I know a lot of us, myself included, like to believe that piracy allows us to consume problematic media without supporting artists we do not like. But piracy demand also indicates to companies an untapped market that they could tap if they create the right product. HBO is absolutely keeping tabs on piracy of their show now and seeing our traffic the same way Crunchyroll used to keep tabs on pirated fan-translated anime back when they cared.
Also, there is a similar ethical zero-sum game with all other Harry Potter media and products. Normally we can buy on the secondary market if we need a hard copy to scan and rip but don’t want to support the creators. But almost every Harry Potter book in circulation is purchased by someone with intention to sell for a profit, and HBO is also likely keeping tabs on sales and resales of DVDs of the old movies. Every time money leaves your bank account for Harry Potter media, you are directly feeding the ecosystem which sustains the Queen of the TERFs.
It’s honestly pretty incredible how morally radioactive this one human is. Orson Scott Card is equally repugnant, but the Ender’s Game series doesn’t even have a small fraction of the market share of Harry Potter (IMHO this is the fault of that movie being just okayish, not good or bad, but that’s another topic.) Trump’s MAGA movement is comparable in badness, but there really isn’t much most of us can do other than voting and never shutting up about how unconstitutional the things he is doing is. Rowling really is comparable to Disney or Nestlé, and she’s just one person, not a whole company.
Right now, the only ethical way to consume Harry Potter is watching or reading movies and books on your copies that either:
- you obtained before 2020
- were given to you for free in some non-trackable way, e.g. offline or sneakernet.
There is no ethical Harry Potter consumption within capitalism. We will have to see if this changes once she is dead.
Boycotts for media work about as well as those for Hogwarts Legacy, not buying a Tesla post 2024, or staying off PSN after Sony announced game discs will no longer be made. Sadly most people don’t care about the political views of those who make these things unless it personally affects them. The only successful boycott I’ve seen recently is Canadians avoiding American goods in supermarkets and even that took an existential threat of annexation for them to act on it.
You’d have an easier time herding cats.
The pomposity in this post, if harnessed, could power a small town for a week.
I’m doing my part
Damn straight!
Even if I wanted to watch a worse version of the movies I already watched, no fucking support for transphobes!
yeah no ill do what i want thanks.
most tone deaf post iv read in a long time everyone else is authoritarian so let me tell you what to do,like and think.
ok and I’m going to say you’re indulging a cultural movement of transphobia
I am not saying JK isn’t a horrible person, but there are way worse people than her making shows and I have never seen posts like this on them. For example Seinfeld, the guy is a horrible person, this just one example there are a lot of horrible people making shows. All of Hollywood should be boycotted if we are being honest.
Part of the difference is Rowling still holds so much cultural weight (somehow). So many people still know and watch and purchase Harry Potter stuff. Seinfeld only really holds that weight amongst older conservatives. He’s only popular amongst the people perpetuating the hate. Rowling’s stuff is popular amongst those who should know better.
I do agree we should boycott more (I personally do boycott a fair bit), but comparing the current impact of Rowling to the current impact of Seinfeld is crazy.
Seinfeld (thankfully) doesn’t have a theme park
I dunno, the rise and fall and extreme mismanagement of a Seinfeld theme park would make for some great background documentaries for while I work…
Fuck it would be like 3 hours it would be so good
In any case, aside from JKR being a piece of shit who deserves zero support:
These remakes seem completely and utterly unnecessary and of questionable production quality anyway. Why rehash the classic movies that were actually decent adaptations of the source material? Is this one arc really the only story worth telling in that universe?
Boycott it because JKR is a Nazi. Don’t watch it because it’s yet more Hollywood remake slop.
Is this one arc really the only story worth telling in that universe?
JKR tried with the fantastic beasts films, it failed so hard it only get three out of the five planned films.
they did not fail:
collectively grossed over US$1.8 billion across three films, three times more than the budgeted costs
they just weren’t as successful as the Harry Potter movies, and the second and third films had bad reviews (because they weren’t very good movies. but still, they had audience polls of B+)
So let me get this straight, I’m supposed to abide by a clear set of rules, set by, who again!?
