There is a difference between something that is aesthetically bad and something that is morally bad. No matter how poorly made or boring something is, I won’t be more than annoyed or fascinated by it so long as it wasn’t unethically made or spreads an immoral message. I might really dislike the 3rd Jurassic World movie, but I don’t hate it in the same way as the new Harry Potter show. One is a cringe worthy and poorly written piece of media, the other gives money to a wealthy and influential bigot who makes the lives of people like me worse.
Unfortunately, both aesthetics judgements and moral judgements are normative, which causes people to conflate the two. They both claim that something is “bad,” but the two types of “bad” are not the same. People often look for moral justifications for disliking something that they dislike aesthetically, or vice versa.
In the case of this comic artist who I know nothing about, I’m trying to figure out if they are a bad artist, or a bad person. If they’re just a bad artist, I’m gonna be much stricter in moderating people being so harsh in their hate towards her. I don’t want people to treat her like lolcow simply because they dislike her work. If she has done bad things, I’ll be more lenient on people calling her out. Regardless, I don’t want this place to be a circlejerk of hate because those tend to breed other types of toxicity.
There is a difference between something that is aesthetically bad and something that is morally bad. No matter how poorly made or boring something is, I won’t be more than annoyed or fascinated by it so long as it wasn’t unethically made or spreads an immoral message. I might really dislike the 3rd Jurassic World movie, but I don’t hate it in the same way as the new Harry Potter show. One is a cringe worthy and poorly written piece of media, the other gives money to a wealthy and influential bigot who makes the lives of people like me worse.
Unfortunately, both aesthetics judgements and moral judgements are normative, which causes people to conflate the two. They both claim that something is “bad,” but the two types of “bad” are not the same. People often look for moral justifications for disliking something that they dislike aesthetically, or vice versa.
In the case of this comic artist who I know nothing about, I’m trying to figure out if they are a bad artist, or a bad person. If they’re just a bad artist, I’m gonna be much stricter in moderating people being so harsh in their hate towards her. I don’t want people to treat her like lolcow simply because they dislike her work. If she has done bad things, I’ll be more lenient on people calling her out. Regardless, I don’t want this place to be a circlejerk of hate because those tend to breed other types of toxicity.