FriendOfDeSoto

YMMV. There is no universal answer to this question. None of us separate the artist entirely from the work and thus our enjoyment of it. I think of it in video game terms. Every artist has a power bar. They can get hit a couple of times and can still be tolerated when they’re in the yellow. But once we’re in the red zone and the character starts getting translucent or is flashing I’m out. This is all very subjective though.

Marylin Manson went red for me and I scrubbed the songs I liked from my playlists. Michael Jackson also. But I continue to listen to The Smiths/Morrissey in spite of Morrissey’s politics. I still enjoy Pink Floyd although Walters and Gilmore are profoundly unlikable characters and Walter’s politics rub me the wrong way a lot of the time.

In the age of streaming, there isn’t a lot of money going to the artist. You’re not really supporting them financially if you enjoy their music in spite of any a-holery, moral or criminal, they may have committed. If you get something out of it, continue to do so. If it feels yucky then I’m gonna guess one more hit is putting the character in the red. And if you paid for the music/album, the “damage” is already done.

I’m glad I was never a big fan of Kanye’s œuvre so I don’t have to wrestle with this question about him. I think he would have done enough to drain his power bar thrice over and thus it’s game over for me. I wish he had more well meaning people around him who could help him to protect himself from himself.

Bluesky is merely a stepping stone between Xwitter and Mastodon. Facebook can just die with them boomers.

Any other answer than professional therapy runs the risk of making it worse. But I know that it can be a luxury.

Out of sight hopefully leads to out of mind eventually. Actively avoiding these a-holes is one thing, having a good emergency plan when it can’t be avoided is another. I don’t know your life so you have to figure this one out yourself. In my experience, people that have a certain power over you in your mind immediately lose a lot of it if you imagine them naked, tickling the tip of their nose with a feather.

Are you reacting rationally when you’re confronted with them? If you can control yourself enough to imagine the nose tickling, start there and see how it goes. If you can’t get there and therapy is out of the question look for a fresh start somewhere else. Different part of the city, different city, different time zone. We are conditioned to think we mustn’t run from our problems, which isn’t bad advice but isn’t universally true IMO. There are cases where you’re allowed to just move away in the night, secretly flipping the old life off in the process. If after careful consideration going through all the pros and cons you arrive at this conclusion, don’t deny yourself this option for dogmatic reasons.

A therapist, after disagreeing with me, would probably add that you should make sure you don’t repeat past mistakes by creating new dependent relationships that could lead to new abuse. So keep that thought in the back of your head.