The Real Harm in “Harmful Content”

Exploring the true harm in “harmful content” and “problematic” media.

Originally published in An Injustice!

We live, unfortunately, in a world increasingly defined by people’s lack of media literacy.

It isn’t as simple as people not reading, because people do — as schools and universities increasingly cut or allocate resources away from English literature, history, and other humanities, students are robbed of their opportunities to exercise their critical thinking stills; in the USA, “balanced literacy” strategies all but ensure many children don’t learn the vital skills to read text in the first place; many CinemaSins and Ending Explained- style videos are critiqued for their contributions to these wider cultural concerns of anti-intellectualism.

What defines this anti-intellectualism, and the culture that goes with it?

Every film or book or article or opinion I don’t understand intuitively and immediately is “pretentious”. It’s superior and self-involved — it’s a waste of time. I might make snarky comments about black-and-white Serbian films from a hundred years ago shot from the perspective of a pigeon, and I come up with that hypothetical in the most scornful manner possible, because I don’t understand why someone would want to watch such a bizarre film, or why they should want to make it in the first place.

People blame TikTok, they blame YouTube, they blame iPad babies, they blame technology, but it isn’t video formats that impact people’s lack of skills — it’s the fact that their intellectual development is cut off at the knees, in primary and comprehensive schools, in universities, in life outside of school. In response to what people do not understand intuitively or immediately, robbed of these tools to let them understand it, they react negatively.

To teach children, then adults, how to understand and analyse things on their own terms is in itself an individual process — it takes that time, it’s complex, and this tutelage is increasingly impossible with large class sizes, underschooled and understaffed teachers, and a lacking syllabus for teaching these skills in the first place.

How can someone understand their own inability in this area? How is someone to come to terms with this, to become comfortable with the idea they might not understand things, or that they might read them wrongly, when to be “wrong” is bad, and scary?

After all, the underlying reason for the defunding and reallocation of resources from the above humanities I mentioned, on paper, is that these things take more time to examine, test, and score. To the anti-intellectual, STEM subjects have right and wrong answers: humanities don’t.

If things don’t have right and wrong answers, if the answers are in shades of grey, how can they be trusted? What is the value in degrees or nuance when nuance is so costly — when it takes time, effort, money? How can I automatically dismiss anyone who is “wrong” so that I can be “right” — so that I can win? Because if I win, I get to stop thinking about this?

When that’s the reward, it’s more than winning, isn’t it? “Winning” this sort of thing isn’t just about one’s feeling of superiority — it’s ultimately about feeling safe, secure, and unchallenged.

This is the core foundation of many anti-intellectual movements and perspectives — ideas that challenge our core beliefs and ideas, the thoughts we hold as certain and most secure, can be frightening, destabilising, even.

People become frustrated with adages like “There are no wrong answers,” because of course there are wrong answers. How can anything be right, if nothing is wrong? If nothing is wrong intellectually, does that mean nothing is wrong morally? If nothing is wrong morally, then what separates good people from bad people? What keeps good people safe from bad people?

Here comes the crux of what this piece is about: “harmful content.”

What is “harmful content”?

Some people might define “harmful content” online as anything that causes us distress or discomfort — anything can be harmful, really. Anything can cause discomfort, as individuals, because it depends on what we’re uncomfortable with.

What becomes dangerous is when people equate their personal discomfort with harm done to them. Having never been made to sit that with that discomfort, and never given the tools to soothe themselves through it, any sort of fear or uncertainty feels much more extreme, more scary — more “harmful”.

People might suggest a definition of harmful content that includes violent videogames, for example — videogames that aren’t actually the cause of school shootings or children’s rates of violence.

I use that as an example, because it seems quite easy for people to understand that videogames aren’t truly the root causes of violence or school shootings , that this is rhetoric to distract from real contributing factors such as availability of guns, lack of conflict management skills, student isolation and loneliness, poverty, etc— and yet when it comes to challenging fiction or erotica, when it comes to “problematic” films and television, people seem to struggle a lot more to understand that those forms of media aren’t the root cause of all bad opinions and ideas in the world.

When someone lacks critical skills, and the ability to meaningfully take apart and understand an opposing or challenging argument or idea, one problem that can arise is a muddling of the “cause” and “effect” of those arguments and ideas.

If I am right, and that person is wrong, why am I right, and why are they wrong? Why do they like this thing that I find disgusting or distressing? Why do they seem to understand or relate to this thing that I find upsetting and discomforting, even frightening?

