A meta-analysis of the effects of trigger warnings and content notes
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The characteristics of the meta analysis were largely focused on the general public and attempts to limit anxiety in that domain. But I think they forgot an entire other application: NSFL warnings.
Whenever I see NSFL I ABSOLUTELY avoid clicking, I even stop reading, and that has greatly improved my peace of mind. Learned that the hard way during the early internet: I've accidentally seen way too many horrific things I wont even tangentially mention to last me 1000 liftimes. Sure there is an anticipatory impact, but NSFL works for me!
It seems like one message here is that more moderation is needed if anticipation has similar impact as the actual content.
Effects on the rest of us matter as well, but shouldn't be considered the whole story.
Trigger warnings are hyper-specific to the audience and could involved thousands (or infinite) potential 'triggers' and a huge variety of audience categories/groups. The burden on the platforms, writers, and general audience is magnitudes higher for some questionable value.
E.g. you'll see posts of the inside of wasp nests and the like being marked NSFL on Reddit.
NSFW has also evolved to mean "disable preview", among other things. E.g. it's used to hide the punchline of visual jokes on Reddit.
Some years back my mom was getting treated for a brain tumor. It was a glioblastoma, and as one of her surgeons explained, "This is the thing you will die from." Median survival time, 14 months.
I was very involved in her care and it was draining. She was still fighting hard at that point, but we knew that a moment would come when we'd have to decide to stop treatment. So when I saw that a local theater was having a triple feature with one of my favorite directors, Edgar Wright, I immediately bought tickets. At last, a light and fun evening.
What I had forgotten in the years since I had seen it was that in Shaun of the Dead, a zombie rom-com I adored, there is a scene where the protagonist's mom gets bitten. That protagonist, played by Simon Pegg, struggles with what to do. When his mom turns into a zombie, he is forced to shoot her. At that point I was about a month away from having to pull the plug on my own mom, and the scene was just devastating. I had to leave the theater. A decade later I've still not been able to watch the film.
I should be clear here: I'm not saying Shaun of the Dead should have had a content warning. I had seen it! And I think that sort of need is better served by things like https://www.doesthedogdie.com/ . But I am saying that it was a profoundly shitty experience. In the same way I'm going to avoid literally stepping on somebody's toes (because that hurts!) I'm going to avoid retraumatizing somebody when I can.
I think people already do that pretty naturally with things that are widely seen as disturbing. E.g., I was visiting a friend and went to pick up a textbook on his coffee table. He warned me not to open it, as it belonged to his brother in law who was studying to be a hand surgeon. I was grateful for that warning, as I can't unsee that stuff. To me content warnings are just extending that courtesy to less common horrors.
The challenge society wide is, of course, where is the line, and when is it useful to do at all?
Which the study seems to be saying, it isn’t generally useful for the ‘less common horrors’, at least not with a somewhat generic warning.
Your example is very relevant as it's both very real and also extremely specific to your own world and context.
Trying to predict every potential 'trigger' imposes a major mental burden both on the authors/editors to find them and on the reader in the distracting way it's prominently appended to information
If you're talking to a very specific audience I don't see anything wrong with it. But making it a common/general practice seems like a completely wasteful exercise. Especially with the way the grievance crowd is never satisfied with only a few people getting special treatment, the list always grows exponentially. Then eventually there will be a mountain of trigger warnings for every potential niche.
So if we agree there's some very real (growing) costs involved, the other factor is does it provide real benefit for x% of readers? Then you can evaluate the ROI. If studies show people are even more likely to read it anyway (or maybe can't "prepare" themselves in a meaningful way) it's hard to see much benefits vs costs.
That said, I think there are plenty of people who feel resentful that people are now asking them to be considerate when before they could get away with being thoughtless jerks. That's especially the case when the requests for consideration come from groups constructed as lesser (women, non-dominant ethnic groups, gender/sexuality minorities, etc). Those people can go fly a kite.
I disagree that the costs are growing. My experience is that I spend an approximately constant amount of time on consideration. On occasion, somebody points out how something I said could be unpleasant or harmful to some set of people. I think about it, usually find another way to make my point, and move on. From what I've seen, the only people who find this burdensome are the ones who are resentful that they have to think about people unlike them, and so don't end up learning. That's a choice that they can make, but I don't see any reason to coddle them.
> From what I've seen, the only people who find this burdensome are the ones who are resentful that they have to think about people unlike them
This sort of smug/stereotypical dismissal of why people don't care to add preambles to every comment/paragraph they write or say aloud that might offend or upset someone is exactly why people push back on this sort of thing.
Ignore all counterpoints and just accuse them all of not caring about x victim's predicament. Surely that will convince them.
And earns you enemies from all but a tiny fraction of people, regardless of the validity of your point.
You can always say no, politely. Or leave. Or refuse, etc.
