A bit of a follow up to my last question here.

[Retro]

I'm sure some of you guys saw my question about watching the movie Trainspotting which had a scene where a dog was agitated, but now those thoughts have extended to piece of media that had more cruelty involved in it, and the ethics of enjoying that piece of media.

I've become quite a fan of the Devil May Cry series. I love the characters, I love the gameplay, and recently I've been thinking of writing some fanfiction of the series. But I do remember that before the game released, Capcom sold replicas of the main character's jackets for thousands of dollars. Now in the game, all of the characters are wearing some kind of leather (which doesn't particularly bother me since it isn't real) so naturally, the jackets they sell are going to be leather as well which probably is actual leather.

I was quite saddened when I found out that a game series that I had grown to love also had some form of animal cruelty in it. Especially since the series is about holding on to empathy and protecting your humanity.

So my question is, am I still supporting cruelty if I continue to play the series? Obviously, I'm not going to buy any of the cosplays or replicas of the jackets which would be directly supporting and paying for an animal to be killed, but am I supporting their actions just by playing and buying the games? Should I stick to just watching cutscenes on YouTube?

[aroneous]

So my question is, am I still supporting cruelty if I continue to play the series? Obviously, I'm not going to buy any of the cosplays or replicas of the jackets which would be directly supporting and paying for an animal to be killed, but am I supporting their actions just by playing and buying the games? Should I stick to just watching cutscenes on YouTube?

That's an interesting question. Overall, I would say don't worry about it too much. Even if the game developers were serial killers who used the dead bodies of their victims in their promotional materials, your personal enjoyment of the game probably has very, very little to do with their unethical behavior and the mindset behind that. If they weren't making video games, there's a good chance that they would be supporting/promoting animal abuse in other ways -- it just happens to be the case that they make video games that you like. For this kind of "boycott" to be successful, you'd have to fundamentally change someone else's behavior through a very indirect means, which is almost always misled. You'd have much better (though probably still not much) luck simply sending them email telling them why you don't agree with what they're doing and otherwise trying more directly to convince them to be vegan.

If you try to restrict yourself like this, you'll very quickly run out of things to enjoy in life. For instance, I recently had the morbid curiosity to watch this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mo5q6Z7FET8
Should I lose sleep over the fact that I've contributed to the engagement with this video, possibly encouraging the creator to make more (and now sharing it with even more people on here)? And should I stop watching Youtube videos entirely, because any engagement with the platform indirectly supports people who produce content like this? I don't think so, any more than I should feel bad about reacting with shock to witnessing someone kicking a dog on the street, when that person is doing so specifically because they take pleasure in seeing how people react. My reaction encourages them to do more, sure, but whether or not I did so has little bearing on the fact that that person is a piece of crap who is going to continue to do crappy things.

[Retro]

That's an interesting question. Overall, I would say don't worry about it too much. Even if the game developers were serial killers who used the dead bodies of their victims in their promotional materials, your personal enjoyment of the game probably has very, very little to do with their unethical behavior and the mindset behind that. If they weren't making video games, there's a good chance that they would be supporting/promoting animal abuse in other ways -- it just happens to be the case that they make video games that you like. For this kind of "boycott" to be successful, you'd have to fundamentally change someone else's behavior through a very indirect means, which is almost always misled. You'd have much better (though probably still not much) luck simply sending them email telling them why you don't agree with what they're doing and otherwise trying more directly to convince them to be vegan.

That is true and helps ease the worries I have. But if you don't mind me asking, does this same logic apply to films that have live animals in them as well? Because recently, I just realized that I'm getting into Star Wars! But then I found out that in a shot during A New Hope which was the first movie, they used an actual elephant and dressed it up for a scene in the movie, which is pretty obvious animal exploitation. Though I do understand that it came out in 1977, where veganism wasn't even known in the public eye does the same logic that you used for the Devil May Series work with films that have animals in them?

(Sorry for the long wait for the reply btw, I was quite busy.)

[aroneous]

That is true and helps ease the worries I have. But if you don't mind me asking, does this same logic apply to films that have live animals in them as well? Because recently, I just realized that I'm getting into Star Wars! But then I found out that in a shot during A New Hope which was the first movie, they used an actual elephant and dressed it up for a scene in the movie, which is pretty obvious animal exploitation. Though I do understand that it came out in 1977, where veganism wasn't even known in the public eye does the same logic that you used for the Devil May Series work with films that have animals in them?

If someone kills an animal for non-essential reasons, that's clearly a morally negative outcome. But a more complicated question is on whom we should place the blame for it. Our first inclination might be to blame the killer, but of course it's not that simple. We have to examine what their particular motivations are. What if they were forced to do it under duress? Then we would blame the ones who put them into that situation. That's why we don't purchase animal products -- doing so contributes to demand for these products that effectively forces people to kill animals out of economic necessity. The blame lies entirely on the consumer here. If these people could choose not to kill animals for a living, 99.99% of them would.

On the other hand, if someone kills an animal, records it, and posts it online for a viral video, clearly we can blame the killer in this situation. On account of the shock value, the video is guaranteed to rake in a certain baseline of views, which may well be enough for that person to feel motivated to kill more animals for more videos. You obviously can't blame the viewers for just watching a video that has already been put out there for the world to see. Of course, if someone enjoys watching animals being killed, that probably correlates with a problematic psychology that may contribute to that particular person committing acts of violence against animals themselves, but the act of watching the video is not problematic per se.

The same logic applies to watching movies involving animal exploitation, I imagine. These movies exist because the people who made them thought that the money they would potentially make from them was worth harming animals for. They weren't responding to demand in the same way that animal agriculture does (or other forms of animal exploitation like zoos, circuses, horse riding, etc.) -- demand for their movie would not even exist if they did not make it in the first place, and anyways they could well have made a different kind of movie that becomes popular for better reasons.