just as superdark, i deeply understand where you are coming from and how you feel. i don't think either of us described what you're talking about. i think your feelings are entirely justified and perfectly reasonable feelings to have around this. i have no want to argue against it, so i hope it does not come off that way. i do not in any way want to excuse or justify bigotry, intentional or not.
i think criticizing, discussing, and analyzing media is very important. i think that's my tldr, the Crux of my feelings about all this - the ability to practice critical thinking around media. it's not reasonable to expect everyone to be hypercritical of every piece of media, constantly, but like... it's healthy to have the skill. engaging with others and explaining why something is hurtful, or wrong, or part of a propaganda narrative - that's an important thing to do. because it's true, media DOES affect people. it DOES cause damage. but i also think media is shaped by the culture that created it - it's kind of a two way street. the context in which a media is presented has so much to say, too, like, under what genre or pretenses are you being sold on a thing? if there's a popular book depicting an unhealthy relationship, is it being advertised as a romance, or as a psychological horror? what angle will filmmakers trying to adapt the book take? will the movie adaptation become more known in the mainstream than the book? will it affect how people think about the book? idk i have a bachelor degree in art history and it's always Context All The Way Down.
i'm good friends with many people who are critical of the media we watch. but i'm no longer friends with people who have over the years, tried to persuade me directly to Stop Liking Thing. not because they dislike the thing, that's fine, and not because i think they are unjustified in disliking it, and not even because they dislike a thing they haven't even read or watched. it's fine! the point where a friendship can no longer thrive is when they can no longer trust me. it's fine if they can't trust me anymore on that basis, that's their choice and their very real feelings! but if they message me to tell me "hello haiz i see you are ENDORSING MURDER because you like this animated cartoon" that's not a real good faith conversation, and i don't feel very comfortable being friends with someone who thinks i am endorsing murder.
like, i've never been big on liking ~*Problematic Media*~ or anything, it's just that by the nature of everything being inherently flawed, there is no rulebook or clear guidelines on when a piece of media crosses into Harmful. like, i would definitely argue that SSSS and its presentation of race is at least somewhat harmful, especially if read by someone who already has a very... particular idea of scandinavia. but we can also see how many people who have read and, at some point, loved SSSS are still critical of it, and are/have been willing to read it through that critical lens. i also think a lot of us have reached the point where we just don't feel comfortable with it anymore. talking to fans (or former fans) who've been around for a while always feels like we're passing around a bottle containing a very strong drink and taking a long and hard sip out of it. there are people i trust to have not been accidentally radicalized by SSSS, while i also believe it's something that CAN happen.
the thing is mostly that i no longer trust random claims of "this media is Bad actually." every so often it will come from very real and justified hurt and concern over how a marginalized and vulnerable group is portrayed. sometimes it will come from motivated reasoning, where someone already dislikes a thing for subjective reasons and is fishing up Totally Morally Legitimate Reasons for why it's bad and nobody should watch it. sometimes there will be exaggerations of actual unfortunate implications or harmful representation, but blown up way past the actual presence in the thing. sometimes it's "lil nas x made a MUSIC VIDEO where he is MACKING on SATAN!!!!!!!!!!" and you have both conservative christians who are upset by it and gay people who think "he's making the rest of us look bad". sometimes there's a misunderstanding between the creator and their audience. there are so many many reasons of all kinds to label Thing Bad Don't Watch. and if you heed every single warning for Thing Bad without looking into it further, you won't be critically engaging with any media at all. obviously, you don't have to! if something sounds bad you can just choose to avoid it forever. but there's also the kind of people who sort of... list every piece of media as either Acceptable or Unacceptable, and will have deep moral reasonings behind each and every one, even though it often crumbles a bit under scrutiny. i have seen people condemn, say, steven universe, a cartoon for children created by a jewish non-binary person making active efforts to be inclusive, diverse, and challenging. you CAN find ways in which the show has failed to be those things, but where do you draw the line for "this media is unacceptable", while justifying other shows which may not even make the same efforts? that's the place "it's okay to just dislike something" comes from.
and yeah, this is kinda niche and specific, but i see it happen a lot. and it's frustrating, because so many legitimate grievances get lost in the noise, AND most people having those grievances aren't even TRYING to stop people from enjoying things, they just really want to have that conversation. so on the flipside there's absolutely the place where you say "i don't like how this show portrayed X" and people will retort "but you can't stop me from liking it!!!!!!!!!", and that's not a conversation either.
and like... sometimes, what are you even going to do? when people like j k rowling, who have a CONSIDERABLY larger platform than minna, come out as openly and aggressively transphobic, what do you even do? asking everyone to never pick up a harry potter book again is absolutely futile. you can't tell a large part of the population to repress their fond memories of the franchise, even if it's probably soured already. there's even the irony of people who cite harry potter as being one of the series that taught them to be loving, more knowledgeable about oppression, or even something that helped them realize they were queer or trans. nobody really knows How To Deal With This, and there's probably no good answer. you can't make rowling drop her transphobic views by emailing her. you can work on educating people around you about trans rights and how to spot transphobic rhetoric. you can actively choose to never monetarily support her again. you can view the franchise with a new and critical lens and find problematic aspects of her book you missed as a child. you can do a lot of things, or you can not do a lot of things, and there's still going to be transphobes rallying around her and susceptible people converting to bigoted views. you can't make people decide who they listen to. the reason this could even happen to begin with is that there was a cultural context ripe for this specific cocktails of events - it did not happen in a vacuum or out of nowhere, even though it really feels that way.
so again, i dont have a specific conclusion. nobody is immune to propaganda, neither creators nor audience. i think the best we can do is open spaces for conversations and understanding of different viewpoints - and that requires participants to be open to it. not everyone will be. that said, i think this thread is a surprisingly great example of a space just like that.