I don’t care for the original persons point, but I also don’t care for you. To be clear.
To my mind that's quite nasty, even when it's cloaked in false, high-minded BS about free speech and the like. So am I going to be frank in return? You bet.
If you really care about people being nasty, I am sure you'll now start hectoring those nasty pro-kyriarchy types. But what I think is actually happening here is that you'll continue to only object to anti-status-quo frankness, while happily accepting pro-status-quo nastiness as long as it's got a modicum of civility glossed over it.
Strangely enough it left me immune to images and videos of human suffering, and they now have no effect on me at all.
But I can't deal with anything to do with animals in pain or suffering.
I wonder if it's something to do with communication. He would communicate what was happening very clearly and was very rational about his wishes.
I'm glad you had that much time with him and that his mind was unclouded. Even now, years later, I treasure those moments of presence.
I had been laughing my head off until that point, but when his mother says, "I didn't want to be any bother," I started crying and just cried and cried through that whole scene you describe.
So I really feel for you. Have a virtual hug.
I have watched the film a couple of times since though. Once you know it's coming, it's just a pang.
In the same manner, those who've seen the war may not react well the “Top Gun” style ass kicking with a happy end. There problem here is not within them.
On the other hand I'm convinced there are things that are universally NSFL for everyone and I believe that the parent comment is geared in that direction.
The meta-analysis seems to include only papers that deal with the first kind of trigger:
" The warning, as conceptualized by the authors of the relevant publication, was intended to notify participants that forthcoming content may trigger memories or emotions relevant to past experiences."
Decades ago, I was having lunch at my parents house. There was a newspaper on the table, unopened, just brought in. I looked over the top of page 1. Unfolded it, and there was a picture of a dead body in the street. It was a story about some conflict in another country (Bosnia perhaps). I'm OK with seeing that if I'm already reading about it and in the right frame of mind, but "not safe for lunch" really hit me that day. So much that I called the newspaper to complain about "being surprised with a dead body on the front pafe during lunch". I've never done that before or since. ;-)
As in, something nsfw is not okay for work, something nsfl is not okay fir life in general.
The trouble with NSFW is that it covers things you want to seek out, e.g porn, but also things you might want to avoid, e.g war pictures.
> One possibility is that most people are not skilled at emotional preparation (e.g., reappraising emotional content or using coping strategies). Thus, the uncomfortable anticipatory period is unlikely to reflect any form of helpful action. This conclusion is supported by Bridgland et al. (2021) who asked participants to explain what they would do when they came across a trigger warning; only a minority of participants mentioned some form of approach coping strategy (e.g., reappraisal strategies, such as reminding themselves to focus on non-emotional aspects of the situation; Shiota & Levenson, 2009). Indeed, trigger warnings (including those used in the present studies) typically warn people about the distressing reactions they may have, but do not explain how to reduce these reactions.
Basically, content warnings aren’t useful on their own without additional therapeutic training, which makes sense. “Something bad is about to happen” isn’t useful if you don’t have the means or experience to prepare for it.
The warnings don’t help when people’s curiosity (morbid, compulsive, or otherwise) has not been counteracted by learned experience (or tools via therapy) that they don’t like it or it doesn’t help them.
The warnings are generally not generic (aka ‘bad stuff here’), they’re usually quite descriptive of what category it covers. Far more than a NSFL warning for sure!
If someone keeps going, it’s not because they did so accidentally. They either thought it was going to be fine and they could handle it (and most can), or couldn’t stop themselves even if they knew it was going to be bad.
How?
Trigger warning = NSFL tag on the post
Allows you to have informed consent to consume content - or nope out of it.
For most people, "NSFL" is stuff like extreme gore.
For survivors, NSFL also includes whatever experience nearly did them in (so, literally NSFL). Hence more words needed.
Did this clear it up?
This is where they therapy side would be interesting to understand. Everyone is going to need a different response plan. Granted, many will be similar, but how do you teach someone to prepare?
Story tags there serve two important purposes: so you can find what you want to read, and not read that which you definitely do not.
The former are meant for people that either actively avoid watching gore/porn, or who generally wouldn't mind but are in public/at work and want to avoid embarassment.
The latter (trigger warnings) were invented by relatively sheltered and emotionally unhealthy teens on Tumblr, many of whom incorrectly self-diagnose with PTSD and other ailments. It became more prevalent in the 2010s as these teens grew up and got jobs and media influence. It was far more of a way to signal in-group membership, than an actual scientific practice. People who didn't include trigger warnings could get criticized (and occasionally harassed) pretty hard.
