Twitter Has Been Absolutely Brutal To ‘The Walking Dead’ Showrunner Since The Season Finale

Poor Scott Gimple. The man is never going to live down the sixth-season finale of The Walking Dead unless he really, honestly follows through on his promise to write a seventh-season opener that justified the cliffhanger. I don’t even know if that’s possible.

It is possible, however, that it wasn’t Scott Gimple’s idea to end the season on the cliffhanger that saw Negan bash an unknown victim’s head in with his baseball bat, Lucille. Comments from the cast and crew have been confusingly contradictory, and it’s possible that Scott Gimple had not originally envisioned ending the season on that cliffhanger. It may have been last-minute meddling from AMC or someone else above.

In either case, Scott Gimple is the one who is being scapegoated. He’s the one who will have to pay for it over the next six months. He’s certainly paying for it on Twitter, where his @mentions have been absolutely brutal since the season finale. He’s tweeted four times in the two weeks since the episode aired, and none of the tweets have had anything to do with The Walking Dead. Nevertheless, Twitter has made them about The Walking Dead in sometimes funny, and sometimes unnecessarily cruel ways.

Here’s a sampling, starting with a completely innocent tweet about airplane mode:

https://twitter.com/j_sandcastle/status/721803416754753536

https://twitter.com/phil_addison04/status/721805475742932997

https://twitter.com/HEEL_Saylor/status/721804035708293122

Here, he tried to plug the Kickstarter for Aisha Tyler’s directorial debut. It did not go well.

https://twitter.com/YaBoyRonJovi/status/718957983447781377

https://twitter.com/arcr131213/status/719329023168552960

Here, all he was doing was talking about his selection of protein bars. Surely, Twitter couldn’t take issue with that, could they?

https://twitter.com/RachelTacoSass/status/718644239589093376

In his next tweet, he posted a picture of his protein bar.

People on Twitter are straight-up cruel, and sometimes hilarious. But mostly cruel. Scott Gimple would be wise to stay off of Twitter until October, or at least never, ever look at his @mentions, if he values his self esteem.