It’s most comforting to believe that I am right and feel the “right way” because I’m a good person, and they are wrong, because they are a bad person.

This is a very easy and often comforting way of looking at the world — it involves as little self-examination and analysis of one’s own perspectives and how they’ve developed as possible. It removes the potential for me to have done wrong or made mistakes , or need to learn something new or grow when such things take time and energy I don’t have to spare — it puts all the agency, all the responsibility, on others.

On social media, on TikTok or Twitter or Tumblr, we might see someone talk about the danger of people “consuming” harmful content.

This verb, “to consume”, is increasingly used when we talk about people’s engagement with social media or entertainment. People “consume” television shows, “consume” music or albums, they “consume” posts: most nebulous of all, they “consume” “content”.

“Consumption” is a revealing word — to “consume” generally means to eat or drink something, and implies not just a one-way relationship with that item, but also a digestion thereof. If someone is “consuming” a piece of media or an idea, it implies a lack of criticism or consideration for those media or ideas — that someone is ingesting it, uncritically, and absorbing anything it might be made up of. Perhaps sitting in front of their television or scrolling on their phone and “turning their brain off”.

In the process, internalising any of the dangerous or troubling ideas or happenings they see.

The word “content” is dangerous as well — television shows have actors, directors, writers, producers; news pieces and articles have journalists, contributors, commentators, analysts; books have authors, editors, illustrators; albums have musicians, singers, sound mixers, song writers; even posts on social media have posters. “Media” itself is a plural that refers to the means by which ideas, beliefs, stories, or anything else are expressed and communicated. All these forms of art or commentary involve individuals and groups that contribute to their creation, and therefore, the ideas communicated in those various pieces of art or commentary.

“Content” is material that seems disconnected from authorship. “Content” is churned out, is aggregated, is written en masse — perhaps even generated by AI.

Communication is a two-way street — when one reads a piece of writing or watches a video that someone’s written and edited, one is engaging, understanding, and responding to another person’s thoughts and ideas. They might agree or disagree.

For someone to “consume” “content”, there is no agreement or disagreement, there is no layered opinion or perspective, but merely absorption of either “bad content” or “good content” — “wholesome content” as opposed to “harmful content”.

“Wholesome content”, after all, might contribute to someone being a good and “wholesome” person — wholesome is another of these words that people often ascribe to food and diets but now ascribe to various forms of media — where “harmful content” might contribute to someone doing harm and being harmful.

Here comes the muddled cause and effect.

Horror movies delve into scary, violent things happening to good people. They might involve violence or rape or assault.

Why would someone make these pieces of media? Why would someone make horror movies or write books about such horrible things? Why would someone think about these things, when they are bad? When they are scary and bad things that hurt and harm people?

Bad people think about bad things and doing bad things and bad things happening — good people think about good things and doing good things and good things happening.

Do they think about hurtful things because they want to harm people? Do people write these fucked up movies or books or posts or erotica because they want to harm people in real life? Do they seek out media to read or watch or engage with on those subjects because they think about those bad things? Why would they do these things, think about these things, if that wasn’t something they wanted?

There lies another danger in “consuming content” as opposed to engaging or having relationships with art and media — when we “consume content”, it implies a lack of reaction on our part, a lack of relationship with the texts. Not only do we not have opinions that we agree or disagree with in regards to those texts or pieces of media, but it also implies a lack of emotional engagement.

“Consume” doesn’t mean to enjoy, but it doesn’t mean not to enjoy either. When applied to food, it’s rather clinical, lacks the specificity of “eat” or “drink”, or the human connection of “taste” or “relish” or “savour”, lacks too the fervour of appetite and action implied in verbs like “devour” or “gobble”. Someone might “consume” food or drink — they might “consume” medication or protein shakes.

One doesn’t “consume” a family dinner or a catch-up brunch with old friends, the food a perfect complement to the beloved company; one doesn’t “consume” one’s favourite dessert one hasn’t had for years, tasting not just the food but all the memories involved in it, good and bad; one doesn’t “consume” their best friend’s awful concoction, trying to hide their gag reflex because they want to support said friend’s new mixology hobby.

Art and media, these things are created by individuals or teams of individuals, and in the act of creation, those people communicate ideas, opinions, perspectives, and also feelings.

When we have relationships with these texts, we also feel emotions, and by feeling those emotions we experience catharsis.