It's the same as the TikTokers who say "k-word" instead of "kill", not to protect people's feelings, but to avoid TikTok's heavy content moderation. If influencers or corporations start saying "k-word" outside of TikTok in the future, you can assume it has more to do with immaturity (or the horribly-named "virtue signalling" concept, which is really just in-group signalling) than with any empirical attempt to reduce mental health impacts.
language politics of whether trauma is a "disability" aside, the existence of a meta-analysis over studies which purport to study whether a disability aid works by using it with people who do not have that disability is saddening
some other limitations the i don't see the authors comment on (though i haven't read thoroughly so happy to be corrected): - the effect of different kinds of content warnings isn't discussed (some interesting dimensions are specificity and prominence) - the fact that almost all of the studies use self-reported anxiety scales, and thus it is unclear whether content warnings increase anticipatory anxiety or increase self-reported anticipatory anxiety
like with most accessibility aids the interesting questions are not "does it help". they're "who do different forms of the aid help or harm" and "morally, when should we expect or even enforce a particular level of implementation"
looking at how other accessibility aids work is helpful for answering some of these questions. to take the classic university classroom example, you could for example look at the way some departments handle students who aren't able to take lecture notes. a student can request note taking accommodation for a particular class, and then a peer volunteer (or as a fallback university employee) will take notes for that student. just like that, we don't need to have a national debate about whether it is helpful or harmful if all university professors are forced to provide note taking services for all of their students.
anyway, i guess i'm upset because i'm tired of the ongoing massive debate and apparently research industry that completely misses the point.
The reason is because there seems to be a standardized list of 'real' triggers that people agree on, and I'm often triggered by depictions of loving families. Which nobody is ever going to warn for. I also have major disassociation and emotional blunting, so I have no idea what makes violence or sexual related cross the line into needing a warning. So ironically, spaces that insist heavily on trigger warnings are hard for me to exist in as a person with PTSD without breaking the norms. It's hard not to feel there are 'right' and 'wrong' triggers.
1.) Nobody would want to pay for a central organization/group to make the ontology or labeling system. That would be a complex undertaking that would require a substantial amount of domain knowledge, not something that could be thrown together by volunteers.
2.) Keeping it up to date would require disclosure from people with PTSD to said central group and for various reasons a lot of us wouldn't be comfortable with that.
And the second problem remains. I do not trust volunteers to treat my PTSD experience with any respect. The type of person who would volunteer to do this are likely to be either people who have PTSD themselves (which represents a burden on them/is likely to be difficult/might possibly not be emotionally stable enough to do this work well) OR the virtue signaling/social control type. I've seen too much open grifting and hypocrisy from progressives to trust randoms claiming to want to help us.
I mistook how AO3 works. I guess I'm thinking more like Tumblr or Flickr. Say it isn't centrally organized. We're just tagging them likes we sees 'em. So someone creates the frog tag because they want to use it and it doesn't exist. Then they tag something because it has a frog. It never crosses their minds that someone may have a frog phobia; the filtering is done by the frog fearer themselves, so it isn't disclosed to bullies who might use it against them, or anyone else they want to keep it from for reasons of their own privacy.
There's still problems here, one person may read `frog` and another `frogs`, mistakes can be made, things can be mistagged deliberately, etc. but I think there's promise to the approach.
If you have resources to recommend on library science, I'd be keenly interested.
Nobody should be arguing against any kind of trigger warning in those spaces. If someone is pushing back, they should be removed from the space -- They're actively working against the point of the space.
>Which nobody is ever going to warn for.
I will now in those kinds of spaces.
Anecdotally I've also seen trigger warnings for father's day and mother's day, which seems like a trend in this direction.
>I have no idea what makes violence or sexual related cross the line into needing a warning
Well, nobody can know for sure :) Many of us have to guess when we put the trigger warning in, more so if we can't relate to the trigger. That can be much harder when you're dissociative but it's hard in general.
What's helped me is to mentally flag any potentially unwanted contact, physical or verbal, and find the best trigger warning that captures the text. Sometimes that means leaving a warning for just that, unwanted contact -- Sometimes I can refine that further to a kind of abuse, e.g. sexual or physical abuse.
In my experience, the people who are most zealous about enforcing content warnings are people who like the social power it gives them over others and who lash out when they're made uncomfortable, and that's not acceptable. Being uncomfortable or triggered is obviously fine and you can't control that, but that doesn't give us the right to lash out at others or expect people to just 'know' what might set us off.
You’ll never be able to put in every trigger. For example, angry drunk people. I’d never expect anyone to warn me about that in any form of media. (Goodfellas is awesome, btw)
There is a reasonable middle ground here. A short list of the most common issues better than nothing while not being onerous. Is mentioning your story includes a graphic depiction of rape difficult? I had a rather frank discussion with a fellow author who gave me that one without warning me.
Obviously the most vocal will never be happy. They can go hug a cactus.
