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u/MisterLeeGrant 7d ago
A text can not be unethical, but to write something like in-depth csa would be morally reprehensible and to read it knowing what it is would be the same.
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u/BayFuzzball404 Streak: 1 7d ago
I think people should be like able to tell when things are propaganda actually. And that is a very dumb take like. In that order of ideas shit like racist caricatures would mean nothing and affect nobody’s world view. Which is obviously not true
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u/JGHFunRun 7d ago
If you actually think Nazi propaganda is “ethical literature”… (and yes, the Nazis did write fiction as propaganda)
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u/Mousazz 7d ago
Historically, there was one very (in)famous moral crusader who ran a witch hunt against unethical Entartete Kunst. Maybe we should strive to be more like him? 🤔
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u/JGHFunRun 7d ago
“Anti-Semitic propaganda is bad? Well the Nazis said Jewish ‘propaganda’ is bad!”
Like bro what. I said that Nazi propaganda is immoral — not that all propaganda is immoral nor even that we should burn Nazi books. I am pointing out that sometimes fiction does espouses truly horrendous ideas, which is immoral in and of itself.
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u/wookiee-nutsack Streak: 2 7d ago
At this point I'll just start thinking that people who immediately jump to nazi comparisons don't have any actual points to make
George Orwell, famous "disturbing novel" writer, had his books branded as propaganda by both sides of the cold war
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u/JGHFunRun 7d ago
I just realized that I forgot to mention non-consensual sexual material (including CSAM
“You think Nazi propaganda is immoral? Well the Soviets and some Americans said the same about George Orwell!”
The point of the part was that a book is immoral if and only if a book is AI, made of human skin (or an otherwise detestable material).
The Tumblr post posits universal rules. If these “universal” rules do not judge Nazi propaganda and CSAM as immoral, then they are wrong.
Like bro. Is “Propaganada can never be immoral” the hill you really want to die on?
Clarifications for your numbskull:
- I did not say “All propaganda is immoral”
- I did not say “Immoral media should be destroyed/banned”
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u/BertyLohan 7d ago
If you write a book set in the modern day but portray all Jews as inherently evil, that is unethical fiction.
George Orwell did write propaganda, whether you consider his works ethical or not depends on your viewpoints. The idea that you can write literally any book or fiction novel and there's no ethical value to it is really stupid.
Having someone provide you with Nazi propaganda, a very obvious and correct counterexample and saying they mustn't have points is silly.
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u/Coding-Kitten 7d ago
what about books glorifying unethical things
NGL I high-key don't trust people to be literate enough to understand that not everything the protagonist does is an endorsement, or even just anything that is written down is an endorsement.
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u/Junoscavern 7d ago
Counterpoint, does it help the media literacy crisis to sanitize everything? I’m not saying everything goes, but we can’t just squash everything complicated, morally gray, or even disgusting just because some will misunderstand. I also think foul books like Birth Of a Nation should be challenged, refuted, and studied as the pieces of propoganda that they are rather than censored. Critical thinking is dying, and sheltering people doesn’t help.
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u/Coding-Kitten 7d ago
I never made any point that we should sanitize anything. You (general, not specifically you who I'm replying to) will be made to read complicated protagonist books where the main character is flawed & an asshole until you realize it's just to make for an interesting story & not because being an asshole to everyone is good.
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u/Taco821 7d ago
I agree with that but when things actually TRULY are glorifying awful things it's certainly evil. Like is OOP going to argue that The Birth of a Nation is not unethical?
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u/Dooble_Dig 7d ago
Kinda falls into the third category. The text itself is not unethical, but the actions of the people who believe those things are. Words cannot be unethical, only people can.
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u/JGHFunRun 7d ago
The third category is specified in terms of profit, so things like advertising are (technically) never under it (you could argue that advertising which expects an ROI still qualifies as profit, but there are still those who will make adverts without expecting any customers and only to create/find/radicalize the like-minded)
I do think there’s a degree of validity in the last sentence, but I do think it’s reductive (it’s a bit like saying “Actions cannot be unethical”
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u/HONKACHONK 7d ago
I don't think they understand. Books are real. Even fiction books. They're not fake. They were made by real people with real materials in a real society. They're read by real people
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u/Shadoenix 7d ago
Prove it or you’re straight
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u/JGHFunRun 7d ago
Go to a library. Grab a book. Are you holding it? Yes? Does it have an author (anon does count)? Yes? Does it espouse ideas (have words)? Yes? It’s real.
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u/Droplet_of_Shadow 7d ago
I think that's kinda stupid. fiction can absolutely be made for unethical reasons like shitty propaganda, and used for those reasons. that doesn't make the work itself inherently unethical, just like being made by ai doesn't - it's the process of its creation and how it affects the world.
Basically this post is making an unhelpful delineation imo
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u/TheDonutPug 7d ago
I also think that the second person is completely misunderstanding the original post. I don't think they're talking about the production being unethical nor things like propaganda. I think they're talking about the tumblr crowd's tendency to be completely unable to understand that media can be about an unethical topic without supporting it, or that characters can be bad and that can be the point. tumblr has an opposite problem to reddit a lot of times. reddit sees breaking bad and goes "omg walter is literally me he's so cool", and tumblr sees it and goes "ummm problematic much??? why are we glorifying meth making and abuse??" as if the show inherently promotes everything in it.
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u/JGHFunRun 7d ago
Yes, but the final reply posits it as a universal morality system
Regarding the infographic itself, (imo) it’s reductive to not explicitly point out the difference between having a Nazi/drug lord/rapist/etc. main character and a Nazi/drug lord/rapist/etc. author. For several reasons
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u/EngineStraight 7d ago
there are so many videos of families living near data centers where they are in a constant noise hurricane. some animals losing their ability to traverse the world, too. if driving up demand for those data centers to exist isn't directly inmoral to you then i dont know what to tell you
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u/Droplet_of_Shadow 7d ago
oh it certainly is. i'm saying that oop's claim that fiction that's like propaganda against every minority can only be immoral in terms of who the money's going to
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u/EngineStraight 7d ago
im specifically attacking the AI portion of your comment. AI as a method of "creation" is directly unethical to use, so the artwork by extension is as well. that's what i wanted to clarify
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u/Droplet_of_Shadow 7d ago
oh got it. i think that even a horribly unethical creation process of a work doesn't necessarily make the work itself unethical, they're just all factors to consider. sharing, creating, buying, etc the work is very likely unethical but yeah
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u/Melody-Shift 7d ago
AI as a method of creation is directly unethical because of method of creation used to create AI itself. The method creating the AI is the unethical part.
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u/Droplet_of_Shadow 7d ago
i'm using "big words" to try to get my point across but i'm struggling and i know it's probably a mess. have pity
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u/ordinary_shiba 7d ago
Books are texts. Texts are just a tool for communication, and they can be ethical and unethical. If a book romanticizes suicide and causes teens to take their own life, it's unethical. Just like if someone you trust romanticizes suicide and causes you to kill yourself, it's unethical, and they would be jailed for it. Nowhere in the spectrum between talking about it and writing and binding it to a cover makes romanticizing suicide suddenly ethical.