I'm willing to separate the art from the artist after the artist is deceased and can't cause more damage. I'm not willing to divorce the two while the artist is still alive and making money off their art while making the world around them a worse place.

[–] Abyssian@lemmy.world 0 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

With just the cases of the loudly vocal asshat artists, or do you unlike the bulk of people actually take the time to try to ensure you're not financially supporting anyone who holds such awful beliefs?

That's the difference between something that truly matters to you and something you only care about on the surface. If something truly and deeply matters to you, then it is worth changing your life and behavior for.

[–] nyan@lemmy.cafe 1 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

I admit that I no longer keep track as I used to thirty years ago. Unfortunately, the information burden has gotten to be just too much, so I admit that said information does have to bubble to the surface in some venue more widely distributed than the author's social media account before I notice it.

Thing is, though, 70% of the people boycotting the most visible 30%—even 20%—of the artists who express bigoted sentiments is likely to be more useful in curbing the expression of those sentiments than 5% of the people boycotting 100% of them. It's a much clearer indicator to other artists that no, this crap isn't acceptable.

[–] Abyssian@lemmy.world 1 points 6 hours ago

I'm absolutely fine with that. Boycotting assholes and voting with your wallet is a good thing to do. Most people don't have time to deeply research everyone involved behind the scenes with media before making a choice on what to buy or watch. It's a hell of a lot of work.

This is an issue that's gotten blown up by people who genuinely are doing nothing but virtue signaling. I'd be surprised if you didn't know anyone who online would loudly proclaim against Harry Potter while having it as their secret 'comfort' book/show/whatever, or at least strongly suspect a lot of people do it. It's become fashionable, a social cue, and something people can feel justified in feeling superior to others about and spewing hate at others who don't agree about.

Ironically, it's being used the same way phony Christians use religion. Feeling smug and superior because you're believing and doing what they see as right and feeling justified to spew hatred at people doing what they see as wrong. Unfortunately, spewing hate and shit and raging at people can feel really good to humans, especially when they feel righteously justified in it. It's not kicking some poor 80lb emotionally broken gay kid to death, it's fighting evil and cleansing the world.

That shit drives me crazy regardless of which side of any spectrum the abusers and the abused lie. The solution to someone being a loud, obnoxious jackass isn't spewing more hate back at them. Then all onlookers see is two groups of people who seem fairly hateful and awful. It's showing compassion and care and living with dignity and respect for others, so that the entire world sees one awful hateful person and that person seems batshit crazy and awful because they're spewing hate about the awesome, caring, good people.

A lot of the shit online is just kids looking for an excuse to spew hate. That isn't supporting trans rights or helping anyone. It's just making the world a worse place.