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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.)
If I have an apple fetish - I get off on pictures of bright, shiny apples - and I especially liked having kids draw me pictures of bright, shiny apples, then clearly there is no direct "damage" being done to the kids, and there is nothing wrong with pictures of apples. But I think people aware of my fetish would be rightfully disturbed that I wanted to involve children in providing kink fuel. Regardless of whether I had any intention of "cranking it up," as that cartoon puts it, it's definitely a valid concern. If I just want to get off on apples, why I am bringing kids into it?
So the argument isn't that he's doing any harm in the present, but that his decision to solicit children to produce his artwork, rather than adults, is a red flag. That makes sense.
If I send you an email claiming to be a Nigerian prince who will pay you millions for your banking info, one could say that I haven't harmed you yet. In the same way, when I put a worm on a hook and cast it into the water, I haven't harmed the fish yet. And yet, both the email and the baited hook are preparation for harm, and when that harm can be foreseen, people want to treat it harshly.
Grooming is a general term for older or more socially-influential people building inappropriate relationships with younger or more socially-vulnerable people, where the latter end up vulnerable to exploitation. It is used without controversy to refer to gang recruitment of adolescents, cult recruitment, relationship abuse, and a variety of other contexts. Fraud and scams commonly exhibit the same psychological tricks, and in all these cases, the problem is well-understood and entirely uncontroversial: maneuvering people into positions where they can be easily exploited is bad in and of itself, and nothing good comes of it.
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