A few days ago, a production assistant on an animated series bravely took to Twitter to expose the bad behavior of the show’s writers, which included making fun of tweets from aspiring screenwriters.
Heidi Butler warned emerging screenwriters away from using the popular #PreWGA hashtag on Twitter. Why? Because the writers room she sat in on typically began the workday by searching the hashtag and making fun of the tweets they found. You can read Heidi’s tweets below.
Hey, aspiring writers! Donβt use the #prewga hashtag.
The writers room I sat in on regularly started their day by screen sharing tweets by aspiring writers and shitting on them. They would search that tag for hopeful tweets and then make fun of them.
— Heidi Butler (@ThisIsHeidiB) June 21, 2022
Mike McMahan, the show's creator, led the morning roast of #preWGA tweets. He would screenshare and bring up the tweets he wanted to make fun of.
Josh Bycel, the showrunner, made the homophobic comments that I reported to Sydney Ryan, the producer, who helped retaliate against me https://t.co/bRU4nOuVzR— Heidi Butler (@ThisIsHeidiB) June 23, 2022
This truly is some asshole behavior. I share my thoughts on this in the below video.

Novelist. Editor. Journalist. Screenwriter. Filmmaker. Chaotic neutral.