this post was submitted on 31 Mar 2026
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Remember: Even piracy doesn't offer absolution.
These properties rely on popular / universal awareness to achieve network effects and cement themselves within modern culture. When this happens, the memes and concepts from the property worm their way into everyday language ("he who cannot be named", "10 points for Gryffindor", etc) and help keep everyone else buying.
The only answer is to treat people talking about Harry Potter as you would someone who keeps talking about the greatness of R Kelly's music or Bill Cosby's comedy.
That's really not what they're saying at all; I get the feeling that you may be taking this too personaly. It's a reasonable argument that engaging with the cultural phenomenon, even if not financially supporting it directly, still signals support or at least tolerance of the controversies so closely associated with it these days. You may disagree of course but I think calling it "a demonization of everyone who ever enjoyed the series as a child" is a gross misrepresentation of their position. It is, at most, a condemnation of those who would continue engaging with it since then. (And, ironically, likening them to Dolores Umbridge is engaging in the very type of cultural normalization that they were arguing against. Although if you disagree with them I don't suppose you'd feel that matters anyway.) Anyhow, that's enough arguing on someone else's behalf for me today. I just can't stand seeing arguments misrepresented like that.