Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.
Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.
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Notes -
Nolan got kicked off the Pizza Party Podcast almost three years ago, so it's certainly "old news" at this point, but a comic someone made about the incident surfaced on my Twitter feed this weekend, as someone was using it to illustrate the concept of fetish mining to people who are unaware.
The first link is the original posting (AFAIK) of the comic. The second is what appeared on my feed. I'm including the second because the person's bio says "Transmale Aro Ace/ He-They", which is interesting given the circumstances.
I'm starting to lose track of grooming and why it's bad.
My understanding is that grooming is the act influencing kids to make decisions they're not prepared to make, with the implicit understanding that they technically won't make these decisions until they've reached the age of consent, even though they've already been acclimated to the concept for years prior. This is why some consider teaching kids about gender to be a form of grooming, and why an adult talking to a minor with no clear intent of romance is seen as potential grooming.
Commissioning an underage artist to draw a character wrapped in a spiderweb is so many steps removed from sex that, regardless of whether the commissioner gets off on it, I don't know why it's any worse than just talking to the child about cartoons. Nolan was openly talking to children on social media before he was #cancelled because most of the fans of the podcast were children. It only became a problem when he commissioned artwork for his niche fetish from them.
If anyone can provide a steelman against Nolan that isn't based on disgust, I'd be interested in hearing it.
(Also, I don't think grooming is a black or white thing, a "you did it or you didn't do it" thing. There's no clear line that makes something grooming or not grooming. Defining it by intent is pointless, because you can't prove intent, and defining it by outcome means that you can't identify grooming until it's come to pass. It's always a judgement call, unlike actual child molestation, which I'm sure we can all agree refers to engaging in a necessarily sexual act with a child.)
This isn't the first time I'm seeing this 'moral disgust / aesthetics' dismissal in this kind of space, and it's nothing more than the intersection between a strawman, question begging, and isolated demand for rigor.
Are you interested in following the causal logic of an outcomes and effects argument? Then ask that plainly. Are you interested in hearing someone defend the issue deontologically? Then ask that plainly Are you're really intereted in someone's basic beliefs in their moral framework? Then why conveniently begin the discussion, dismissively, with an issue you disagree with.
All moral arguments will ultimately fall into essentially 1 of 4 categories, beneath the level of basic beleifs: theological / deist, arbitrary nihilism, aesthetic, or motivated self interest.
Even if you are Mr. Consequentialist, you eventually have to argue 'why' the good outcome deserves the term 'good', and you have one of the four options to pick from above. And all four of these can arguably collapse into the others (or lack of other).
"Ha! Your perception of good and bad is based on 'aesthetics'!" Isn't quite the trump one might thing it is.
I appreciate your response and aspire to your level of rationalism. I'd say I'm most interested in following the causal logic of an outcomes and effects argument, though I wouldn't mind the other three.
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