So it's true that art can affect its audience in powerful ways, and these effects can be negative. Another example (different from the Slender Man case, which I wrote yesterday): Goethe's Werther caused a huge wave of suicides in the style of Werther across Europe. People dressed up the way Goethe describes Werther and everything :) and shot themselves the way Werther shoots himself :( Art is powerful. Has always been. Will always be. And it should, too.
So, what about the Slender Man case? Obviously it's a problem if twelve-year-olds start stabbing other twelve-year-olds?
Of course there's a problem. But I the problem isn't the Slender Man, or the creator of the Slender Man, the problem is the two twelve-year-old girls who misread the Slender Man to such a drastic extent that they stabbed their classmate.
So the obvious way to address that problem would be to make sure people know how to read art. Just like you shouldn't survey 500 people about how much two plus two is, get an average answer of 5.33, and then declare that to be the correct answer---just as you should teach them Math instead---just the same way, you shouldn't look at what the Slender Man makes people do, notice that it caused a stabbing, and say the Slender Man is somehow bad. You should teach people how to read correctly instead.
The same goes for photoshop. Altered images cause people in the audience to starve themselves, etc. That is a problem. But the problem isn't the image, the problem isn't the artist, the problem is that no one taught those particular viewers how to correctly read a picture.
So (a) please don't go postal on photoshop, and (b) please add more classes on art appreciation, tia
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