Social media gives a voice to a lot of people that shouldn’t have loud voices. It’s not a secret and we’re all aware of it after more than two decades of its existence.

There are times though, when it’s just a bit quieter than normal, and it’s usually when people aren’t talking about politics or religion.

Apparently, we can add Zack Snyder to that list as well.

No matter what is happening in the world of social media, all it takes is for Snyder to do or say anything that becomes public for even the nicer accounts on the interwebs to join the dogpile of hatred, vitriol, snark, and groupthink toxicity. And for what reason? Because eleven years ago he gave us a more humanized, relatable take on Superman? Seemingly.

It’s difficult to believe these days, but prior to Man of Steel’s release in 2013, Zack Snyder’s name wasn’t something that triggered unholy hatred from the social media, blogging and vlogging masses. People enjoyed his remake of Dawn of the Dead in 2004, his adaptation of Frank Miller’s 300 was lauded and applauded in 2006, and even though it didn’t latch onto the cultural zeitgeist that strongly, his adaptation of Alan Moore’s Watchmen was also critically acclaimed and noted for its accuracy to the source material.

Snyder wasn’t becoming as popular as Steven Spielberg or Christopher Nolan by comparison, but there was enough positivity around his work that even when Sucker Punch bombed in 2011, it wasn’t quite a source of contention nearly as much as it is now from film fans.

And then he made Man of Steel, which clearly burst open the gates of Hell itself based on all the demon spawn that sprang forth to denounce it. Suddenly, Snyder was the worst director ever to touch a camera and had violated the sanctity of a beloved superhero that children and families could look up to ever since 1978, despite the character itself existing in comics that the general audience still hasn’t read, decades before that.

According to the Nerd MAGA legends apparently, the day that Man of Steel released was also the day that simultaneously all home copies of Superman: The Movie from 1978 either stopped working forever or burst into flames right before the eyes of innocent children and their horrified parents, wondering why the universe had forsaken them. Legend also claims that all cable and broadcast channels were forbidden to broadcast Christopher Reeve’s iconic role ever again, since clearly Zack Snyder’s take erased it completely from existence.

As silly and incredibly false as all of that sounds, that perfectly describes how the anti-Snyder crowd has publicly and visibly acted for over a decade, which only intensified when he “failed” to give them the World Finest’s adaptation they claimed to want when Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice released in 2016.

We can say “claimed,” because these are the exact same people that said Superman was “too perfect” and “broken” as a character, with no relatability whatsoever, in 2006 after Superman Returns bombed. Funny how they all seemingly forget they felt that way after Big Bad Zack seemingly came to their house and kicked their dogs with a single recorded neck snap.

Ever since then, all it takes for social media to dogpile on Snyder is for him to sneeze in the wrong direction or hang his toilet paper the wrong way in his bathroom, it seems. Whatever the man does or says, if it finds its way into a blog, post or video online, the mob will find it and brandish its digital tiki torches to express their rage that he exists as a living, breathing human being, let alone one that is trusted with studio budgets to keep making blockbuster movies, no matter what the haters ultimately do about it.

And naturally, in true mob mentality fashion, if you tell them how ridiculous they are acting, they will either defend it with their “right” to dislike anyone and anything they want, which is a weird flex to get defensive about your right to hate things, or they’ll lump you in with the Snyder cultists that still think WB is going to sell DC to Netflix so that Snyder can restore his original Justice League plans.

Ultimately, it’s the rational, reasonable fans that suffer in all of this, because if they actually enjoy a Zack Snyder film, they can’t post that enjoyment on social media without the mob calling them wrong for doing so, and if those same rational, reasonable fans don’t care for Snyder’s work, they get lumped into the groupthink Nerd MAGA crowd that is determined to take their hatred of his existence straight to their graves…all because he dared to give us a relatable, humanized take on Superman that the gatekeepers and Superman ‘78 acolytes simply refuse to handle or accept.

This has led to where we are now, when even an innocent quote about Snyder saying he may need a fan campaign to restore his lone box office bomb, Sucker Punch, is enough to get even the nicer accounts on Threads to add to the dogpile with jokes about how Kathleen Kennedy told him to make his movies good the first time when she rejected his Star Wars script.

At some point, it’s not just a joke anymore. Not after eleven years of rampant butthurt and toxicity, all because he didn’t give us Superman: The Movie Redux in 2013.

We might want to say a prayer for James Gunn’s sanity in 2025. Just saying.