If fiction doesn't affect reality, then why do people get upset about lack of POC representation or queerbaiting? This isn't trying to start a fight or anything, I'm pro fiction too but I've seen that argument a lot and don't know how to respond to it more eloquently than "that's different"
Okay so the actual point isn't "fiction doesn't affect reality", because OBVIOUSLY it both can and does.
The point is that fiction doesn't affect reality on a 1:1 basis. (that's one-to-one, in case you're not used to seeing it written like that.)
No one is going to watch Dexter and come away from it thinking that it's okay to be a serial killer just because the main character was a serial killer, for example, the same way no one played Grand Theft Auto and thought it would be okay to start jacking cars and shooting cops and ignoring all traffic laws. In fact, they could engage in MULTIPLE types of media that stars serial killers and glorifies car theft and unsafe driving practices, and they still wouldn't think it was okay to do those things.
Unless they were already a serial killer/car thief/intentionally unsafe driver, but even then, they'd know those things were not socially acceptable unless they were dealing with some serious mental health issues that had disconnected them from reality.
But antis/fandom purity police act as though portraying things that are absolutely not okay irl, like abuse/rape/underage sex/whatever, in fanfiction will somehow ~normalize it~ and people will start thinking it's okay when they didn't think that before. But that's not how fiction affecting reality works.
And no one single work of fiction makes, say, a lack of POC a problem - the problem is a widespread trend. AND the problem is that this particular issue is fiction reflecting issues in our culture that already existed elsewhere, racism and erasure of POC that is baked into our culture. That's reality affecting fiction, NOT fiction affecting reality, it's just that one of the ways to start changing reality is to - in addition to other things - start working on changing the trend in fiction.
But there is no widespread trend in fiction of things like pedophilia being treated as okay. There's no baked-in part of our culture that approves of pedophilia that we're pushing back against. And in fact even if there were a trend in fiction of approving of pedophilia (there isn't), it wouldn't be able to change our culture single-handedly into celebrating irl pedophilia. That's not how people or fiction work. And then FANfiction, being such a small subculture, comparatively, even if it's more popular than it used to be, couldn't even hope to make a dent.
Seeing murder in fiction will not equate to people going out and murdering. Even seeing murder treated as okay in multiple pieces of fiction will not equate to people going out and murdering. And reading fanfic about unhealthy/abusive relationships will not equate to people going out and emulating those relationships. That's what "fiction doesn't have a 1:1 effect on reality" means.
Honestly, if you read up on the research about how violent video games don't actually cause people to become more violent, it's the same premise. Honestly it's a lot of the same ARGUMENTS, and I already lived through that and it's exhausting.