On July 15th, Mediaite reported the following:

Online Shock Spreads Over Massive Hack of Political, Corporate, and Celebrity Accounts: ‘BREAKING: Twitter’

Shock, mockery, and a little relief: how the very online on Twitter reacted to the massive hack of, well, Twitter.

After an ominous, slow-rolling hack touting a likely Bitcoin scam hit some of the biggest political, corporate, and celebrity names on Twitter, people couldn’t help but turn to the compromised site to sound off on the moment. And the irony was spread thick and wide.

But not everybody saw the humor in the moment, after both former President Barack Obama and current Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden were hacked — and wondering if this was a foreign, cyber attack.

In the brief interregnum when Twitter suspended the ability of verified accounts to post — presumably, as it tried to lock out the hackers — unverified users took full advantage of their newfound power and bragged about how the tables had turned.

On July 16th, WIRED.com reported the following:

Twitter Is at Its Best When Verified Accounts Can’t Tweet

On Wednesday, a hack involving high-profile Twitter accounts led the service to suspend the activity of verified users. It was great.

Yesterday, those people with the blue checks, those “verified” social media users, found themselves silenced on Twitter. Elon Musk, Kanye West, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Barack Obama, and a host of other Twitter mega-users had their accounts compromised Wednesday afternoon in what appeared to be an attempt to pull off a bitcoin scam. To staunch the bleeding, Twitter blocked verified accounts from posting messages. Suddenly, many a Twitter blowhard was locked out; the drivers of conversation were muzzled, and the plebes had the controls. Nature was healing. It was a night, or at least a few hours, without checkmarks.

Only July 17th, pymnts.com reported the following:

Twitter Hack Of Kardashian, Obama And 130+ Other A-Listers Invites FBI Probe

The FBI is investigating the worst security breach in Twitter’s 14-year history, as hackers commandeered more than 100 high-profile accounts, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Security investigators discovered cybercriminals committed alleged cryptocurrency fraud Wednesday (July 15) after hackers seized control of the Twitter accounts of political figures, executives and celebrities. Among the targets included presumed Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, reality star Kim Kardashian, former President Barack Obama, Microsoft’s Bill Gates, entrepreneur Elon Musk and investor Warren Buffett.

The attackers posted tweets that appeared to promote a cryptocurrency scam and posted similar tweets on celebrity accounts soliciting donations via bitcoin to their verified profiles, The Journal reported.

Then interestingly, Rian Johnson’s Twitter account went missing:

Shortly thereafter, Rian popped his round head up, on his Knives Out Twitter account on July 16th:

This despite the fact that no story I could find mentioned Twitter accounts being deleted due to the attack. Every story I could find only mentions that the Twitter accounts were taken over or breached, not deleted.

So why would Rian Johnson play into the notion that his Twitter account was deleted due to the hack through his Knives Out Twitter account?

Well, also on July 16th, purported Disney insider WDW Pro posted the following on the wdwmagic.com forums:

To add further to the company’s woes, in the past 24 hours there was a major breach of security at Twitter. While the news media is mostly focusing on a bitcoin scheme that was part of the Twitter hack, Disney (and other companies) are much more concerned about the seemingly true issue that hackers had access to all Direct Messages on the platform for verified accounts. I am told that a small minority of individuals within the company AND linked to the company through various current and former projects may have had information within those Direct Messages that would be damaging. Disney Legal has advised individuals who may have had damaging information in their Direct Messages to delete their Twitter accounts, and at least one individual of significant stature has elected to do so. There is real fear in Burbank that hackers have information about the company, about individuals within the company, etc, which would be particularly unpleasant to have released into the public sphere.

Did Disney tell Rian Johnson to delete his Twitter account?

Now, some folks like Kneon and Geekly Sparkles from Clownfish TV who have worked around Disney in contract capacities, have stated that they feel WDW Pro to be the real deal. Others are highly skeptical of WDW Pro. WDW Pro himself has recently posted a “prediction grading thread” that readers can review. Ultimately though, readers of this blog will have to make their own determinations as to whether or not WDW is the real deal.

But what’s interesting is that I couldn’t find any mention of DMs being an issue with the Twitter hack in any of the legacy media articles. Until today.