Also i disagree. You can enjoy something, completely guilt free, even if it was created by the biggest trologodyte known to man. Reading a book or watching a movie doesn’t equal wholesale support. Hell I think it would do the world a whole lot of good to read more books, even that are written or suggest ideas that we find offensive or repugnant. For it allows you knowledge, to listen, understand, and to form independent ideas and thought. Basically it creates a better source of knowledge and a defence against darknes. Versus just blindly listening to today’s serially offended internet warrior, who basically has almost zero to offer to humanity other than constant judgement and authoritarian like viewpoints from the opposite spectrum.
Fuck you, I won’t do what you tell me. I also won’t watch this show, but only because it looks terrible.
Goes to reply.
Sees username.
That’s bait.gif
I’m barely aware it exists and almost never see anything about it.
Making a post called “Reminder: do not watch HBO’s Harry Potter.” Is literally marketing it and forcing people to think about it.
Do not think about pink elephants
Damnit
As a compromise to not contribute to stat gathering could one not use newsgroups?
Meh, sail the seas and do what you want. This sounds like a plea from the corporate overlords to get you to not pirate their shit. Also, what show?
Oh dear, the thought police is here, telling me what I can pirate and what is forbidden.
I don’t give a crap about Harry Potter and JK Rowling can go to hell along with all her trans hate, but your arguments and your authoritarian wording of the post are a bit ridiculous. You don’t get to tell me what I am ethically allowed to do.
You’re right, except that I think expressing such an opinion here is futile. How anyone could possibly think this kind of post is a good use of their time and energy to make the world a better place is beyond me. Like maybe it’s not harmful in the grand scheme of things, but if you want your society to be better and help people you care about moralizing in the echo chamber is just a ridiculous distraction.
Switzerland during WW2, defending their neutrality. I want my cake and I want to eat it too.
Worked for them too, came out better than everyone else. How nice for them
Thanks for the heads up. I don’t even like Harry Potter and JK Rowling can get fucked for being an out of touch billionaire but I’m gonna find these torrents and seed the shit outta them. If you want to tell people what to do and how to think, you’re probably in the wrong place.
Side note: Let’s be real dude; comparing her to Trump, MAGA, Disney, or Nestle is insane and just makes you sound delusional.
Another potential ally down the drain. You had so much promise. I am now sad 😔 What are we doing here folks!!!
I feel like by this logic you shouldn’t have even brought it up since they also track Internet engagement…
Marketing teams only track engagement on major social media, having a discussion about it on lemmy is not going to impact their metrics or even be considered
That’s a fair criticism. I’m gonna hope their scrapers aren’t looking at Lemmy, but they probably are.
Lemmy is well known by every major AI. It can even talk about the histories between various instances with some accuracy. Unless there’s some reason that commercial scraping companies would include Lemmy for an AI corpus but not include it for a marketing department’s research file, I’d say it’s safe to assume we’re included in that.
All scrapers look at Lemmy. When you search on google, Lemmy pops up in the results. You can’t reasonably expect to be NOT scraped when you put things online.
There is so much far better content out there to absorb other than Harry Potter. I can go without and be perfectly fine. I think we already have some of the books and DVDs from ages ago. So if my wife or I suddenly have the desire to revisit, we’re not consuming anything HBO or anyone else can even remotely trace.
I’m just here to bring to your attention Lev Grossman’s “The Magicians”, both the books and the assorted TV show, which is quite awesome in its own right, even if it diverges from the books by quite a bit. There’s a whole world of awesome outside of HP, and even if it wasn’t, I refuse to recast in my theater of the mind the extremely talented and deeply regretted Alan Rickman and Dame Maggie Smith.
I read the books as they came out and loved them. i tried watching the series as it was coming out but they really were so different from the books that when I had to wait for the next season I never picked it back up.
Are they worth watching though? If I go into it knowing it’ll be basically something loosely related?
The Magicians show lost me with the sudden graphic rape, that was then portrayed a good thing. Sucks you got raped but you get a consolation prize of extra powerful magic! Also the rapist has magic semen, and they need to get more.
Yep Harry Potter for adults
IMHO the onlyy ethical way to consume new HP media is original fanfics featuring LGTB+ characters. 😆
“Hi my name is Ebony Dark’ness Dementia Raven Way and I have long ebony black hair…”
