I didn't wanna get involved because god damn that was a massive thread, but it does get me thinking: does fictional media have any influence in the things that people do?
I say yes, if only because the left has been programmed through the Long March through both fictional and nonfictional media, hundreds of shows, etc, and the impact of fictional media on people should be quite obvious, considering we boycott shows for being woke and whatnot, but I guess what I’m trying to ask is how much of an influence is it, and is it worth regulating, why or why not?
I know people on both aspects of that whole loli debate, I know people who like lolis that have had to report people to the cops for pedo shit, and I know a loli lover who admitted to “guiding” someone through their transition, so I can’t say that I really have my own opinion on it tbh, I just think that the issue is gonna come up at some point because if society ever does come back to normal, we’re gonna have to deal with “the people who were trying to enduce my child into transitioning watch these weird Japanese cartoons and the weird Japanese cartoons have depictions of young kids in sexual situations”.
/u/Steampunk_Moustache actually brought up something that I honestly never thought about, and well, maybe they can explain it better here than in that chaotic mess of a thread. What exactly makes art so different? Like it was mentioned several times that anime characters look nothing like actual people (which very much depends on the anime and is not a universal thing), but imo, a human is still a human, so does that matter that much? Like I can go on Twitter or Insta and go searching for a few hundred cosplay girls that either naturally have anime girl bodies or got work done for it, but is it just the literal art styles you’re talking about? I’m gonna stop rambling and let this thread be the thread, as I wanna see this discussion.
Aw shit, here we go again. Look, I don't like porn, but it's pretty hard to detach it from speech/art/expression, which all are and should be protected. Drawn art is an especially easy example, since it's even more fictional. If I draw a sexy woman in clothes, is that fine? Not degenerate? Art? Now, if I draw her without clothes? Porn? Degenerate? Not art? And what if I do it in a classical style, like older masterpieces? Porn/degenerate/art? Where's the line? "You'll know it when you see it?" Okay, now say I draw this sexy woman with smaller tits? With clothes, without clothes? Porn/degenerate/art/you know the deal? The line, where it is?
Also, speaking of degeneracy laws, how is that any different than hate speech laws? "I believe in free speech, but this thing I don't like should be outlawed." No. Free speech exists to defend "bad" speech. Deal with it.
Plenty of shit grosses out normal people, and should. Plenty of that is also still protected, and should be. "It's gross" is nonsense rational and, honestly, something you see a lot more from the modern left. It can be gross, and still be legal, and deserving of protection.
Porn is art. For better or worse.
Porn is not art. Porn is maximum exploitation of aesthetics intended to get someone off, and you can rhapsodize all you want on the question but nobody has trouble telling it apart from art.
Is the depiction of the sexy woman (with or without clothing) intended to express some type of thought or is the final point of the piece to titillate? Faye in Cowboy Bebop = not porn. Game of Thrones = not porn. Porn parodies = porn. Etc.
Obscenity has NEVER been constitutionally protected speech. Anywhere, ever. This idea that distributing hardcore porn is somehow a free speech issue is just something our increasingly softheaded culture has invented over the last few decades.
A more complex question is when does IG modeling become softcore porn and why we allow kids to access that.
The nudity and sex in Olgaf is often completely incidental to the structure of the comic. It's porn. I'll give you it is a very weird mashup of porn and funny jokes that could only be born in the webcomic era (the porn is like visual Tourette's, it would be much better without), but that's what it is. Same thing with infamous porn anime like Demonbane.
I think it's harder to characterize something like Lars Von Trier's Nymphomaniac, but in the end, despite the explicit depiction of sex, that falls under art as it is clearly using the sex as a means to communicate something. I don't think it's very valuable but it is art nonetheless.