From The Verge on July 18th:

Read Twitter’s update on the huge hack — 8 accounts may have had private messages stolen

The bad news: Twitter has now revealed that the attackers may indeed have downloaded the private direct messages (DMs) of up to 8 individuals while conducting their Bitcoin scam, and were able to see “personal information” including phone numbers and email addresses for every account they targeted.

That’s because Twitter has confirmed that attackers attempted to download the entire “Your Twitter Data” archive for those 8 individuals, which contains DMs among other info.

They may even have DMs that the 8 individuals tried to delete, given that Twitter stores DMs on its servers as long as either party to a conversation keeps them around — we learned last February that you can retrieve deleted DMs by downloading the “Your Twitter Data” archive, even if you’ve deleted them yourself. The archive can also include other personal information like your address book and any images and videos you may have attached to those private messages as well.

The good news: Twitter claims none of those 8 accounts were verified users, suggesting that none of the highest-profile individuals targeted had their data downloaded.

Unfortunately, or fortunately depending on your point of view, the good news may not matter. If DMs that verified accounts deleted still exist with the accounts of other users, then the DMs of verified users could still be obtained. Which would mean that the action of deleting an account may not have much effect, if any at all. And this is only what has been discovered at the present and reported on. Who knows how long this hacking went on, the extent of it, or how many people have actually been involved. Information is still coming out.

But what would be so sensitive in Rian Johnson’s DMs that he would delete his account, whether of his own volition or at the behest of Disney?

Well, Rian Johnson’s Twitter account has been the subject of strangeness outside of the silly nonsense he posts in public. In July of 2018, Deadline reported that Rian deleted 20,000 old posts in the wake of the James Gunn controversy. Perhaps some of the DMs pertain to that. He was also accused by some of having purchased nearly half a million fake followers for his Twitter account. A few of his DMs may talk about that.

But an old Reddit post from 9 months ago by user MolyneuxEdward, spoke about Rian Johnson belonging to a Twitter bullying group.

The user wrote:

Before Rian DELETED EVERYTHING, Johnson was part of a very strange, insular, and deeply cruel subculture that called itself Film Twitter. Led by Devin Faraci, formerly of the Alamo Drafthouse and a blog called BirthMoviesDeath, Film Twitter was an army of drinking buddies who would get wasted together and scream at people online all day who disagreed with their hot movie takes. Film Twitter was filled with guys like Devin, Rian, Drew McWeeny, Meredith Borders, Priscilla Page, Jordan Hoffman, Kumail Nanjiani, and Jen Yamato, among many others. They were INSANELY cruel to strangers that they deemed not “woke” enough or had “bad” opinions on movies. Name calling and threats were par for the course, and in fact, they got off not just on harassing fans, but also entertainers whose work they did not enjoy, like the cast of a dumb party movie from 2012 called Project X and the indie filmmaker Joe Swanberg. They really hurt many young artists’ careers, and they got off on inflicting pain onto those they saw as enemies or worse, inferior moviemakers.

I personally went to a couple of their meetups. Imagine 20 Comic Book Guys getting hammered, singing Karaoke, and passing around their phones to brag about the strangers they were totally schooling. Just irredeemable and vile shit from a sweaty legion of dork alcoholics. Their usual excuses for harassing people would be some nonsensical and completely irrelevant rhetoric about gender or race. Didn’t like Force Awakens? Misogyny. Thought one of their buddy’s new indie film sucked? Bigotry. These guys spread so much hate, but would immediately retreat into “I’M BEING BULLIED! HARASSMENT!” when their victims dished it back. This is called “crybullying.”

That could certainly cancel everything Rian’s ever written or spoke about Kelly Marie Tran and Instagram, now couldn’t it?

But wait, there’s more!

Rian Johnson eventually had to delete all of his Twitter references to Devin Faraci after he admitted to sexually assaulting a woman. They are still, however, very close friends. So for all of his posturing, he’s a total fraud who hangs out regularly with a creepy criminal. The online toxicity of the TLJ fanbase is a direct reflection of it’s director and his social circle.

 

If Rian’s DMs were stolen, and ever do get published, we could be looking at another two years of discussion about The Last Jedi. But not necessarily in a way that pleases Rian.

Clownfish TV comments:

Originally published here