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 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….

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.

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

Possibly controversial take: I get super turned-off by any content creator who seems to be in it mainly for money.

There are lots of people out there who decided they want to be a youtuber as their profession - and best of luck to them! - but I feel quite safe in saying that almost every youtuber I truly love began their channel not because they wanted to make money, but because they had something to share. They had a passion, or burning thoughts, or knowledge that was too good to keep to themselves, and youtube was a way to voice it.

And they might be profitable now, but that’s not why they started.

So yeah. As soon as I get a smell that the content someone makes or the way they act or the things they say are dictated primarily by dollar signs, rather than by being the thing they truly want to do, I very quickly lose interest.

No. If I have problems with a creator, publisher, etc., I’ll stop consuming. If I previously purchased and own some work (i.e. an album from a band that turns out to be shitty), I will still sometimes engage with that, but no new money is going to them.

I had my first run in with this in the tail end of highschool. Lovecraft was the first author that really hit me. The feeling of existential dread and the idea of forces beyond our comprehension that we only survive sharing reality work because we’re too inconsequential to do anything about were both formative and comforting ideas to my anxiety riddled mind. It wasn’t until deciding I was truely a fan that I found out he was so racist the kkk didn’t want to be associated with him.

He’s not my only brush with this, I find that any figure I grow to like inevitably fails to meet my standards. Neil Gaiman, Danny Masterson, Dr. Seuss, Neil DeGrasse Tyson, Joss Whedon, Louis C. K., Jack Black, Walt Disney, Jane Goodall, Woody Allen, Kevin Spacey, and the list goes on. At this point, the only heroes I’ve had that haven’t turned out to be bastards and sex pests are Weird Al and Bill Nye.

To this I’ve taken to the idea of the death of the author . In short, the essay states that you should ignore the artist’s intention and biography when considering the merrit of the art. Awful people are just as likely to create something beautiful as anyone else. This doesn’t hold entirely true and your mileage may very, Lovecraft’s Xemophobia makes his inspirations far more obvious, but removing all of the overtly racist parts has no affect on the actual horror or conveys. That doesn’t work for Scar Tissue by Red hot Chili Peppers which is explicitly about raping a minor.

Play it by ear. If it’s not explicitly problematic then it’s not on you to feel bad about it You can like a song without it meaning more than that.

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.

Every physician in the world uses Nazi data collected using the corpses of Jews. Most anatomy books uses drawings mad by Nazis. Just the swastikas have been airbrushed out. The data collection was never repeated.

It depends on what it is. I generally don’t expect an artist/creator to be what I’d consider a good role model.

Some examples:

Dave Grohl (lead singer/guitarist of Foo Fighters) announced he fathered a child outside of his marriage. I consider this morally wrong, but it has no impact on my enjoyment of the music.

J.K. Rowling being an outspoken transphobe has had an impact on my ability to enjoy Harry Potter. Not that I was ever a super fan, but I enjoyed the movies well enough. But discrimination against an entire group of people is too significant to me to keep the art separate from the artist.

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.

generally, no.

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

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.

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).

I consume it. I don’t pay for it but I do consume it.