I think you're being a little disingenuous with this take, bro.
Of course, there is a difference between reality and fiction, but ever since people learned to tell stories, they have had a way to live a little in a simulated reality and feel the feelings and emotions that the characters of the fiction experience. It's only a matter of how good the reality is simulated.
Obviously, for most people, watching a movie will allow them to become much more immersed and feel the thrills of the story than reading a book, where you need to have a very developed imagination to get immersed in the story. And the use of virtual reality in combination with sensory deprivation activates the same areas of the brain and neural connections as real world stimuli, so that the subject's brain is practically unable to distinguish reality from fiction.
It's good that AVNs do not yet allow you to achieve such a level of immersion in fictional reality.
But I think, they are superior to even movies in some ways, since usually the player acts on behalf of the main character and makes decisions about MC's actions changing the story flow. And a well-written plot and graphics make what is happening on the screen quite convincing, at least during the playthrough.
So yes, when AVN is done well, it helps the player believe in the fictional world and its characters and feel an emotional connection to them. Otherwise, it's just a bunch of cg-illustrations for a mediocre story. And I guess many people don't want to experiment with a roleplaying a rapist and an asshole. However the question stands, why they play the dark path when all the tags and warnings are in place.
By the way, they often make the argument that you are bothered by the dark themes in AVNs but at the same time you easily run over pedestrians in GTA. I think the issue is exactly what I wrote above: thanks to a fairly well-written, gripping storyline and deep, living characters, the player perceives and experiences what is happening in AVN too personally.
