I think it’s important to recognize that ‘controversies’ like the Uzaki discourse both are extremely niche and have a high potential to be damaging for individual artists. Yes, very few people are actually upset, but they’re throwing around very serious accusations.
If you step outside fandom discourse, it’s a huge deal to be called a pedophile, even if you know it’s false. You can’t disprove an accusation like that easily because it’s entirely based on what’s in your head. What are you going to do, broadcast your thoughts publicly somehow?
And yeah, most random people know the internet is full of liars, but they’re still going to be uncertain. Pedophile accusations, even completely unfounded ones, are really dangerous if you work with kids in any capacity or have a job based on reputation like online freelancing.
I think the strong reaction to the Uzaki discourse comes from two different places. One is alt right trolls who have been fed the “SJWs are coming for your waifus” narrative for years. The other is small creators who are afraid of this niche criticism becoming mainstream.
Sure, most people would easily see how ridiculous this whole argument is, but ridiculous arguments have caught on before. What if this is next? What if online artists start getting blacklisted for drawing standard anime girl designs on a large scale?
It’s a small chance, but this is a fear reaction we’re talking about, it doesn’t always listen to reason. People are afraid of losing their shot at an artistic career and I don’t blame them for that. It’s really hard to break into the arts and you want every chance you can get.
But on the other hand, we also need to remember that the Uzaki haters are a very small subset of anime fans and this discourse is still very far from mainstream right now. It’s not a censorship crisis, it’s a small group of vocal people getting upset at something very common.
We shouldn’t let people get away with tossing around pedophile accusations like candy at a parade, but we also shouldn’t give them more power than they need. And we definitely shouldn’t ally with alt right assholes because we’re scared. It’s a fine line, but we can walk it.
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