My point is that there are conditions where yes, that's difficult. What counts as 'graphic' versus any depiction? I would genuinely have no idea because I'm so desensitized. Getting a 'frank discussion' over it and acting like I'm that way on purpose is just telling me not to be in the group because I don't share the invisible sensitivity level. It's the invisible part I object to, by the way. If there's a list of things to warn for and guidelines, I have no problem with it. But most people/groups won't do that because they like to pretend that there's something objective about what they chose as sensitive subjects rather than admitting 'hey I think we need some cultural boundaries around what's acceptable in a public space, let's discuss it' because they know it opens the discussion to other (usually more conservative) cultural boundaries.
For example, those spaces warn for suicide but not blasphemy. Or how about explicit consensual sex? Sex involving trans people? (Depending on the sex act/how it's treated, it can be triggering to some people's dysphoria)?
The middle ground is still a value judgement. Just admit it instead of dancing around that it's for the disabled. It's not. Stop using us as a shield for what is considered moral or not moral or disturbing or not disturbing. Just say "Most people find rape abhorrent to read about, so warn about it".
What does “triggered” actually mean, specifically?
Regardless, that seems like a serious mental health issue.
You are responsible for and in control of your own emotions. If you don’t feel that’s true, you need to spend more time in serious therapy, not demanding “trigger” warnings.
I mean 'triggered' in the PTSD sense of the term since I have PTSD. I'm nominally the population served by trigger warnings, but I find the cultural practices around them not helpful because they assume a common experience when PTSD triggers are very personal and in addition trigger warnings are accompanied by a 'walk on eggshells' culture which clashes with the desensitivity/disassociation that also accommodates PTSD.
And I am in therapy, thanks. You should probably take some reading comprehension classes though.
Others may have been reacting to that as well as it's not a productive addition to the discussion. (Also why I was snarky in my reply, which I will not be editing.)
Frankly, I now wish I hadn’t.
If you actually get triggered by seeing “happy families”, that’s absolutely a serious mental illness, and not only is it not anyone else’s concern, but by advertising it, you almost certainly are reinforcing it.
Being unwell is not something to celebrate or wallow in, and the creation of spaces that encourage such self-destructive antisocial behavior — tumblr comes to mind — has been to the detriment of society at large.
I also mention my Multiple Sclerosis when it's relevant. Is discussing my spasticity 'wallowing' in it?
Why is your first instinct to shame the suffering person for talking about it? We shouldn't celebrate it, but nor should we ban any discussion of it socially because it makes you uncomfortable. I'm sorry that you clearly have emotional reactions to frank discussions of mental illness; are you in therapy for that?
And again, work on your reading comprehension. I'm arguing against trigger warning culture because even if I take its assertions at face value, it doesn't help the people it purports to help. It's a refutation of the argument that 'trigger warnings help people with PTSD'. I have PTSD, which is relevant to refuting that argument. That's why I mentioned it.
It's not envy. It's a trigger because one of the women who abused me was really into socially appearing to be a good mother and therefore that was part of the 'act' and I was forced into acting like part of those happy families. So I tense and have emotional reactions because my brain is fucked up and therefore reads the depictions as abusive.
(I have a great deal of envy - I'm working on it - but that means I definitely know the difference!)
Given a person who is triggered by a specific type of content do they avoid things labeled with that specific type of content more than if it was unlabeled? It’s one of those things that seems so obviously true when you talk to people.
To me this study is actually huge to support trigger warnings and content labels. They don’t cause people across a population overall to avoid the content, they act as a positive signal for people who are looking for it (like R rating on horror movies), and they have no effect on the experience — it makes the response no worse and doesn’t spoil it for people who want it.
I feel like I'm not asking for much here. :(
We can’t possibly account for every possible form of extreme emotional fragility, nor is it our responsibility to account for it.
The attempt to shift that responsibility to speakers is itself just a form of social aggression, status-seeking and control.
So yes, it is asking for too much.
You do not have to stoic. Feeling emotions is good for your mental health and is not a sign of weakness.
You are allowed to want attention. You are even allowed to ask for it. It is a normal part of being a social creature. You deserve to be loved, cared for, and have your needs attended to.
When you are deprived of the attention you need it is normal to feel resentment towards people who get it and come up with reasons they must be undeserving. It’s a defense mechanism. Because if they are getting attention because they deserve it then your brain tells you that because you’re not getting attention it must mean you’re not deserving. Pushing past this is a sign of emotional maturity.
Different responses pto emotion get different reactions from people. If your response is something visible but non-threatening like tears, curling up, shaking people will be sympathetic and help you. This is healthy. This is good. It’s not an act it’s a release and a signal to others of your needs. You are allowed to ask for help.
You are allowed to be vulnerable, and being vulnerable around people can establish trust and mutual respect. Someone who you see as gaining status probably did so because they opened up, shared their feelings, and asked for what they needed. That kind thing makes you more human and naturally makes people like you.
