So, from a meta perspective, no real people died or were harmed. And the things real people get from a story are not a direct one to one analog to what goes on in a story.
Stories let people process things without actually having to participate in them. The fictional characters are not real. The person reading is, and generally filters what they read through a lifetime of experiences, picking and choosing what to integrate into themselves. Watching media or reading books and liking things doesn’t turn you into a bad person simply by exposure.
It’s true a story can spread a dialogue, but acting like someone is a terrible sinner guilty of the most horrifying thought crimes because they like the bad guy in a story isn’t really different in my mind that someone religious peddling nonsense like you’ll go to hell if you merely think a thought that isn’t in line with a holy book.
I think sometimes people raised in religious homes with all that guilt about thinking sinful things stop going to church, but sort of copy and paste the moral thought crime bullshit onto random things and pick that up as their replacement zealotry because it feels familiar.
I see it happening a lot in discussions of media with darker content.
Agreed 100%. I think it’s a combination of that and a severe lack of media literacy. I don’t know if there’s a real name for it, but what I think of as sort of internet neo-Puritanism is a driving force behind people being extremely uncomfortable with media that isn’t a morality play with clearly delineated good and bad guys, where the bad guys always suffer. Like, we had that, it was called the Hayes Code and it was terrible.
Religion isn’t necessary to explain this. Most people seem to believe that our actions define who we are. I tend to think that our thoughts are a better indication of our real self, given that our thoughts are less constrained than our actions.
Watching and reading about bad things doesn’t turn you into a bad person by exposure, but if you enjoy torture porn then i’m going to infer that you enjoy thoughts of torture and sought out that which reflects your thoughts and that makes you a bad person in my view.
So, from a meta perspective, no real people died or were harmed. And the things real people get from a story are not a direct one to one analog to what goes on in a story.
Stories let people process things without actually having to participate in them. The fictional characters are not real. The person reading is, and generally filters what they read through a lifetime of experiences, picking and choosing what to integrate into themselves. Watching media or reading books and liking things doesn’t turn you into a bad person simply by exposure.
It’s true a story can spread a dialogue, but acting like someone is a terrible sinner guilty of the most horrifying thought crimes because they like the bad guy in a story isn’t really different in my mind that someone religious peddling nonsense like you’ll go to hell if you merely think a thought that isn’t in line with a holy book.
I think sometimes people raised in religious homes with all that guilt about thinking sinful things stop going to church, but sort of copy and paste the moral thought crime bullshit onto random things and pick that up as their replacement zealotry because it feels familiar.
I see it happening a lot in discussions of media with darker content.
Agreed 100%. I think it’s a combination of that and a severe lack of media literacy. I don’t know if there’s a real name for it, but what I think of as sort of internet neo-Puritanism is a driving force behind people being extremely uncomfortable with media that isn’t a morality play with clearly delineated good and bad guys, where the bad guys always suffer. Like, we had that, it was called the Hayes Code and it was terrible.
Religion isn’t necessary to explain this. Most people seem to believe that our actions define who we are. I tend to think that our thoughts are a better indication of our real self, given that our thoughts are less constrained than our actions.
Watching and reading about bad things doesn’t turn you into a bad person by exposure, but if you enjoy torture porn then i’m going to infer that you enjoy thoughts of torture and sought out that which reflects your thoughts and that makes you a bad person in my view.