I understand the idea of shielding people from content that would be upsetting, but my own experience is, that I feel a little anxious as soon as I read Trigger Warning […].
How is your experience with it? Are you happy with it, or do you thing there are better ways to address dark topics?
I’m trying to imagine under what circumstances anyone would leave after a trigger warning. If they’re so sensitive to all the bullshit we all see on the internet every day, why would they be there in the first place?
Depends on the magnitude of what is being warned of.
“Warning, graphic gore”? Absolutely appreciated. “Contains scenes of actual combat, those with PTSD may wish to leave the room”? Yeah totally reasonable. “This book contains vivid descriptions of sexual abuse”? I can see why people would be squicked out by that.
But then we get into the absurd side of it. A film about the Holocaust, needing to warn its viewers that some contents may be distressing? Wow. You don’t say. A memoir about a tragic death, needing to put a warning that… someone dies? “This politics discussion may discuss slavery, racism, and oppression”? Oh no, we have to think about upsetting things that happened!
And before someone suggests those are unrealistic hyperbole, those are all things I’ve seen. I don’t feel those are helpful.
I also think its about the magnitude. It’s a huge difference between reading “they died” and a long detailed description of how. Or a photo or even video.
The first I’d say don’t need a warning, but the rest might depending on how realistic it is.
I appreaciate warnings overall as I struggle with anxiety so I can still use the internet even on bad days
They are harmless, so don’t see why not. I rather them to censorship. I remember mainstream media was heavily editing/censoring the footage of the killing of Charlie Kirk, and even posting the “far away” shot onto the same platforms that had close up, raw, uncensored footage. I heard it debated by them if a content warning and uncensored footage would be more beneficial.
I think the high quality footage itself of it actually made people more sympathetic/outraged about it, just seeing a man die that way
This is the correct take.
Content warnings on everything seems silly until you think about what the alternative is. It’s much better to have largely uncensored media that people can engage with intellectually, making their own decisions if they want to experience it or not.
The alternative is visible in the advertiser-friendly hellscape that mainstream social media has become, where people can’t even say words like “kill” or “drug” without being buried by the algorithm.
For a healthy society to exist, people need to be able to interact with sensitive topics and challenging ideas.
Imagine if the the news was able to show the actual true suffering in Gaza. I remember seeing Ukranian media publish uncensored images of mangled corpses and fragments of people’s skull still with a scalp and hair among rubble from Russia’s invasion. I think with the interactive nature of the internet, offering a content warning, then a censored version, then an uncensored version is the way to go. I imagined an interface possibly which starts with a content warning and then a “censored” toggle visibly turned on by default, but can be toggled off.
Yes, they are. For a literature class, I taught a very short story, which is expertly written, about an infant who is scalded. It’s a fantastic piece, but something I’d totally expect some people to opt out of given the content.
I think I remember that from my creative writing class! Wasn’t it by O’Connor or someone?
David Foster Wallace, “Incarnations of Burned Children”
Ah right, Wallace. Seemed like everything he did was a cry for help
What’s the story?
David Foster Wallace’s “Incarnations of Burned Children.”
not to be confused with David Wallace, CEO of Dunder Mifflin and founder of Suck it
hell of a read, thanks
Really depends on what it is. If it’s gore I would like to be warned beforehand because I don’t like gore and if I’m eating then it’s even more disturbing. So they can be beneficial but as I said it’s heavily dependant on what’s being warned against. I once saw “tw: food” on a post that had a photo of someone’s McDonald’s meal and thought that was stupid
Do you feel content warnings are beneficial?
Nope. Quite the contrary.
But it may be worth mentioning I’m getting old (nearing my 60s) and I have been educated in a now remote time where the idea that being confronted with hardship and with failure is what would help us learn to overcome them. Not being shielded from them.
do you thing there are better ways to address dark topics?
Confront shit ideas with better ideas. The rest, any form of censorship or control, never works, never did and I doubt will ever.