You are allowed to set boundaries for yourself. Saying you can’t do violence when picking a movie to watch is a boundary not control. It’s your responsibility to try to not cause others harm or distress and in turn it is others’ responsibility do the same to you.
Nobody is forcing you to add trigger warnings. No one will beat down your door and string you up for not adding them, but then you have to read the room which might be harder. Asking “hey I know suicide is a sensitive topic, is everyone good to talk about it?” is a good way to not accidentally bring up sore topics around people whose lives you don’t know.
Yes, we’re allowed to feel emotions, but no, they’re not the responsibility of strangers, acquaintances, or coworkers.
If you’re semi-regularly crying, curling up, or shaking in a non-familial environment, you need to seek professional help, not burden those around you with what is clearly a serious personal mental imbalance.
I hope you find someone that teaches you that kindness doesn't have to be conditional.
Unconditional kindness is reserved for parents’ relationship with their very young children.
With anyone else and in any other circumstance, unconditional kindness is pathological.
It is enabling, not helping, and it is detrimental to those who need to build resilience.
Enabling someone isn't kindness, unablement often occurs because confrontation is deeply uncomfortable and is a completely different wiring than choosing to be kind.
I get what you are getting at, but I am curious how much of that profile should be fleshed out in your view?
"Main character may discover a secret about their true ancestry"?
[1]https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086190/parentalguide?ref_=tt_s...
- one important dimension of the "should" in this question is how much choice the viewer of the media has in viewing the media. this is part of why schools are such a big part of the conversation about content warnings, because the students can't just choose to opt out of readings without consequences
- another important dimension is the delivery platform and audience size. sometimes you can just ask the person who made or is showing you the thing about some very specific content you'd like to avoid or be prepared for, so specifying everything isn't as important there. otoh, if you're a giant media property with millions of viewers, maybe the cost/benefit of listing exactly when/where particular things happen looks a little better
- depending on platform, lots of detail could be more or less practical. e.g. if you're making a web page it's easy to say "content warnings: click for details > detailsdetailsdetails click for more details > detaileddetailsdetaileddetails", which easily allows the viewer to choose how much detail they want rather than picking for them, but that can be harder to pull off in other formats
- if you find this topic interesting, consider looking for literature on topics like accessibility and disability justice (not sure i could recommend a particular one since i've formed my views on this sort of thing piecemeal and through community). there is a lot of interesting moral thought on the subject of "ok so this thing is helpful to some people sometimes, sooo how much should we actually do it?"
It suddenly does not seem as impossible as it did a moment ago and it would actually benefit people, who are concerned about triggers ( and alleviate concerns of people like me, who don't want flags on everything ).
I always thought a true trigger warning, the kind that I really like, are for example movies warning when there'd be things like gore and etc that I don't like to watch. I like it because I get a physically ill reaction that will ruin my night if i see fictionalized gore. I wish I didn't, but I do, so it goes. But as you've said I've seen "trigger warning" mean literally putting the words "trigger warning" on the top of a text post which seems pointless, or, saying it before telling a story, which also seems pointless.
No, no, that one's simple: "fascism" means anything that isn't anarchism. And "anarchism" means anything that isn't fascism. This is definitely a coherent and useful set of terminology.
The term "grooming" is being used in a homophobic way in the USA by american politicians and media. This isn't a new homophobic stereotype, btw.
I'd like to share a personal annecdote that I think may be instructive to people who have never found trigger warnings to be useful.
Once a friend of mine wanted to show me a visual novel. They skipped the trigger warning at the beginning because they felt it was spoilery. We played through the whole thing in one night; about halfway through the story (given the path I took), we were lead to believe a character committed suicide (and that it may be because you rejected them romantically), and then at the end it's revealed they were literally trolling you.
I had fairly recently gotten out of a traumatic relationship with someone suicidal. When I would try to leave the relationship, they would threaten to kill themselves. Sometimes they would beg me to kill them. Needless to say, suicide was a difficult topic for me to engage with in an immersive, RPG-like setting.
I felt blindsided & stopped having a good time after I was lead to believe the character took their life. I was uncomfortable but didn't know what to do but keep playing. When I finished the game and the twist was revealed, I didn't feel pathos. I think some of you may relate to the moment you realized the show Lost was never going to resolve the mysteries it was putting forth, that the show runners were throwing things out to grab your attention with no plan to resolve them; like my emotions had been manipulated in a cheap way to engage me. I felt toyed with.
I think if I had had the trigger warnings, I would've been able to mentally prepare myself. Or I'd have the opportunity to decide I didn't want to play.
I want to make informed choices about the media I consume and how I consume it. Make of that what you will.
(This was all many years ago & I'm doing well.)
<< I want to make informed choices about the media I consume and how I consume it.
