Well obviously words aren't real. If someone's saying cruel things to you or spreading hurtful rumors, just ignore them! It's not bullying unless they put their hands on you. /sarcasm
Rather than get caught in the same argument loops as usual, let me tell a real life story about how D&D changed a man's life.
About 20 years ago, I was in a campaign with a younger guy, I think in his last year of High School. Messed up home life, angry and edgy, not uncommon for a teenager. Well the DM basically dared him to play against type for this campaign and got him to roll up a Paladin. And then the DM threw a bunch of interesting moral quandaries at him. Not no win situations, but pitting the Lawful solution against the Good solution and accepting whatever the player decided as he struggled to figure out how to best live up to his Paladin code. The player dove all in the way in on working through those dilemmas, actually thinking about what it all meant, he said it was a life changing experience. Ten years later he was a police officer and I don't think that would have happened without him playing that Paladin.
Fiction is the testing simulation for real life. It's where we go to experiment with morality and philosophy under controlled conditions or specific circumstances. And yes, it's also entertainment. But it's not just for entertainment. Because it's not just a mask you can put on or take off at will. It's a training room for how you think about the world. And a lot of us are making the deliberate choice to put aside having groups of people you can kill on sight for reasons of birth, rather than because they're bandits or slavers or demon cultists. That's not who we want to be, and so we're changing how we play.