u/Exciting_Hope5839

I've been having these thoughts lately, wonder what other people think (maybe I'm stating something obvious lol)

Like, fiction, obviously, affects reality. Sometimes very intentionally and directly, like with propaganda, sometimes in more subtle ways.

But, like, the propaganda doesn't work without censorship, does it? Propaganda needs to create or support a certain picture of reality among its audience, a picture that shutters the moment the audience sees an alternative. Some propaganda piece can show how all, say, women are stupid or how all gays are groomers, and with the lack of personal experience you may buy it, even if you don't have strong pre-existing biases against women or gays. But if you see other examples of representation from the very beginning, this propaganda piece will fail, because you will see it as another work of fiction, instead of reality it pretends to represent. And many propaganda pieces only work because they pretends to state some "obvious" reality that no one ever thinks to question. And different and diverse art provokes questions. If you see different versions of reality in different works of fiction, you at least start to question which of them is true, and whether any of them is.

What I want to say is, well, sometimes fiction affects reality in the same direct way that antis believe it does. But! What's important to understand is for that to work, you need pre-conditioned audience with existing biases or of people who are ready to believe anything that certain authority tells them. In addition to that, you need strict censorship of anything that challenges the worldview that said propaganda tries to create, or even pre-conditioned audience may start see the propaganda as fiction instead of reality. And still, there will be many people who won't buy the attempts to brainwash them.

I'm speaking from experience of living in a country with rapidly deteriorating free speech. The government HATES the internet, simply because you may find different opinions there, and tries to ban and block everything. Because less and less people buy the government's propaganda (though sadly, many do and many get radicalized by it) and the Ministry of Truth is panicking.

So, what I want to say is... A drawing of two people kissing is NOT that case

At this point I'm just used to anti rhetoric in everything on youtube even if i agree with this person on literally everything else

Sometimes they even have based profic takes but still defend censorship when it's about, say, fictional "minors" or other "too problematic" things

Like, "yeah we need to explore the taboo topics in art" and at the same time "oh why you made your villain too evil, what does it say about YOU?" (Not making up the second one)

Of course i filter out the shittiest ones (like one time i found a video defending the arrest of an Australian woman who wrote a fictional book about fictional grooming, sorry I'm blurry on details) but there's always something lowkey like "of course we shouldn't censor everything, but SOME censorship of the most EVIL artis necessary, of course in won't get out of hand" and no they usually aren't talking about things that involve real people, real children and their personal information