That is a reasonable statement and even expectation on the surface. I might accept it as rationale for graphic movies and so on, but your example is visual novel, where you choose your own adventure - a form of media that is almost guaranteed to put you in unusual and unexpected situations? Unless you play a game built around satire of everyday life ( say.. Stanley Parable ), is it not expected to expect unexpected including some questionable predicaments?
But more to my real point, should art imitate life or should it be a 'safified' version of it? I can absolutely relate to seeing something you should not see ( my buddy dared/forced me to watch "Hostel" with him and it was not a pleasant experience and have stumbled onto some real bad stuff on the 90s net - I completely buy it can mess you up if you are not mentally prepared ).
In your example, how would you know this could have been the outcome without having gone through it? It seems like catch 22. Trigger warning would give you only a very general idea.
I'm not entirely sure I've understood your objection properly, but I'll try to address your questions.
Yeah it's expected that I'll be put in unusual situations, no I don't expect authors to anticipate each trauma I could possibly have, but surely the very obvious ones can be covered.
Should art immitate life or be safe? Neither and both, there's plenty of room in this world for the most gritty horror movie and for Blue's Clues.
How could I have known it was the outcome? The trigger warning was as specific as it needed to be - "TW: Suicide" is plenty.
ETA: The general vibe I'm getting here is you're asking, "where do you draw the line?", as if this were a slippery slope. The answer is, it's a matter of taste and judgement. It's not any less tractable then the question, when do you decide a work of art is done?
Naturally this opens up the observation that, if it's about judgment, one could decide to include no trigger warnings, like my friend did when presenting the game to me. And sure, I'm not saying that's invalid. More that its bad taste, and I've elaborated as to why I feel that way.
Those who oppose trigger warnings like the commenter above you, who believe that you should be ready to handle anything a piece of fiction throws at you. After all, it's just fiction, right? Generalizing, this usually comes from people who have never experienced deep trauma or at least who have never confronted it. Or possibly they have, but they were lucky enough to have an upbringing that gave them the tools to remain mentally stable while doing so. They also tend to be low in empathy - they believe everyone has a mental state similar to them so they can't understand, at an emotional level, why other people would need trigger warnings. For them, quite reasonably, trigger warnings are annoying spoilers and they dislike that.
Then there's the people who support trigger warnings. Often this comes from having experienced deep trauma without a support system (internal or external) that was strong enough to deal with it. Or they have observed this in people they love. These people know how fragile mental health is for many people and they want to start building a more supportive society, one small part of which is adding labels to fiction that will let people know when dangerous traumas might be triggered by reading it. And undealt-with traumas are dangerous - they are the basis for all kinds are dark behavior which I won't list here.
And then there's me. I just don't wanna read about sad shit. Give me happy fantasies man, not that dreary misery loving suicidal bullshit.
(Or maybe I'm in the second group but I've reached the denial stage)
First, thank you for your answers. Some disclosure may be necessary. I am a strong free speech proponent, which colors my views of the world somewhat. I will admit that in this case, I had no real objection, but I was more trying to understand how you see the world and to what extent some things are ok ( which you correctly identified anyway ). In other words, I found your post interesting and decided to engage.
Believe it or not, I think we are oddly closely aligned based on your answers.
<<as if this were a slippery slope.
If there is a place where are not aligned, this may be it. Having seen ( sometimes heard of, sometimes read about ) some of the horrific things people can do to one another ( sometimes willingly and enthusiastically ), I have certain level of discomfort of trying to hide reality from people ( and trigger warnings enable that ). I do not mind those for movies and, say, other forms of entertainment, but I worry that it is going to move to other non-entertainment spaces, where, for example, augmented reality will be asked to remove all traces of 'unpleasantness'.
In other words, I do see a slippery slope here, although I can give you that is a gentle and slow one.
I do think you're mistaking a mistake that I see many free speech advocates make, which is to confuse criticism with compelled speech or compelled silence. A critical benefit of free speech is to make an argument that something is bad, including even that something shouldn't be said or done. But when people use their voice to do that, sometimes free speech advocates get confused and think this is limiting someone's rights.
But it's actually the very discourse and truth seeking process that speech is meant to enable at work. I'm not asking for compelled speech or silence, I'm making the case and hoping people will do so voluntarily. And if they don't, then I'll simply repeat my objection, incorporating new evidence and better arguments.
Reading between the lines, I think perhaps you're worried that governments may use this metadata to limit the distribution of media? And that's a reasonable concern, but I'd describe that as two separate problems; the need for metadata, and the tendency of overzealous regulators to react to something once it's been made legible to them, despite it not previously being an issue.
(Just a note, I apologize for the phrasing "I'm puzzled by your objection", I edited it to make it clearer that it was my not understanding and not something wrong with how you expressed yourself. That your quote uses the older version shows you spent quite some time considering this. I appreciate it.)