Why do we watch a sad movie we know will make us cry? Because sometimes, we need to cry — we need the relief, the release, that comes from that overwhelming urge to sob, the break of the floodgates, the tears on our cheeks and into our tubs of ice cream.

Why do people write sad stories when writing it might make them cry themselves, when they know the sad story will spread that feeling around? Because sometimes, people need it.

Titanic is a sad film — it’s a tragedy. We watch tragedies knowing they’ll end badly, because sometimes, that’s the point. Here’s a criticism I’ve never heard anybody make of Titanic: that it glorifies shipwrecks. Glorifies infidelity. Glorifies drowning, or sadness, or tragedy.

“To glorify” means to represent something as admirable or desirable or good — to praise or worship its subject. People increasingly use “glorify” on social media almost as a synonym for “to depict” — because “depiction” is a neutral term, but “glorify” isn’t.

If someone “glorifies” a bad or dangerous or harmful subject, they’re delighting in it, praising it, making it uncomplicatedly good. For someone for whom understanding the nuances of a text is difficult or even impossible, for whom complicated emotions or messages within a text or piece of media are impossible to digest and understand, depiction can seem or feel like glorification.

Especially when sex is involved.

After all, there’s a convergence of factors here: anti-intellectualism rises in alignment with anti-sex attitudes. Anti-intellectualism and movements against bodily autonomy and sexual education are about the same thing: control, and maintaining control.

Sexual attraction and sexual desire are not seen as uncomplicated feelings in the same way that sadness is — sadness isn’t bad, after all. Sex is. Sex is scary, and can be harmful, and therefore, sex is bad. Talking about sex is dirty. Sex scenes in TV shows and movies are gross and unnecessary and perverted and pornographic — they’re uncomfortable.

And that’s just regular, wholesome, vanilla sex.

What about even dirtier and badder sex than that? Kinky sex? Dangerous sex?

Sexual assault, and abuse? Horrible abuses that are sexually motivated or have their roots in sexual desire, or are metaphors for sex? Horrible things that are about sex but aren’t explicitly about sex — things that make us uncomfortable, and scared? What about when we have emotions about these things that are nuanced and complicated, and we don’t have the tools to sit with those nuanced and complicated feelings?

Am I a bad person because my feelings are complicated, but I know — I’ve been told, and people are saying — that the “content” I’m having feelings about is bad, or “harmful”?

Am I an agent in that harm, now? Am I bad person?

Who, and what, causes the bad effects, and how much? Who is to blame? Who makes it all stop, and go away, and let me stop thinking about it?

When we avoid nuance and critical examination of our beliefs and the beliefs of those, we fall into binary thinking — good people and bad people are one example, seen as discrete and immutable categories, categories that cannot and will not cross over with one another.

Another false binary that maps onto this binary of good versus bad people is the idea of there being a discrete binary between abusers and victims.

Abusers can be themselves abused, and have been abused by others; victims can have abused others in the past, or go on to abuse others in the aftermath of their own abuse.

As a victim of sexual abuse and trauma, I write extensively about sexual abuse, about rape, about bodily autonomy, body horror, trauma, trauma recovery; I read a lot of erotica that delves into similar themes; I watch and read and engage with dramatic movies, soaps, comedies, horrors, and all manner of other media that delve into the same themes.

For me, I find that engaging so much with these themes allows me to elevate my understanding and relationship with my own fears and traumas, and my recovery from them, as well as to understand other people’s relationships with their own — and sometimes, it is triggering.

Sometimes, I watch a movie or write a narrative or engage with an argument or idea that is very upsetting for me, that hits me hard, can even be physically sickening beyond merely emotionally or psychologically destabilising.

And honestly?

That’s good for me.

Yes, those feelings can be horrible and upsetting, but being able to work on and digest that horror and upset makes me feel more empowered and as though I have more control and awareness over my own traumas and how they’ve made me feel — how they’ve made me feel uncontrolled in the past.

When I watch a film or read a book, if it’s truly too upsetting, I always have the option to stop watching or reading, to put it down, and walk away. To do something else. This means that while I am being re-exposed to triggering ideas, that re-exposure is safe and controlled — and many therapists do practise forms of exposure therapy that follow the same or similar tenets.

For many people, this idea would be horrifying. To watch or read upsetting things with no clinical outlet, no outside support — it could potentially feel retraumatising, and that’s okay.

