#and its like that is deranged!!! im not going to praise someone for spreading complete horseshit because their ego told them

[violentviolette]

"telling someone incorrect information about a media franchise will never have the same potential for harm the way telling someone incorrect information about their mental health or illness or their loved ones murder will and i think its important to keep that perspective in these discussions. especially because i think the blurred line between media and real world topics, and people consuming real world topics the same way they do media, and treating them like they're essentially the same and approach researching them in the same way is a big part of this problem." I've been saying this for ages you are so real for this. It's genuinely a big issue that people have grown the tendency to compare every form of media that they consume to real life issues, which then desensitizes them to said real life issues. It's a big issue that people compare content relating to fictional characters who do not exist and are not sentient as on the same level as real, living and breathing people. Is it annoying when people mix fanon with canon to the point that the entire message behind a media has lost itself ? Yes, it very much is. But does that loss harm anyone on a physical, mental, emotional or psychological level ? Nowhere close. This technological age makes me so uneasy because of the ever increasing comparison of media to real life events, and the continuous belief that "fiction affects reality" + "fiction = reality." If fiction *does* genuinely affect reality, then that would mean violent video games inherently make someone violent and horror movies inherently make someone a murderer. I say that: if you already struggle with anger issues, exposing yourself to more violent forms of media without critical consumption will obviously worsen the symptoms, along with horror movies giving you ideas on how to kill that one relative you've fantasized killing for the past half decade—the only thing that affects reality are idiots who lack critical thinking. A comparison I can think of that people bring up to debate that "fiction affects reality" are the trends of fictional cats and rabbits consuming milk and carrots respectively. It's so silly because if you're planning to become a parent to an animal, it is your JOB to do research into that animal's diet, livelihood, habitat, body language etcetera. Why are you trusting the livelihood of a talking cartoon character ? Sorry for the long ask, but what you said is so important and I hope people adopt that mindset more, especially with this growing technological social media age.

no apologies neccessary anon u are absolutely correct and u should say it

media should not be where people are getting actual real life applicaple information. *no one* should look at a work of fiction in any form and just assume that whats being said or done is accurate information that they can just apply to their real life. and the same goes the other way around. when u want to research mental health topics or world history or a science, no one should be approaching it the same way as digging through their favorite shows wiki.

but there's been this huge kind of like. fandomification of social justice and social science and other topics like this where instead of understanding the critical nuance of these things and approaching them with a research minded perspective and an understanding of the nuance needed because so many things in real life are contradictory and complex and have eons of context, people approach them like tv shows. they think if they just read enough information and consume enough of the "content" surrounding it then they'll be able to fully understand and grasp them and then be able to educate others about them as some kind of authority and it just makes me want to scream from the rooftops that *thats not how any of this works*

the desensitization thing is also so real. u genuinely cannot have a single conversation about a real world topic without someone bringing up media and i dont know how else to nicely tell people that that is in no way relevent and actually actively harmful. trying to relate everything in life back to media and not being able to talk about a topic without including media will genuinely rot ur brain because it completely desensitizes u to the issue of harm. being wrong about media will never ever have the same impact that being wrong about mental health or physical health or animal welfare or public wellbeing will