For vee "Should people engage in this media made by an awful person who has literally used the popularity of their media as an excuse for their awful behavior" is kind of a solved problem.
But I keep thinking about the underlying structural issue of "There was a time where if you really wanted to engage in it anyway, you could and no one ever know and that time seems to be gone and maybe we should be talking about that too"
And I don't mean "So people can hide still being into it from scrutiny" as much as "My engagement in this to criticize it should not count as a +1 in some ledger people use to make future shitty decisions"
I guess what I'm getting at is everything we do on every system is tracked and tallied and data warehoused to the point that everything we engage in informs something about trends and informs future decisions.
And I don't think we were built to function in a reality where literally everything we do, even under a blanket in our bed late at night with no one actually watching, has this kind of far-reaching amalgamated load to it.
Everything we do has some moral load to it because it informs some corporate entity of trends but that individual load is also so small we can't really engage in it on a philosophical or practical level. We try to talk about trends and popularity and people only see individual decisions.
"Okay that system is trash and we should be burning it down" only goes so far. At some point you have to accept this is what is in the now, and build a model for functioning ethically within it. Right?
And yeah I know, "No ethical consumption" blah blah.
But I'm not talking about life staples here. I'm talking about trying to explain to the performative median centrist who kind of gets why buying Shitty IP Made By Bad Person is a bad idea, but their model for this falls apart the moment Shitty IP Made By Bad Person is free to download.
They don't, nor should they have to, understand the precise complicated network of threads being plucked here to say "That +1 download tells someone they made the right decision buying the rights to offer this for free and will continue to work with that IP in the future"
and as a result you have no hope tackling "It's fine, I pirated it"
I guess at the end of the day what I'm saying is "How did we end up in a place where literal global attention can be weighed and optimized for like a commodity? That kind of sucks"
@trysdyn Ah right, there's no shortage of this shit. Ugh.
And that sucks. Guess I'll have to write that strategy off then. Pity
@elfi I mean, it's a valid point. On top of everything else the author does, the actual content itself is bigoted. There is a valid tie between the author's awful views and them seeping into the work.
As is what invariably happens in time with any bigoted author with a shitty view, I think. You can only write about what you know.
I think it's less "It's not a valid point" and more "Some people just have their minds made up and will only acknowledge points they think they can tear down and ignore the rest"
@elfi That's the proximal trigger but it could be that, it could be the animatronic furry bait, it could be the engineering kink conveyor belt game...
Hence the "The actual proximal trigger for this thought is a solved problem to vee but" at the start of this ramble.
But yeah I brought that up too the last time I had an argument about this and people found it far more interesting to talk about everything else I said and just ignore that point, funny enough 🤷