This is the benefit of content warnings, after all: they forewarn people of the subject matter in a piece of media before they’re exposed, so that they can decide upfront if they want to engage or not; if they want to engage today, or if another day, where they’re in a better mental headspace might be better; if they want to engage, but with friends or loved ones nearby, or when they know they’ve got a therapy session the next day to help them digest any difficult feelings that might arise in the aftermath.

“To consume” implies a level of passivity on behalf of the consumer, after all — implies that that person won’t or might be unable to walk away or control their own exposure to difficult or troubling themes.

Of course, some people might look at a list of content warnings and the horrible things that might be warned for, and they might not consider the context of those content warnings within the narrative — they might just see a list of upsetting subjects, and feel disgusted, horrified. Why would someone put all those horrible things into a book or a movie or a story that someone’s meant to be enjoying, entertained by?

People often don’t understand abuse and the impacts it has on someone, the complicated feelings it gives people, layered and often conflicting.

If I can’t read a book and understand that three others might read it and all have conflicting feelings and opinions on it, and all potentially be right in their analyses, because there really isn’t a wrong answer —

How can I sit with my feelings on something horrible that’s happened to me, or even horrible that I’ve done to someone else, and understand that they’re complicated too? That there isn’t a singular right answer, or something as simple and straightforward as good people versus bad ones?

It’s important that people are able to define for themselves what’s harmful to them — discomfort, uncertainty, anxiety, fear, these are not in themselves harm.

To write off all “harmful content” as dangerous and bad, because challenging or complex ideas may be contained therein, to save ourselves from all discomfort, uncertainty, anxiety, fear, because they are complicated, because we struggle to digest them?

Is that not more harmful than the “content” itself could manage?

And what if the media we’re talking about, what if it genuinely is bad? What if it was made by a bad person?

Many people won’t watch The Birds because Alfred Hitchcock genuinely terrorised Tippi Hedren in the making of the film , and they can’t separate that from their experience as a viewer, knowing they’re seeing a woman in real fear and distress, not just a woman acting — Wil Wheaton published an essay last year about the abuses he experienced during the making of The Curse, and why he doesn’t like to discuss the film or look on it fondly.

What if the media we’re discussing has genuinely harmful ideas contained within it, ideas that are glorified, that are depicted as positive when they’re harmful? What if the hero of a story, beloved by other characters within the text and never criticised, is an abuser, and does what is not described as but is clear to the reader as, abuse or harm to others?

What if a text or piece of media is racist and communicates a racist ideology or belief system? Is bigoted? Is homophobic, misogynistic, transphobic, ableist? If it’s just mean-spirited and a bit shitty?

People experience a lot of guilt about “problematic” media — if someone points out the flaws in it, they might be accused of ruining it, of spoiling it for those who were previously able to enjoy it uncritically and now find that they can’t.

As with so many things I’ve mentioned so far, there is no right answer.

I would argue that without people engaging with harmful depictions, pieces of media, different texts, without forming a relationship with those texts, positive, negative, neutral, or otherwise, they cannot be analysed in the ways that they must be.

It is not enough to understand that all pieces of media labelled as such are “bad” or “harmful” — the work must be done to analyse the ways in which they are bad or harmful, the harms that that text might contribute to or reflect, the ways in which those ideas are communicated unchallenged or uncriticised. How intentional is it, on the part of the author or authors of the text? Where is our bias, as the reader? Are we taking into account the contexts of the narrative, of the time period, of the person or people who created it, of where it was created, and why, for what purpose?

There are no unequivocally right answers, nor unequivocally wrong ones, either.

Therein lies the rub: that’s what makes this, these discussions, these ideas, hard.

Hard work is required of us. Analysis, patience, consideration, critical thought. These things take time, and effort, and they take an emotional toll.

And at the same time, they must be done.

Not by everybody all the time in all situations — but to insist no one do them ever in any situation is to bow to the pressure of the real harm, which is in robbing people of the language to explore and define the ways a piece of media or a text or even another person makes them feel.

That’s what this critical thought is truly about, after all.

If I can’t explore the complicated feelings in a television show and how it makes and made me feel — how can I possibly approach the feelings I have in my relationships, or the feelings another person made me feel? The harm they’ve done me, or that I’ve done them?

How can I formulate a voice for myself, and voice my thoughts, my feelings, my fears, my needs, my boundaries, if I have never been taught to speak?