Rian Johnson Explains Why He Deleted 20,000 Tweets In The Wake Of James Gunn’s Firing

After James Gunn was fired as director of Guardians Of The Galaxy 3 for his controversial joke-tweets about pedophilia and rape, his cast and friends came to his defense while questioning the political origins of the campaign against Gunn and the timing of Disney’s decision. The ordeal has also ignited a debate about free speech and Twitter trials, and it’s also (understandably) put some public figures on edge because, after all, livelihoods are at stake.

That is to say, Twitter is full of inane tweets (those that never approach the objectively bad level of Gunn’s tweets) that probably don’t really have a reason to exist. And it’s not too shocking that many celebrities would be searching (or hiring someone to do it) through their histories to scrub anything that could paint an even remotely negative picture. Well, someone discovered that The Last Jedi director Rian Johnson purged 20,000 tweets, and some folks began wildly speculating about the reason. This would include the Mary Sue Twitter account, which added, “[Y]ou probably know what that means by now.”

As seen above, Johnson explained that nothing was amiss, and no studio told him to take action. Johnson simply wanted to get rid of some possibly dumb tweets. “No official directive at all, and I don’t think I’ve ever tweeted anything that bad,” he tweeted. “But it’s nine years of stuff written largely off the cuff as ephemera, if trolls scrutinizing it for ammunition is the new normal, this seems like a ‘why not?’ move.”

Honestly? Seems like a wise move on Johnson’s part. The man has already endured death threats from Star Wars fans, and he knows exactly how vicious an online mob can be. Maybe he doesn’t want a bunch of old cat photos to haunt him, you never know, but this is probably the new social media world we live in …. either that, or maybe everyone will simply stop tweeting.