Television

Piracy and staying away from popular public spaces to discuss it. Discuss it in private with your friends who know to pirate it. But if you're on the show's subreddit, you're helping bring attention to a wider audience, which helps the show.

Even sailing the open seas is better for HBO/JKR than just boycotting. Every casual conversation, favorable post, fan art, merch buy, etc. keeps it in the zeitgeist and keeps the money machine rolling forward.

Pirating something like HP just to watch it alone, never discuss it, and never interact with the IP is at best a total waste of your time when there's so much other content out there not propping up TERFs.

All science is built on the backs of the “content” created by generations upon generations of our predecessors, many of whom were far from saintly.

Schrödinger was a pedophile, but his equations are some of the most important and beautiful equations in physics.

Newton was an asshole, but his contributions to math and science are unavoidable in any STEM field.

To blanket disregard content simply because it was authored by a bad person is not a valid stance at all, but also, it is quite literally the hateful option since you are asserting your hostility towards a person and even to anything remotely related to them. That is the definition of hatred, not love.

I don’t have a horse in this race. Maybe it is beneficial to boycott the consumption of Harry Potter media in general. But you are wrong to assert that content created by a hateful person is fundamentally unhealthy to consume.

This is the take. And also, piracy is still support. Every creator who supports the free sharing of information recognizes that piracy is basically free word of mouth advertising.

I grew up with the books, but as I learned about Rowling's shittiness, I stopped consuming any Harry Potter content. Now the franchise is something I don't care about, don't even generally think about unless someone else brings it up. More of my time can go to those creators who deserve it.

Ok, so, I have a few problems with this take.

I do not think it healthy to consume content made by hateful people.

First, I question the very premise. That consuming otherwise benign content is somehow "not [...] healthy" if the creater is themselves hateful, whether or not that hate is present in their content. A) by what do you mean it is unhealthy? For your mind? Your eternal soul? What? B) If the content does not display any of the specific hatred of their creator, by what means would that hatred effect me at all? Psychically?

Second, let's assume the premise is true. Tell me then, how would you ever avoid this unhealthy situation in your life? Sure you could avoid the openly hateful creators, but how would you ever know who is secretly hateful? Many a creator of beloved works, has turned out to be an asshole or a bigot. And many of those were only revealed as such after those works became beloved. Surely, many more were also created by hateful people who were not and may never be publically revealed as such. Given you have concluded that the content and monetary support is not all that matters, but also the internal character of the creator, how do you know your health isn't be constantly compromised by consuming work by people you don't know are actually hateful in some way.

Third, it seems kind of a moot point anyway in this case. Rowling only started revealing her transphobia in 2019. By that point the entire novel series, the entire film adaptation series, a spin off play and companion book, the first two of three spinoff films, and any number of video games, toys, and other merchandise had all been released and consumed by billions. The vast majority of our generation has consumed a ton Harry Potter media in many forms before her bigotry was on full display. I personally read most of the books over and over as a kid. I gotta tell you, if my health was damaged because she was secretly a hateful bitch at heart, then that damage is done.

I get wanting to take a moral highground, being disgusted by the association, and just wanting to distance yourself from Rowling and leave it behind. I truly get that and think it is entirely justified and valid. But don't project some sort of damage onto people who don't do the same, or attribute some sort of complicit immorality to them because they don't take the same stance as you. That's where I strongly disagree.

If you're paying for HBO for any reason, you've already given JK more money than any pirate ever will.

#facts