An ask I got, from someone who wants to remain anonymous:
“Hello! I have a friend who’s currently getting really worked up about liking “problematic” content bc their online friend groups are telling them about things like people who like villains in media are bad people and all that other purity fandom stuff, how can I tell them that what you like doesn’t equal what you are?”
My first concern for your friend, honestly, is that they’re at a high risk of being in abusive friendships. Fandom purity police are not known for their tendency to go, “Well, I see the issue this way, and have chosen to take these steps, but I understand that other people can have different perspectives and still be acting from a valid and moral place.” Instead, they’re very likely to trample mental and emotional boundaries to insist everyone agree with them, and to use verbally abusive tactics to make that happen.
So I think it helps to back up and look at the issue from a broader perspective: From “my friend has some opinions I don’t think will help them” to “I’m afraid my friend may be in a potentially abusive friend group who are subjecting them to a lot of pressure to act and think a certain way (which I don’t think will help them).”
In my experience, people who get sucked into purity policing social groups have a hard time getting back out of them because those groups exert isolation and control.
Isolation: People are heavily pressured to cut contact with anyone who doesn’t agree with the group. This means losing contact with outside friends who think differently–and it also means that they know that if they step out of line, they’ll lose all their purity-policing friends (who are also now their only friends). It is way, way easier to leave an abusive situation if you know you have somewhere safe to land–so denying people that lifeline is part of how these groups retain membership.
Control: People are pressured to think, behave, and see the world in really specific ways. Especially, they are pressured to think that how the group sees social justice issues like abuse, racism, or homophobia are the only possible correct ways to see it. They create an “us vs them” mentality where anyone who is not “us” is a “them”. For example, anyone who doesn’t agree with purity policers about hating villains must condone abuse. The world is now scarily filled with tons of people who think abuse is super fun and totally fine. The only way to fight this is to be part of the group and do what they say! There’s absolutely no freedom to think that you could oppose abuse, and yet find some antagonists sympathetic or likeable.
So in some ways, my advice for you is to follow standard advice for someone whose friend is in a potentially abusive relationship:
State your concerns gently but clearly. (eg. ”I’m worried that your friends have a really narrow worldview that in reality isn’t the only way to see things, that they engage in really unhealthy behaviour, and that if you ever find yourself disagreeing with them, they’ll turn on you and it’ll be really bad for you”)
Make the issue about your friend and their decisions instead of attempting to control them. (”I think it’s important that you really think these things through and come to your own conclusions. It’s up to you whether you agree with them or not.”)
Try to help them see the alternatives and have healthy alternatives to the group–encourage them to maintain healthy relationships apart from this group, and to remember that you can be a moral person without doing or believing everything this group says.
Take care of yourself and set your own boundaries. Watching someone fall down this rabbit hole can be worrying, frightening, and exhausting–and that’s not even counting if your friend absorbs the group’s abusive tactics and starts using them on you! Remember that it’s not your job to save them, and you can’t save someone who doesn’t want to be saved. You can be a friend who’s a counterweight to their new friends, but it’s not your job to pull them out all by yourself.
So, that said, on to the actual debate about how moral people can consume problematic fiction or enjoy problematic things, and still be moral. I’ll just throw up some links:
Your Favourite Media is Problematic - Here’s How to Deal (And What Not to Do)
It’s Okay to Like Problematic Things
How to Be a Fan of Problematic Things
You might notice, the common thread through all of these is developing individual critical awareness. That is, not assuming that you will be mindlessly controlled by the media you consume, but actively taking control of what you think about it and owning your responsibility not to let it affect you in super negative ways. This is another aspect of encouraging your friend not to cede all their decision-making to the group and let them decide which opinions are good and which are bad.
Sometimes knowing about social justice and caring about a better world does mean having a negative opinion of a work of media, or not being able to enjoy it. That’s not actually bad. Fandom purity police wouldn’t get so far if they didn’t have a grain of truth in there. Where they go awry is deciding only one interpretation and set of actions are moral or valid. The best antidote is, therefore, encouraging people to break out of the lockstep and begin to think for themselves.
blakekathryn
ellievsbear
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