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.
A self-published writer I follow(ed) spent a lot of time there. I thought it was basically a place to hate Star Wars for libs. I enjoyed the first two sequel movies in the theaters but then came to understand that they weren’t really good. The last sequel movie I didn’t even enjoy in the theater. As problematic as they are, Solo and the one about the death star plans were actually probably better. Solo might have been the best if Disney hadn’t fired the directors.