expecting all of the actors in every show I watch to be Genuinely Good People is a stretch. The culture of worshipping celebrities - which is nothing new, humans seem to love worshipping others throughout history - and treating them as role models whose personal opinions actually matter outside of the TV screen is very confusing. Why would someone be an interesting philosopher just because they're good at running around a set in makeup and shooting fake guns?
I'm not even sure that genuinely good people exist, especially in a field like acting where some level of narcissism is a baseline requirement for a lot of roles, so whenever people are shocked to learn that some famous singer or actor has skeletons in their closet it surprises me that they hadn't assumed there was a problem there to start with. Maybe I'm just a jerk (I am) but most people I've met seem to have a variety of flaws or unfortunate opinions and if I limited myself to perfect people I'd hardly have any entertainment to choose from. And all of it would probably be crafted by psychopaths who were experts at covering their tracks rather than genuinely nice people who accidentally used the wrong word in a conversation once. (In fact, there's a challenge. Is there a single work of modern media with no problematic associations at all?)
All of this, I am in one-hundred percent agreement with. And as for the bit in bold, you probably wouldn't find them in the entertainment industry as they'll more likely have gone into politics. And certainly if you go into any work of fiction looking for things to be offended by (as I'm convinced people do now, usually so they can churn out clickbait articles and video "reviews") then you're going to find it. I've argued before that if someone were to pick me a random ideology and a piece of media, I could come up with a convincing argument to show how it either endorses
or repudiates said ideology. It's 90% the same tactics you use to get someone who neither wants nor needs a coffee machine to buy what you're selling anyway: Sound convincing and sincere in your bull****ting.
Rather than everything being free from problematic content, it's more interesting to me to dissect and understand those problems and use that as a first step to do better in future. I'm personally ok with creators not being perfect people. I'm less ok with them using their platforms for reasons I find unkind, but whether that affects my purchasing decisions heavily depends on the situation. We're at a really weird point in the Internet now where up and coming celebrities not only have the threat of being outed by their actions since becoming a media darling but also their actions in childhood, since their whole awkward teen years took place online. A certain Internet-famous creator was being called out a while back because she posted skeevy yiff artwork when she herself was ~14 or so and people were saying that it proved she was into underage stuff now. Yikes. I can't even imagine what the Internet would make of the weird fanfics I was writing in my teens if they ever saw the light of day.
And on that note I think how people react to being challenged says a lot too. If a celebrity is accused of saying something cruel but takes the opportunity to learn from it, listen to what people are saying and then reframes their opinions in a way that doesn't propagate awfulness then they should be given credit for trying and left alone; it's very different to doubling down and using that 'I'm sorry if I offended anyone' (translation: 'I'm sorry that what I said inconvenienced me') non-apology that's so fashionable these days. People shouldn't be crucified for making mistakes. However, when they refuse to listen and try to make themselves into a martyr for the right to bully others, and try to use their popularity to shout down anyone exercising their own free speech to challenge them, I lose a lot of sympathy for their position. It also makes a big difference if the thing they said was punching up or punching down. Will it stop me from subscribing to Disney+ or make me throw my cheapo Harry Potter boxset in the bin? No. But when I find someone ugly as a person, I might be less interested in checking out their future work. Cultivating an appealing image is part of their job when they're using their identity as a media brand.
This is all really interesting stuff to think about. Rightly or wrongly (and probably due to my own narcissism) I have more of a tendency to put myself in the place of the people being "called out" for things which, like, aren't actually crimes. But to be fair, that's usually because they are at least producing something of value (which is what makes them a valuable target) rather than simply spending their time complaining about what other people are doing. Beyond the despairing "Why do you even give a toss?" I also tend to think "Why should
I give a toss?"
If I was, for instance, the sort of person who produced potentially offensive fan content I would absolutely be able to see why some people would find it objectionable. But that shouldn't be a problem, since it wouldn't be for them and a very simple solution to their problem would be to stop looking at it. My answer to any non-constructive criticism aimed at my motivations or tastes rather than my skill-level would be "Yes, yes I did create this and I enjoyed creating it, and other people enjoy consuming it. It's not real, I don't have to justify myself to you or anyone else. Stop p*ssing on things you don't like and go look at things you do like or better yet, make them yourself. Be the change you want to see in the world." If, of course, any of that were the case.
The only thing keeping people from being themselves and enjoying what they want is fear of authority: Their employer, their webhost, the law. Sadly if notified all three of these are now willing to go to town on people for stepping outside of society's bounds of acceptability, which is kind of ironic given this is exactly how gay and trans people have been (and in many cases still are) treated and it feels like no step forward at all to start treating other people this way for, I dunno, drawing furry porn you don't like or making a clumsy Nazi analogy. I don't think anyone needs to apologise for anything unless they actually do feel sorry. I also don't think anyone has the right to
demand anyone else's respect because that itself is a confrontational way to behave and, speaking personally here, anyone using threatening behaviour to try and make me respect (if not obey) them is a sure-fire way of making sure they never, ever get it. Because that absolutely is the tactics of bullying, I don't think it matters who it comes from and I think anyone subject to it has the right to fight back.
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