That's terrible about the 12 year old boy. I would say DDLC is a powerful and compelling piece of art that subverts & interrogates it's own genre and reveals the flaws of that genre, and I'm certainly not advocating for people not to make really challenging art like that. I wish things could have been different for that boy, but I'm not sure that's something better trigger warnings would solve.
https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manches...
> Ms Kearsley said it was 'commonsense' to question the game's emotional impact but recording a verdict of suicide, she said: "We can make no direct link between Ben's death and his online gaming. Ben was a young man who potentially had a number of complexities."
I've never really found them to be spoilery though? So perhaps I'm the wrong person to ask.
So far players really likes the fact that the system exists and that they can choose to skip or see the content. It's all about being warned anf having the choice.
People seem to be hung up on the new term "trigger warning" when we've had content warnings since time immemorial.
Nobody seems to be writing the articles on "efficacy" of movie ratings, or putting "18+" labels on content. We, as a society, understand that not all content is suitable for all audiences... when it comes to sex, and sex only, it seems.
Then there's the issue of trust. Any source that gives a heads-up of what's coming and doesn't spring 2girls1cup on you without a warning is going to be more trusted than the one that does.
Why is that even a question when the same principles applies to content other than an unclothed female nipple or (gasp) genitals? Is it so hard to make the leap to other subjects, such as vivid depictions of rape and violence?
Why isn't it common sense that, regardless of studies of "efficacy", giving a heads-up about shit that some people in the audience might not want to see unprompted is, like, polite, and is universally a good thing?
It's frankly exhausting to even have these discussions, again and again. Trigger warnings are about not being an asshole to the people who choose to listen to you.
The effect is they might choose to listen to you again, because you're not a dick. End of story.
_______
TL;DR: the study focuses on nebulous "effects", whereas they should be looking at bounce rates.
So he analogizes this by saying "Imagine a doctor prescribed you a pill and you asked if it was going to help".
If "Oh no, it won't help, but it might cause some very minor harm." was the response, you'd probably find a new doctor. So why do we do the opposite here?
In reality, you're "being an asshole" with the trigger warnings, assuming you continue doing them knowing now that it does not help, and may actively harm.
1. patients invented and self-prescribed the pill originally
2. the doctor has concluded that the pills are harmful by studying what happens who do not have the illness the pills are meant to treat take the pills
3. the doctor didn't really keep track of what doses were given to different patients
i.e.
1. trigger warnings were not originally forced on people, they were created by people who found them helpful to help themselves
2. the studies in the meta analysis are all on general populations, in particular mechanical turk and college students
3. there is no discussion of the different effect different implementations of content warnings can have. for example, the only study that measured physiological responses instead of using self-reported anxiety showed the highest anxiety response. probably, because it also gave a completely general and non-specific content warning that went like this: "The next page has the link to the movie clip. Researchers have been asked to give a trigger warning for the clip". so they showed that when told some arbitrary but highly disturbing thing could happen at any point during a video, people in general will be more anxious when watching the video. and concluded that content warnings are a harmful practice.
4. The doctor didn't keep track of of how many patients ditched him, forever, because the doc doesn't understand the above
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Thank you for a thorough reply and debunking of the argument by broken analogy.
The whole idea of content warnings is giving the audience a choice; it's about informed consent — a concept that both HN and the researcher seem to struggle with.
No shit Sherlock that a content warning of the form "some thing you won't like will happen, BUT I WON'T TELL YOU WHICH THING NOR WHEN IT WILL HAPPEN is anxiety inducing!
For fuck's sake, that's a bad faith thing to say.
How about:
>"Warning: I'm going to talk about rape, about 15 minutes into the talk, for about 5 minutes. I'll give you a heads-up, so you don't have to worry. If you don't want to hear about rape today, you can skip this part and stay with us for the rest."
This is a trigger warning.
It enables informed consent to consume any/all parts of the content.
Similarly, "what follows in 10 seconds is a depiction of rape" is a warning.
A trigger "warning" without the option to opt out of consuming the content warned about isn't a "warning", it's a threat.
And a "warning" that isn't specific about either content or time is torture.
>"Somewhere in this talk, we'll show something that we know you asked us not to show you out of the blue. We'll still show it out of the blue, but we're warning you about it now. No, you can't leave"
— apparently, we need a research article to tell HN that this is fucking bullshit.
The cherry on the pie remains what I said in the first place: that the natural outcome of such "warning" (i.e. lack of warning) is that affected people won't choose to interact with you again — and that's exactly what this study doesn't measure.
So, I'd see things like this as more warning people that something contains content they might want to _avoid_. The analysis seems to be more about cases where people read the warning and then _consume the content anyway_, but is that really the common case?
It's not, which is why the entire analysis is BS.
If the subject of the experiment isn't given the choice to opt out, the experiment is flawed.
Is the subject of the experiment is indifferent to the content being warned about to begin with, it is meaningless.
