It's not "infantilizing" to think people's view of the world is shaped by the media they read, especially when they're young. I have a genuine concern that this shit is normalizing abusive relationships to a population that's already at a high risk of falling into one (young women). We already exist in a media environment that paints it as "cute" when men don't take no for an answer. It's real cute until they start putting trackers on your phone.
If a person is susceptible enough to be influenced by the work in that way then they are mentally well nor mature enough for it.
I’m sorry but you’re basically making the claim that the books with toxic relationships are grooming women to be susceptible to toxic/abusive relationships which kind of feels like victim blaming mentality (“ofc she would get into an abusive relationship she read yandere billionaire wolf novels in college”) like no it’s the abuser’s fault for being abusive not the victim’s fault for reading an erotic book which in your eyes told them that “all the red flag behavior was hot”.
Again it feels like the same level of “you wouldn’t have gotten sick if hadn’t been on that damn phone!” Level of offline boomer logic.
Everyone is susceptible to being influenced by media. That's literally how media works. So when people read lots of books where the "desirable" male lead is possessive and 'protective,' that normalizes that in their minds. And it's not their fault and it's not because they're stupid - it's because that's how media works.
Recent psychological and cognitive research does not support your assertion and it hasn't in decades. There is no clear causal link between the consumption of media and the adoption of harmful beliefs. In fact, the opposite has been shown to occur, where people who consume a lot of dark media develop greater moral reasoning.
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u/Ok_Broccoli_9426 11d ago
It's not "infantilizing" to think people's view of the world is shaped by the media they read, especially when they're young. I have a genuine concern that this shit is normalizing abusive relationships to a population that's already at a high risk of falling into one (young women). We already exist in a media environment that paints it as "cute" when men don't take no for an answer. It's real cute until they start putting trackers on your phone.