It is past time for the Anti-Snyder Cult to move on from their hatred.

We are one whole month into the theatrical release of James Gunn’s Superman film, the grand opening launch of the DCU for DC Studios. Despite all the positive hype, buzz, and renewed cultural significance for the newest cinematic Superman entry, the hardcore Zack Snyder haters outright refuse to let the Snyderverse go away.

Ironic of course, considering they spend so much of their time on social media telling the Snyder Cult to let it go and move on, only to turn around and act completely incapable of posting a positive review for Superman without taking a shot at Man of Steel, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, Zack Snyder’s Justice League, or the director himself.

The situation has seemingly intensified recently over inane box office arguments, where Snyder cultists are defending Man of Steel by citing its higher global box office total than Superman, and pointing out what Man of Steel’s box office would be today after adjusting for inflation.

The stupidity and immature nature of those arguments aside, they’re not coming from a large group of fans that are dragging James Gunn or the DCU. They’re coming from trolls and rage bots with low follower numbers and either fake or no profile pictures. The number of actual humans posting the “Superwoke” memes and box office toxicity is still tiny compared to the overwhelming amount of humans responding to them and keeping their bile alive.

These are the same people who felt the need to warn James Gunn about the cultists on the Snyder Cut subreddit that were planning to boycott his Superman film, as if somehow they could pose a legitimate threat to the launch of the DCU.

To his credit, Gunn understands the situation a lot better than these Anti-Snyder cultists do:

He wasn’t wrong. Superman is leading the pack among comic book films this year at the box office, poised to beat out all three Marvel Cinematic Universe releases at the end of the day, so whatever boycott actually happened didn’t even scratch the surface.

Furthermore, when recently commenting on the subject of trolls and toxicity at large, Gunn gave a perfect response for all of us to remember:

In two posts, the creative boss of DC Studios gave the Anti-Snyder cult the blueprint on how to kill the Snyderverse chatter on social media, and not only do they refuse to listen to it, they’re doubling down on their amplification of the rhetoric they claim to hate by continuing to acknowledge and boost it, under the misguided guise of shaming and making fun of them.

The Snyder Cult doesn’t care about being made fun of or shamed. If they did, then they wouldn’t behave the way they do. Like all cults and trolls online, they crave attention, and the worst way to hurt them is to deny them that attention. We all struggle with ignoring them, but that’s the bottom line.

The Anti-Snyder Cult isn’t remotely interested in denying the Snyder Cult their attention, and wants to amplify it and keep talk about the Snyderverse alive and well for all to see, despite their claims that it needs to die by those who are clinging to it out of delusion. At this point, it’s all gaslighting, since there’s far more talk about how allegedly horrible the Snyderverse was, how allegedly inaccurate the characters were to the comics, how much alleged damage it did to the DC brand, and how allegedly certifiable its fans are.

So why won’t the Anti-Snyder Cult let the Snyderverse go, and why are so many actual humans with larger audiences and followings unwilling to move on from it? The same reason the Snyder Cult won’t let it go: attention whoring.

Social media is nothing if not a farm for engagement and attention, and the easiest way to get it is to farm rage and negativity about a popular subject, because not only will you attract the people offended by what you say, but also the people who agree with you and join your online mob. That’s engagement on two sides of the aisle for the same posting behavior.

To say that the Snyderverse and the DCEU were a magnet for controversy in the past nine years would be an understatement; frankly, the death of that means the end of an era for engagement farmers and content creators who relied on that hate marketing for nearly a decade. So, as much as they tell Snyder Cultists to move on, they don’t want to themselves, because the DCU so far isn’t remotely as controversial or polarizing as the DCEU was, by design. Without that controversy and chatter, there’s nothing for the engagement farmers to latch onto and ignite their outrage to attract attention.

The Snyder Cult also draws the attention it wants, making the whole situation a double-edged sword of foolish behavior. Suppose neither side will let the Snyderverse go and is intent on making the other one acknowledge them. In that case, it’s never going to go away, no matter what any of them tell you, and the social media algorithms will delight in pushing their bile and nonsense in our path to mute and block for eternity, as we preserve our sanity as rational Snyderverse and DCU fans that moved on awhile ago, and don’t need to acknowledge either of these clown shows.