The disclaimer “Trigger warning” is now being used with remarkable frequency in Internet discussions, Facebook posts, and the like, to precede, well, a lot of controversial things. A few years ago it was mostly limited to “we’re going to talk about rape and sexual abuse” but now I see the term employed before any number of things that can theoretically involve something offensive.
Is anyone here actually prone to getting the vapors at something they read? What percentage of people are actually prone to a substantively physically unpleasant reaction to reading something, or is this just a fad?
No idea on the percentage but as for the popularity of trigger warnings, it’s a way that people in a specific bleeding heart subculture outdo each other on the bleeding.
Presumably someone somewhere has avoided very unpleasant traumatic feelings by the existence of a trigger warning. Maybe it’s a fad, but if it helps a few people not feel like crap, then I’m fine with it.
I think they’re probably not that commonly needed, but they’re a polite thing to do for the few people who might choose to avoid a stressful topic coming up. And even if only a small fraction of your readers/watchers might want the warning, if you’re creating something for a mass audience, then some people will want them.
We’ve had warnings like this for years in many contexts, they just weren’t called trigger warnings, and they were generally not used for text or speech. When you watch a violent or sexual TV program, there’s often a title card that warns you about that, in case you don’t want to see scenes like that.
The difference with trigger warnings is that we’re changing the types of media that we warn for (descriptions, not just depictions), and the types of things that get warnings. I think some people definitely go overboard with them out of a desire for sensitivity (or, depending on your perspective, celebration of victimhood), but honestly, it’s not like the old social standards made much sense. Watching a consensual sex scene is considerably less traumatic than hearing a detailed account of rape, but we have long warned about the former and not the latter.
I am a member of the private Grief Beyond Belief FB page. There are a lot of people there with very painful and very new deaths that they are trying to cope with.
In that case, I support the use of trigger warnings (such as murder, child death, infant death, suicide). Some people in the community just aren’t ready or able to read those posts yet, and the platform doesn’t allow you to proactively avoid these posts.
That’s reasonable and understandable.
I’ve also heard of trigger warnings being issued in university classes WRT material being covered. I’m leery of that as a general practice. :dubious:
What gets me is when Jezebel or someone wants to whip up some outrage over a racist petty functionary somewhere, they put [trigger warning: racism and abuse of privilege] in the beginning. Surely everyone reading that is anti-racism. So who are they warning? People who are scarred from their abuse by police? But doesn’t the headline already give the whole description away? I admit lots of people have been victims of racism, but are there really that many who cannot read a description of racism occurring somewhere without severe mental anguish?
I honestly think the best way to handle this is DESCRIPTIVE FUCKING TITLES. Maybe if you didn’t title your posts “Woman finds cute baby creature in her back yard… but then THIS happens!” or “Man speaks on subway; by the time he gets to his third sentence, I am crying”, people wouldn’t be surprised by what they read in the article. If the title of your article is “Man murdered by police [video]”, you don’t need trigger warnings.
All this complaining reminds me of folks who get so pissed that they have to “press 1 for English”. Is it really that big of a deal to press 1? Or to scroll past the trigger warning? Maybe you don’t need it, but is it really such a shock that it might help some folks?
It’s nothing new. News stories have had “Warning the following story contains graphic images which may upset some viewers” notices for decades. Trigger warnings are sometimes used by tumblrinas just to show how sensitive they are, which can be pretty eye roll inducing, but they’re not a bad thing in themselves.
This. But we might add NSFX warnings also. NSFW is kind of a trigger warning (read it and you might get fired) but maybe we can develop a set of letters to cover things which the title might miss. NSFG could mean not safe for grievers.
It could also help disambiguate some titles. “Look at my nice pussy” would be avoided by those who have recently lost a cat, unless it has a NSFW tag on it.
I first encountered the ‘trigger warning’ phrase in the context of self-harm behaviours, placed before descriptions of cutting, for example. The thought was that reading details of such things tend to …inspire… those with the existing proclivity to do so. It may have spread from that community.
I find the prevalence of trigger warnings a bit eyeroll-worthy. I’m an adult, I can decide what to read and what not to read. If it turns out that the subject is upsetting to me I can stop reading. And frankly, my gauge of what is upsetting shouldn’t stop other people from discussing that subject. Nor should they feel the need to protect me from it. Obviously, YMMV but that’s my take on it.
Some universities have taken to requesting that professors include trigger warnings in their syllabi. Fortunately, my university is not one of them. I teach Russian literature. There aren’t enough trigger warnings in the world.
I’m generally with you on this. College, at least in theory, prepares students for life after college. And real life does not give anyone advance warning about every unpleasant thing. Students need to learn to deal with unpleasant topics rather than demanding to be shielded from them.
Or perhaps we could get Al Queda to give a trigger warning before they start shooting people.
Well yes, scrolling past a trigger warning is trivial. No disagreement there.
But the idea that we need to bend over backwards to protect people from the trauma of reading something or other won’t stop there. If a student can demand a warning on certain material, can he or she also demand to be exempted from the material entirely? According to this article by a Harvard law professor, such concerns are already limiting what gets taught.
We have done a great job of promoting and publicizing to increase awareness of PTSD in soldiers. Now folks are recognizing that it happens to rape victims and other trauma survivors. Then again, as a society we are also gaining a more widespread understanding of addiction, and how those obsessions are triggered, so now and then I’ll see a warning about that as well. For instance, when Breaking Bad showed heroin prep and injection, I saw a lot of discussions with trigger warnings in the title.
I think it’s just part of the societal learning curve. There’s a tendency to swing the pendulum through it’s entire curve, from the previous rudeness to extremes of care, and then eventually as the conversation continues, it slows into a more reasonable median arc.
Getting pissed off at people’s attempts at sensitivity, or even civility, is IMHO a complete waste of time and energy. If I find I’ve got bile to spare, I try to spew it in the direction of someone who is being purposefully insensitive or uncivil.
In what sense are trigger warnings “demanding to be shielded”? All they do is warn of potentially problematic material. It’s up to the person in particular to decide whether or not they want to expose themselves to it.
And real life gives advance warning about as many unpleasant things as it can predict. Warning labels. Safety instructions. Advice from friends and family.
Your cite doesn’t back up your points - you’re pulling “demand” from somewhere, but all I see in that article is things like “asked”, “requested”, “suggested”. The closest it comes is “insist” - and that talks about post-exposure, when the material has already been presented.
