When antis say “Fiction affects reality” they usually mean “Fiction can be a magic override button to our moral and beliefs”. It’s especially ridiculous considering that even actual facts are often not enough to change our views.

We don’t learn our beliefs from fiction: we learn them from family, from school, from real communication with real living people. Fiction sure doesn’t exist in vacuum yet it doesn’t come from vacuum: it comes from people whose views have been already formed by their real life experience, it reflects mindsets that already exist in society no matter how harmful they are. For example, 50 Shades of Grey didn’t normailze abuse, it reflected the already existing perception of emotional abuse as something normal and desirable, perception that often comes from family. When your parents control every step of you, ignore your boundaries, invade your privacy and invalidate your decisions while claiming that is because they love you, care about you and want to protect you, you will eventually believe that this is ok, that this how love and care really work. When you constantly see your father ordering around and your mother obeying, when you constantly hear that men are strong and women are weak, you will eventualy accept it as normal and pursue power imbalanced relationships. 50SOG didn’t change anyone’s views, it just supported and reinforced the existing ones.

The situation with Jaws is pretty similar: people have been afraid of sharks because of the news about shark attacks before the movie was filmed. It was the already existing fear of sharks that influenced the movie. Jaws has reinforced that fear, not created it.



You see, fiction doesn’t affect reality as much as reality affects fiction. Our experiences, our feelings, our desires, our needs formed by reality make us create and consume certain kinds of content. We can do it for various reasons because it’s safe. Fiction gives us a safe outlet to fulfill our power fantasies and comfort fantasies, to experience the thrill of danger without actually endangering ourselves, to explore taboos, to examine different phenomenons, to cope with our traumas.



Fiction is fun and sometimes useful yet it’s not reality and will never have the same power and the same effect as real life experience. Not to mention that same of piece of fiction can affect people in different ways, it can be harmful for one and helpful for another, so fiction’s effect depends more on people than on fiction itself. That is the reason why people should be responsible for content they consume, to learn what’s harmful for them and avoid it instead of attacking creators and advocating for censorship.

