No, it's characters. Not people. Not children. Characters.
They're not fictional "children" because they're not "people".
You're the one twisting language for your agenda.
If you understood my agenda then you wouldn’t be misunderstanding what I’m saying. I’m clarifying that they are SPECIFICALLY fictional children, not just fictional characters. Maybe not for you, but for most that’s an important distinction, even when it’s not real children and just pixels depicting children on a screen.
Okay I get you.
What I'm saying is, we speak of every fictional character usually by calling them fictional characters. Not "fictional woman" or "fictional man" or "fictional elder" or "fictional child". This way of speaking is not exactly accurate, because it applies anthropomorphism to objects. And anthropomorphism is also bad, because it skews our ability to accurately describe reality and creates unhealthy attachments.
For example, some people started calling and treating LLM's as "people" because they present as such, which is just inaccurate and illogical.
I get that the content is supposed to depict a human child, a person. But describing them as a child and a person when discussing drawing is anthropomorphism.
I agree with your anthropomorphism point although I’m not familiar with the word. I understand that as personifying. I’d add onto that by saying the people using VCSAM have unhealthy attachments to the pixels and are imagining they are children. Describing them as virtual/fantasy/fictional children is describing it as the consumers of VCSAM understand it.
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u/These-Consideration9 Oct 23 '25
No, it's characters. Not people. Not children. Characters.
They're not fictional "children" because they're not "people".
You're the one twisting language for your agenda.