gary

I think I need to be a bit more clear on how I feel about the whole Mimi situation. In no way am I endorsing her arrest by the UK government, nor am I outright decrying it either. This is a complicated situation involving freedom of speech/expression and fostering or encouraging pedophilic behavior. While on the one hand I believe in freedom of speech and expression and don't think the government should be able to say what "art" any one individual can create, I simply can't ignore context surrounding the "art" in question in this case. With Mimi, she does not simply do "loli art". She draws NSFW art depicting a loli character (her own vtuber model as I understand it) in a variety of highly sexually suggestive poses and situations... which I will not lay out in detail as from what I've seen others say about it I have no interest in repeating. Now on it's face I could see the case being made that "Well, it's just a loli character and doesn't necessarily mean it's a child" and to that I would actually agree. However, you have to look at the overall context of Mimi's content online here. All of her posts were/are done in third person, infantilized dialogue specifically to give the impression of someone who is under-age... and this includes very sexually suggestive comments. Coupling her online dialogue and commentary that is clearly designed to sound or appear under-age, along with her artwork of a "loli" vtuber model and there seems to be a rather strong intention to present her art in a way that suggests the depiction is that of an underage girl or at least intended to be viewed as such by those she is catering to, not that this is simply a petite or underdeveloped adult woman. This now brings up the question: Should she have been arrested for this? The simple answer? I don't know. The argument can certainly be made that this was not CP because it was not depicting an actual child and presumably the artist herself (and by extension her model) is of legal age and thus no CP actually occurred. At the same time, there is clearly an intention to cater to those individuals who have... let's just say an attraction... towards this kind of thing and that is highly disturbing all on its own and shouldn't be encouraged for obvious reasons. This is an entire rabbit hole that I don't want to go down right now but the bottom line is I'm not applauding Mimi's arrest, but I'm also not championing what she has done either. Oh, and yes, I vehemently believe that anyone involved in the assault of children in the UK needs to have a date with Chippy and I think the way the UK is NOT dealing with that in any way is sickening. This is not about that so stop desperately trying to make it about that.