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?
Depends. I’m fine with most stuff, but I certainly want warnings if a video is titled “revolving door fail” but the content warning is “NSFL” (dude got his fingers caught and visibly cut off)
Not having a NSFL tag would be a major disservice to the viewer.
Just to head this off at the pass, because someone is bound to bring up exposure therapy: hi, hello, I am someone who has been through exposure therapy (technically Exposure/Response Prevention, or ERP). Yes, it is broadly speaking true that avoiding triggers increases anxiety in the long run. However, one thing that was stressed to me over and over in ERP is that exposures have to be VOLUNTARY to be beneficial. Meaning, just hucking a tarantula at someone with arachnophobia is going to do far more harm than good. Likewise showing them a bunch of pictures of spiders with no warning. However, putting a content warning puts the decision to engage back into the hands of the person with the phobia (or trauma, eating disorder, etc), which effectively turns it into a voluntary exposure should they choose to engage.
It depends on the implementation. Some good implementations are: Tags on AO3, Content Warnings at the beginning Movies/TV, using tags on the fediverse There is one implementation that really bothers me and it’s the Content Warning on the fediverse, the fact that it hides the whole post by default means that most of the time I end up expanding the content and seeing it anyways. I would prefer if the fediverse would just move to spoiler tags where you can hide only the content that the warning is for:
like this
tada!
I hate graphic depictions of sexual violence. Moves like “A Clockwork Orange”, “The Accused”, and “Requiem for a Dream” all have scenes that I wish I didn’t remember.
Content warnings are information that allow media watchers to make informed decisions. People who are annoyed by them are just contrarian assholes with the teenage mentality that gore and cusswords are cool.
I saw a post once that had a content warning for music. Just. Music.
personally i find any and all music to be deeply upsetting. even tonal speech gives me anxiety.
i like my noises like my fonts, monotone and monospaced.
Depends on what are they warning me about. If it is about gore of something similar I can appreciate it, if it about foul language they can shove that warning up their asses.
Yep! Love em. I use filters and such all the time. I have several topics I do not care for at all, so I skip right over those.
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.
Content/trigger warnings are not about “being shielded from hardship;” they’re about not springing trauma triggers or upsetting shit on unsuspecting people (or not causing actual physical harm to people, in the case of epilepsy warnings).
Like, OK, cool, you read Mein Kampf. I don’t think that’s a bad thing to do, for the reasons you did it. But you did that freely and knowing what you were getting into (“by Adolf Hitler” serves as an implicit content warning IMO). Suppose you were a Jewish student and your history teacher sprung a reading from Mein Kampf in the middle of a lesson with no warning. Or hell, just imagine having “Old Yeller” sprung on you the day after your dog died. I don’t think it’s babying anyone to warn them about something that could ruin their day.
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.
If you get a little anxious when you read a trigger warning that is your issue to deal with.
Wait a minute…
I find them pointless to me (sometimes irritating as noise and insurrection), but I understand they could be helpful and useful for others, so it’s fine to me when people use them. I simply was past them.
I absolutely appreciate them. They give me the chance to decide for myself whether to engage with a topic, depending on where I’m at. Suicide is often hard for me to deal with, due to my own family circumstances, so sometimes I want to get in and help people who are struggling, but other times, I just need to avoid the discussion for my own wellbeing. Content warnings give me the opportunity to make that choice
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.
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.
Seeing unexpected gore has ruined my day before. It’s not that hard to give a warning.
I don’t think they serve any other purpose than to signal that the person wishes to come across as considerate.
If it’s gore, porn or such then yeah but if we’re speaking of just text then no.
