Who are “they” and who says that that is valid advice?

“Separate the artist…” is fairly accepted by any decent people I know as a way for selfish people to forgive themselves the burden of minor personal sacrifices related to their own consumer activities. The long form is literally, “Yes, Michael Jackson did horrible things to that little boy’s butthole, Woody Allen molested his daughter and married his adopted child and Bill Cosby drugged and raped women for decades, but let’s go buy their movie/album!” - you likely wouldn’t say the long form through, would you? You would hide and obfuscate behind, “sepatate the artist…” So you don’t have to say the bad things out loud.

Nobody with any integrity buys into “separate the artist…”

Also, to your point about this post, again it’s a similarly lazy way to forgive yourself the burden of trying to stay aware of these things and making little changes to how you vote with your wallet. You can absolutely do something like go shop at Costco this week instead of target - as one performatively eliminated diversity programs at their company while one preserved them as a stand. That’s where your opinion falls apart because yes, you can likely find something to hate Costco as well (because they are all garbage companies, but there are shades, they aren’t all equal. You have to participate to function, but you can do the slightest amount of work to shop more consciously. But that is the work you are trying to forgive yourself of.

The point isn’t perfection, but to do enough for this week and try again next week. Before you know it, you’re shopping more consciously wherever you go.