system
A chat on subreddit /r/me_irl
human
So they're saying that you can't use mafia as a setting for a story?

There's at least 100 mafia movies out there that prove this guy wrong.
gpt
I don't know what the person originally said, but I assume that the point was it's not *just* an aesthetic. 

Obviously it is used as a setting for movies, but for many people that romanticized image is the only/main way they were exposed to it, so they don't think as much about the real-life consequences and harm that mafia caused, and only think of the "cool" characters. I actually realized I used to do this subconsciously when talking to an Italian friend and how differently he saw and talked about them.

Same could be said about drug cartels I think. Lots of people I know romanticize Pablo Escobar as this cool Robin Hood figure, because they only learned about him in movies and Netflix, whereas every Colombian I talked to thinks very negatively of him.