Man gets dumped for gatekeeping Marvel films and Twitter rejoices

Sometimes couples fight over silly things, like who emptied the dishwasher last. Other times, they fight over things that prove they shouldn’t be a couple at all — as proven by a recent Reddit thread.

In a new “AITA” post, (an acronym for “Am I the A**hole?”), one man’s desperate girlfriend turned to Reddit to ask: “AITA for for calling my boyfriend a gatekeeper?” The general consensus was no — she was very much not.

In the post, which was shared to viral Twitter account @AITA_reddit, the woman explains why she and her boyfriend are fighting: In short, she didn’t love Black Widow, for which her boyfriend believed her to be in the wrong. By his logic, she simply hadn’t seen enough Marvel films to really “get it.” Except, she had, prior to their meeting — a fact which he refused to accept.

The boyfriend then began quizzing his girlfriend on Marvel films, forcing her to “prove” her knowledge of having “really” seen them — because simply viewing them wasn’t enough, apparently.

“He wanted to go through every Marvel movie for me to tell him what they were about and prove to him that I have watched them and that I remember them, because even if I watched them, if I don’t remember small details it means that I haven’t REALLY watched them,” she wrote. “I told him he sounds like a gatekeeper by telling me that I can’t comment on the movie or that I can’t dislike it because I don’t meet his standards of what it means to REALLY watch a Marvel movie. I explained that the timeline and the character relationships are not difficult to understand, I can connect the dots when watching the movies, it’s not rocket science.”

Offended that he’d been deemed a “gatekeeper,” the boyfriend decided to sleep on the couch. Desperate, she turned to read and penned the aforementioned thread. By the time the @AITA_reddit twitter caught wind of it, however, she had already posted an update: They had broken up.

“Well, I think my 2-year relationship is really over because of Black Widow. I sat him down to have a conversation but just kept getting defensive. Thank you for your responses and I’ll have to figure out how tf [sic] I’m going to move out.”

Twitter, understandably frustrated by said gatekeeping boyfriend, was grateful to hear he had become an ex, while others addressed how problematic gatekeeping is in general — in or out of relationships.

Even self-proclaimed “geeky nerds” came to woman’s defence — no one should or can be expected to remember every minor detail of every major film or series.

It seems this man has (gate)kept himself single. Hopefully his Marvel knowledge will serve as an adequate companion moving forward.

And for what it’s worth: 97 percent of 12,185 votes determined that the boyfriend was, indeed, the A**hole.