[Published at The Playlist] By now it’s impossible not to have heard that Kelly Marie Tran, who played Rose Tico in “Star Wars: The Last Jedi,” left Instagram, reportedly due unhappy “Star Wars” fans still harassing her online several months after the movie left theaters. These toxic fans, seemingly leaving quite the ugly blemish on “Star Wars” and fandom, in general, said things ranging from a hatred for her character to vile ethnic slurs and racial epithets. Charlie Brooker, the creator of the hit Netflix series “Black Mirror,” has weighed in the controversy, using one of his own episodes to try and explain why this kind of absurd trend of hatred has continued.

In season four of “Black Mirror,” there’s the episode “USS Callister,” wherein a gamer replicates the consciousnesses of his coworkers, and implants them into a video game so he can then maliciously toy with and abuse them. At a recent Variety event, the trade said: “Brooker likened the episode to gamers who torture their virtual families in ‘The Sims’ games.” However, Brooker revealed the deeper inspiration behind the episode: toxic fandom.

“We knew we wanted to do a story about space, it was as simple as that, and we knew we wanted to do a story about a tyrant,” Brooker told Variety. “That was where the story came from. And then as you do it, there are other thematic things that come in like fandom, workplace politics and abuse of power that comes in second.”

Brooker suggested the intense connection that fans forge beloved characters and brands can become corrosive when met with notions of entitlement and ownership issues.

“These properties have been around so long that they’ve been in people’s childhoods, they remember dressing up as these characters at Halloween,” Brooker said. “I don’t understand the rage. I do understand people identifying with something, and it is very personal to them, and that’s fine…I sometimes wonder if when people are interacting online with people, there are some people who just don’t see [them as people] unless they’re literally walking around in front of them if they don’t see them as human. Everyone’s got an insecure voice in their head. If it’s being personified by thousands of people screaming at you, that’s just awful.”

And that’s precisely the problem. It’s so easy for some thoughtless people to dehumanize the actors who play these characters onscreen, and it’s even easier for some to type insults to a computer screen without seeing repercussions. According to Twitter user Nicholas Levi, in a tweet that went viral, he explains the following about “Star Wars” fans:

“This is the fanbase that:
•Drove Jake Lloyd insane
•Made Hayden Christiansen quit acting
•Made George Lucas not want to make any more movies
•Made Daisy Ridley delete her Instagram
•And recently made Kelly Marie Tran leave Instagram”

“Star Wars: The Last Jedi” director, Rian Johnson, a target of harassment himself, though never facing the same level of abuse as Tran suggested the small minority of bad apples are distorting the perception of fandom.

“On social media, a few unhealthy people can cast a big shadow on the wall, but over the past 4 years, I’ve met lots of real fellow SW fans. We like & dislike stuff but we do it with humor, love & respect. We’re the VAST majority, we’re having fun & doing just fine.”

Let’s hope that Tran returns to Instagram, and the toxic “Star Wars” fan base, already constantly threatening to boycott the franchise, quits altogether and finds a new dark corner of the Internet to slink off to. May we suggest reruns of “Battlestar Galactica?”