A History of “Star Wars” and Toxic Fandom: Part One of Two
How a once-beloved brand forever polarized a loyal fanbase
Published in
11 min readNov 22, 2020
“Star Wars.” At once my greatest geek pleasure, and the bane of my existence. No work of pop-culture before or since has fired my imagination to the degree of 1977’s original work, and the collective of the series — in whatever form — has remained appointment viewing.
So how then could something so grand, so mythic that nearly everyone seemed to rave about over 40 years ago descend into a whirlpool of negativity and, well, abject hatred?
Read on …
Episodes IV-VI and Early Spin-Offs
My family and I stood on line in the early summer of 1977 at a tiny theater in Monticello, New York. There was no “A New Hope” back then, nor was there an “Episode IV.”
There was only “Star Wars,” and it took the universe by storm.
