I read/listen/watch my Harry Potter books and movies that I’ve had for 20 years because it basically kept me alive when I was in the closet and it’s a big part of me but also fuck JK Rowling.

If the content itself doesn’t reflect the creator’s shittiness, yes, but I won’t pay for it.

Once I think a creator is a bad person, depending on what they did, I have trouble enjoying their stuff.

There are a ton of comedians, for example, that have done varying degrees of bad things that I just can’t listen to anymore. Louis CK, Cosby, any of the podcast bro comedians that got Trump elected, etc are all out. When I hear them perform it is all I can think about.

Same with bands, writers, etc. I just have a nagging feeling in the back of my head reminding me the person is shitty.

I can usually separate art from the artist, given that the media in question doesn’t reflect their opinions/isn’t influenced by their actions.

I’m too tired to really spend my time being too correctional on what I should or shouldn’t enjoy based on the actions some people do. It really depends. Ian Watkins is an exception, a horrible person, who made it easy for me to drop everything Lostprophets-related.

I still listen to Disturbed, because there’s way too many songs I like from them. I don’t have to care about David Draiman and I don’t, because of what he did.

I will still enjoy Harry Potter, because I believe the universe is bigger than J.K Rowlings to where, anything she does or says will not knock down my enjoyment of that universe. I can and will ignore her existence.

generally, no.

and if I do, I make sure not to share/promote it

I struggle with it and am hypocritical about that.

Roman Polanski was convicted of a terrible crime, but I appreciate his work.

Weinstein’s production company made many of my favorite movies.

Kevin Spacey played some of my favorite characters.

EDIT:

And then there is Bill Cosby and OJ Simpson. I love the Naked Gun Movies and both are pure gold on screen.

Bill Cosby’s Chicken Heart routine is so fucking funny it was making me laugh my ass off until the mid 2010s… Now I when I ever I see the album it just makes me sad….

It varies.

I often give the example of HP Lovecraft. I’m a big fan of his stories and the Cthulhu Mythos. But it remains that he was a huge racist. How do I reconcile the two?

First, an author’s works are separate from the author themselves. Second, in Lovecraft’s case, he was a product of his time and upbringing. And third, and importantly in his case: he’s dead. He has no ability to change beyond his passing in the 1930s. People can and do change all the time. If Lovecraft were around today he might have become to most left-leaning person in the world, but he never had that chance. There were indications, late in life, that he might well have changed.

But, he didn’t. It remains that he was a racist in life, that will never change, and because of it there will always be people uncomfortable with his work. That is understandable, and I won’t try to convince anyone that they should ignore it.

I try to avoid giving them more relevance, but I do occasionally revisit through means that don’t give them money. I hate Dave Mustaine’s guts, so I have the best three Megadeth albums downloaded (Peace Sells… But Who’s Buying?, Rust in Peace, Countdown to Extinction).

Usually if the person who made something is a massive piece of shit, that just puts me off it entirely. For example, Rurouni Kenshin might be considered one of the best animes of all time, but I cannot watch it without thinking about the fact that the guy who made it had so much child porn. Sours everything the fucker touched

Like, maybe I could learn to separate the art from the artist, but… why would I? There’s already more art than I could ever consume made by people who don’t jerk it to kids

I try not to enrich creators who are bad. Like Polanski and Weinstein and Whedon and Besson and Rowling and Gaiman. I might watch/read old stuff, but I’ll avoid spending any money on it.

Then there’s people who aren’t rapists and abusers and virulently homophobic but are still not great. I’m thinking YT creators who pull dumb and mean pranks, or just revel in the more negative aspects of human nature. I don’t watch them, but mostly because I don’t enjoy that sort of content. It makes me depressed and sad. Since I don’t like that sort of content anyway, it’s hardly an effort. Same with MAGA bro podcaster types; I don’t enjoy that garbage so “boycotting” it really just means going about my life per usual.

If I know someone is a terrible person, I can’t enjoy their work. Besides not wanting to financially support them, I like to put myself in an author’s, actor’s, writer’s shoes when I watch/read stuff.

That said, I don’t purposefully look into people’s lives; I’m not into celebrity gossip. But sometimes a person is such an outlier or just so vocal about it that it’s unavoidable.

There are a lot of fair-minded takes in this thread which is surprising for me since this is lemmy where I’ve actually seen someone tell another person they are a piece of shit for even talking about Harry Potter lore.

It depends. The artist being a bad person doesn’t automatically make the art bad. But I also don’t want to support bad people. So, relevant questions to me are: Is the artist still alive? Do they profit from my consuming their work? Do I promote them perhaps indirectly? The answers will be different for e.g. Lovecraft vs. Rowling, or rereading a book I already own vs. convincing my book club to buy new copies.

My favourite book is Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. My edition has a foreword about how Lewis Carroll really really wasn’t a paedophile, he just loved children very very much. That foreword convinced me that he was a paedophile.