Heck, aged 16 my best friend and I decided to read Mein Kampf in order to understand how that ‘Nazi’ stuff managed to seduce so many people. While we were reading it, as seriously as we would have read any other book, we just discussed it freely meaning without fear of being judged (‘being cancelled’ one may say nowadays): we would point out stupid shit as well as things that seemed not, to young us at least, not that stupid trying to confront them through a free and open discussion. Decades later, I can safely say it was one of the best cure against me ever risking getting ‘seduced’ by those shit ideas and the hate they thrive(d) on.
Seeing something objectionable in media is not a “growth through suffering”. It is also not censorship. Nobody ever became a Nazi simply by reading Mien Kampf. (It’s usually complaining about made up shit like cancel-culture that pushes the dim-whited into the far-right).
There should have been a content warning on this thread: graphic depictions of boomer philosophy.
thx for this fine demonstration.
You know, fairy tales for children generally involved horror, murder, dismemberment and worse.
To get the kids to be aware of the actual horrors of the world, which are worse.
Hearing a story about, or seeing a fictional or even actual video of some of the fucked up shit people do to each other for stupid fucking reasons is still not actually traumatic.
Experiencing depictions of such shit should absolutely bother you. Should absolutely put you a bit on your toes, in real life, on the daily.
So you can avoid those situations. So you know shit like that’s possible, and fucked up fuckers have done it and will do it, and they’ll think they’re right the whole time.
Because when it does actually happen, that’s when it is traumatic, and not just being smart and aware
There’s an episode of the excellent podcast “Search Engine” about this, it’s called “What do trigger warnings actually do?” and it brought me from the “maybe they’re effective” thought group to the “they are not effective” group.
Thx for the podcast, I did not know it.
Here is a link to the relevant episode, for anyone interested: https://www.searchengine.show/what-do-trigger-warnings-actually-do/
Thank you for the link, I was lazy. I heavily recommend it, the host has on a lady who is an “expert in trigger warnings” (like a legit expert) and her research is very enlightening. I can relate—when I was young, I would deliberately seek out things with trigger warnings that I knew would affect me because it felt good to look at those things! I still click on anything with warnings, but I don’t actively seek stuff out anymore cuz I’m lazy.
I feel a little anxious as soon as I read Trigger Warning
I feel a lot more anxious when a show dumps graphic violence or ear piercing screams on me with no warning.
Warnings tend to at least let me adjust my TV volume in advance. Much better than those YouTube clips or TikTok videos that try to blow out my speakers in the first five seconds
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i appreciate the heads up
I appreciate them. You are what you eat. That goes for what you put in your eyes and ears as much as your mouth
I feel some kind of warning is deeply important, as it allows people to decide to skip a post instead of reading it in detail. Personally, I prefer to be given a chance to gird my brain against the potential onslaught of feelings that a serious, dark topic post might bring up. If I am ready to read and engage with a post of that nature, often a productive discussion is had as a result. As for general Trigger Warnings, I appreciate those as they activate my automated mental hardening responses and allow me to read without being overly concerned or stressed.
Seeing unexpected gore has ruined my day before. It’s not that hard to give a warning.
I only want to know gore/nsfl. otherwise im on the internet and i know what community im on.
If you get a little anxious when you read a trigger warning that is your issue to deal with.
Wait a minute…
Most people like to be coddled, few with admit it but it’s clearly a preference. They don’t bother me but I do my best to ignore them.
I prefer to go in with a little foreknowledge as possible, life doesn’t have trigger warnings, why should art? Bumpers are for children.
And this is not a, “I am very bad ass, nothing bothers me!” there are things that will consistently ‘trigger’ me, literally nope out but I’m a “buy the ticket, take the ride” type of person.
I also have a tendency to automatically dismiss groupthink. Occasionally to my own detriment but I’d rather maintained my agency rather than hand it off to a human void I rarely agree with.
To each their own. They don’t benefit me because they aren’t for me.
To answer the second half, if I had the wherewithal, my improvement would be for people to predefined their triggers and allow the medium to alert only when a trigger matches.
I feel content. Warnings are beneficial.
