My example was from around college with a Disney adult (I know) who was adamant that Pocahontas shouldn't be counted in the Disney princess line up.
That fixation set an alarm bell in my liberal brain, but I didn't want to think it was racism at the time. But the fixation on using technicalities (not technically a princess in the western monarchy sense) like in this case was just reaching to exclude a category of people in a way that was socially acceptable.
I can see that unbending view of rules and technicalities to be a red flag. The lack of willingness to take a personal stake in a topic and couching your real thoughts in arbitrary rules has been a clear sign for me to watch out. I see it with boardgames too. The excessive rule-following clues me in to a lot of reactionary behavior.
What about the rest of you? What things turned out to be red flags like that?
Edit - Fast forward to present day and this person is no longer a friend and is big into Q, Trump, and covid denialism.
TFW you know RotJ is kind of not great and it blows everything that came after it out of the water.
Also, Rey's arc is horseshit and while there are things to like in TLJ, it's generally kind of fucking stupid - only to be topped by Rise of the Skywalker which was full blown WTF mixed with "I'm just going to turn off my brain" for 2 hours.
Kathleen Kennedy should be fired just out of pure incompetence. It drives me nuts that she's so bad at her job, she makes chuds on youtube sound almost sane when they shit on her "wokeness" or whatever they go on about.
TFA was alright.
I've been drinking.