape him, a dog-man, and a golden robot too. My six-year old eyeballs couldn’t look away. I mean, how fantastic. How fun! What the fuck is going on?!

This moment of rapture happens for so many people because, and I can’t put this any simpler, Star Wars is fucking awesome. It’s pure, unadulterated fun. An epic adventure with spaceships and aliens and heroes and princesses, plot twists and robots and electric swords. And what makes Star Wars a real life miracle is how accessible it is. Everyone who’s open to this kind of storytelling gets it. Kids get it. Adults get it. Old people, teenagers. Every race, religion, ethnicity and nationality has Star Wars fans. It’s crazy. Star Wars, like cinema itself, is a near universal language.

But the more trolls take control of the conversations, the less people will come to this franchise with open-eyed wonderment. Fewer six year olds will have their minds blown. Fewer people will use Star Wars to jumpstart their imaginations into creating the next wonderful, great thing.

To thrive, imagination needs two things: it needs diversity, and it needs conversation — two things trolls are intent on shutting down, and the two things Star Wars absolutely and definitively stands for.

Look at the rebel alliance. It is full of diversity, both on an interspecies level and along racial and gender lines. The rebel alliance has always been lead by strong women. Mon Mothma, Jyn Erso, Rey, General Leia Organa. And that’s just the rebel alliance! The galaxy far far away is diverse as hell. Full of Hutts and Wampas and Palpatines, Jawas, Ewoks, and liminal players like Boba Fett or Empire’s Lando Callerisian. Everybody is there. Everybody is represented. Star Wars is an open invitation, because this is ultimately a fantastical story about the world we live in. It’s a space opera, but it’s really about us. We’re all trapped here on earth, in our alien bodies, living in our alien lives with our own, unique alien experiences, most of us doing our level best to resist the oppressive forces that would subjugate and destroy us.

No fandom, Star Wars, Pokemon, or the next thing will ever be perfect. No group of people ever is. There will always be assholes, sexist and racist trolls and the cruel and violent stubbornness of fanatics. But while we’ll never fully weed out the trolls, we can commit to stunting their progress.

It can be our prerogative to see that there’s less trolling, both by ignoring trolls and by making them stare bald faced at who they are, at their behavior, without lowering ourselves to their levels. It takes patience, and cunning. Knowing your own mind and heart. It takes repeated engagement with some extreme ugliness, and diffusing it. But it is doable.

Most humans are Darth Vaders at heart: Good-natured beings, tempted and falling to the dark side, but ultimately capable of change. The hate-filled, racist trolls who can’t handle their deep-rooted feelings of inadequacy are no different. We have to remember that. Otherwise, we risk ever-increasing levels of volatility in the fandom when it comes to debating anything about Star Wars. We risk this truly becoming our status quo.

Trolls, don’t make people suffer for a piece of art as good and goofy as Star Wars. Remember: You came to Star Wars with love. Not hate. You came to it with eyes wide open, murmuring, “What the fuck is going on here!”

That’s all that counts. Be nice. Don’t bully each about Star Wars. Engage, discuss, fight, change your mind. But do not cause unnecessary suffering. We’re all different. And We each have a right to love Star Wars in any way we please, without harassment and hatred.

A lot of us have been bullied in our lives, for so many reasons and in so many ways. Star Wars does not have to be another source of pain. The world is hard enough as it is. Something as fun and wonderful and good-hearted as Star Wars should be shared and explored and loved more. We can’t let it be held hostage by those who would silence our love.

It’s a wide open galaxy, guys. Share the force.