[Cybotron5000]

Fiction (/well-written fiction at least) is an artform, like music or, um, art, or even design you know? It’s a communication medium meant (amongst other things) to convey something of the human experience that is perhaps intangible or illogical. Fiction is normally very honest and open about not being factual. I take your point though that when people take fictions as truth, whether through the reader’s ignorance, or the writer’s misrepresentation, that can be extremely problematic - that is not the fault of fiction I would argue though, but rather of the context/audience that receives it/the manner in which they interpret it (I suppose there are exceptions like parodies/eg. ‘War Of The Worlds’ or something?). I currently read much less fiction than I used to when I was a kid (my mum was an English teacher), but I can assure you that my brain is almost always perfectly capable of distinguishing between the two on some level. I may choose to suspend my disbelief or feel feelings prompted by the material, but am simultaneously aware that this is not objective reality. I agree with your point though that much fiction/fictionalised material that has been interpreted as real has caused much damage - people really like stories (isn’t this an inherent part of our psychology?) and tend to inevitably construct them around even the most dispassionate material (in the same way we tend to anthropomorphise stuff I guess?). Trick is we need some training to help us ‘read’ media with a questioning/‘between the lines’ sort of rationale/focussed attention/looking for bias/manipulation/being self-aware etc etc…