I wonder if people who are still Buying The Problematic Thing Because Reasons know that they're allowed to just, do that. You don't have to defeat a marginalized person in debate. You don't have to browbeat someone for a blessing. You can just do it.

If you feel like it's important to minimize the harm you do, then step one is: don't make a big public thing of it.

Some people are going to guess this is about a specific thing and some people are going to wish they could reply to ask what I'm talking about, but I said it in the first tweet. Today's proximate inspiration doesn't matter. I'm making a general case.

We've all got the things where we just can't/won't support or enjoy it anymore because of how it hits (or who it hits) and we've all got the things we continue to consume In Spite Of. Literally everybody makes these choices.

If you feel so guilty and conflicted because you see people you follow saying "This is hurtful to me." and you Wanna Anyway... the available appropriate responses to you are ignore the guilt or listen to it. Don't make other people try to fix it for you.

"But it hurts me to feel like this person whose opinion I respect might think less of me for Buying The Thing."

Then don't buy the thing?

Or don't talk to them about it.

Those are the choices that won't change their opinion of you. Also, chances are they don't *have one*.

Maybe this is easy for me to say because this isn't a form of guilt I actually experience. But someone talking about New Thing, even if they're saying, "If you buy this thing then I don't trust you anymore." - they didn't @ you, did they? They didn't tag you? Single you out?

If it hurts you to think that this person, if they knew this thing about your consumer spending habits, would think less of you... you can listen to that! And if you don't want to, you can ignore that! No one can stop you! You require zero permission!

These "I will simply explain myself and receive absolution and then enjoy my problematic purchase guilt-free" things *never* work out. Never. Can't. Won't. Because even if you somehow manage it... that's one person. How about the next one?

I mean, in the final analysis, if you're worried that someone *might* think less of you *if* they knew you spent money on a thing, trying to argue them out of that, uninvited, is going to remove that ambiguity. Now they *do* think less of you.

Just buy the thing. Don't ask for dispensation. Don't argue with people who weren't arguing with you. Don't justify yourself to people who don't know you.

"But I couldn't do that, I'd feel horrible!"

Then don't buy the thing. It's not complicated.

Today is not Explain Things To A Marginalized Person Until They Mercy Kill Your Conscience For You Day. Neither is tomorrow. Rest of the week? Doesn't look good for it.

Maybe guilt is out of my lane because outside of a few specific applications it's just a word to me, a label for a cognitive process of balancing conflicting intellectual considerations. No emotional weight.

But it seems to me that if you're feeling horribly painful emotional guilt out of buying something that people you admire are saying is harmful to them... I mean, I would think making that their problem to solve would be *worse*, not better. Right?

Like, if you can't ignore the guilt you would feel over buying a book or video game or movie but you don't even feel guilt over being the 2,173rd person in someone's mentions trying to explain why they should forgive you... what's the guilt for? What is its function?

Life is trade-offs. Suck it up and deal with the guilt or suck it up and deal with not having the thing. Those are the choices. There's not a magic third way.