And if not, it's just abuse.
Did it occur to the author that perhaps communicating when the triggering content is going to happen in advance, as well as giving a heads-up right before it to allow the people to make a choice to not experience it would be the thing to try in experiments?
Evidently not.
It feels like the author (and HN) thoroughly misunderstands both the concept of trigger warnings and informed consent.
>So he analogizes this by saying "Imagine a doctor prescribed you a pill and you asked if it was going to help". If "Oh no, it won't help, but it might cause some very minor harm." was the response, you'd probably find a new doctor. So why do we do the opposite here?
This analogy is beyond broken.
Ads for medication are required to include possible side effects. That's a closer analogy.
>In reality,
In the reality of broken analogies and hacks pushing flawed analysis and misunderstanding as research, I am a very sad person.
Let's be better than that.
Of course I did. The point is that it wouldn't matter. You're not scared by the content, you're scared by the potential of that content. Knowing it's the next word would only drive anxiety even higher, even if you decide not to look at what might be a horrific description of my trauma. I mean, it could also be a description of a cute kitten cuddling, but I don't know and humans are risk averse, so the first thought is the worst one.
>It feels like the author (and HN) thoroughly misunderstands both the concept of trigger warnings and informed consent.
I think you've just misunderstood the author's point.
>Ads for medication are required to include possible side effects. That's a closer analogy.
That's a beyond broken analogy. This isn't about advertising potential side effects. It's about a cure which may not work. The cure is analogous to the advertisement. If the ad on the TV were the actually theraputic thing, your argument here might make at least a little sense.
> I am a very sad person
Cheer up - it looks like you're the only one here who can't follow the author's train of thought, but in the future you might wanna run it by someone else to see if they get it instantly or not
Conservatives routinely get upset about the presence of gay people in media, among many other things. Is that somehow in a different category?
(This is in reply to the article linked by the author of the study in that Twitter thread)
That said, trigger warning is already a trigger word and may need to replaced with something else to avoid emotional reaction ( although I admit I do not have a good replacement off the top of my head ).
Some of the other posters mentioned movie ratings I almost chuckled a little, because I imagined a future, where I send an email in corporate settings with various tags to allow other people to ignore it in time and corporate code of conduct, where you agree to always read some upsetting tags..but I digress.
<< Is that somehow in a different category? << Conservatives routinely get upset about the presence of gay people in media, among many other things.
Please correct if I am wrong ( I have done my best to limit my news intake lately ), but conservatives being angry over gays does not ring true to my ears. If I understand current zeitgeist correctly, it is, currently, about a 'conveyor belt upon which progressives plan to place their children'(paraphrasing certain host). The difference is notable. Is it possible you are using old caricature for specific effect?
And this kinda brings me to the other point. Lately, it seems, it is not conservatives are not the ones calling for boycots, bans, deplatforming and demonetization. It is actually their opponents, which, in itself, is already interesting.
Moral panics are nothing new, and (self-)censorship is nothing new either.
I think it's naive to think that conservatives have "gotten over" gay marriage, or gay rights more broadly, especially given how recent progress has been in those areas, and how much opposition remains to things like trans rights. I personally have a number of queer friends who are estranged from their families because they're queer, and those families usually aren't particularly progressive, as far as I know.
Why are people still conflating homosexuality with transgender? They're completely different issues.
Do you want to fit somewhere but haven't yet found a place to fit, or do you not care about fitting anywhere? If it's the latter you may have a social-variant blindspot (halfway down this reddit post: https://www.reddit.com/r/Enneagram/comments/kx0wfa/russ_huds... ). If it's the former you're probably just looking in the wrong places, or aren't engaging enough with the right people to find their similarities to you (or find out if they know of someone else similar to you).
"where I send an email in corporate settings with various tags to allow other people to ignore it in time and corporate code of conduct"
My employer uses a system called "Bucketlist" for kudos or something of the sort. I don't really know because the moment I saw it I created a filter that autodeletes every single email with that word in it. I can handle being reminded of death, but I don't want it popping into my work inbox.
"Please correct if I am wrong ( I have done my best to limit my news intake lately ), but conservatives being angry over gays does not ring true to my ears."
It depends. Media talking points should never be taken at face value. The Log Cabin Republicans continue to be denied a booth at the Texas Republican state convention: https://www.texastribune.org/2022/07/24/texas-log-cabin-repu...
But, as you indicate, conflation of lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transgender, transsexual, and a variety of other groups make it difficult at times to figure out what people are actually in favor of or opposed to.
"Lately, it seems, it is not conservatives are not the ones calling for boycots, bans, deplatforming and demonetization. It is actually their opponents, which, in itself, is already interesting."
It's all sides. If you're noticing one side and not the other it's because of the bias of the media you're consuming. Examples:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/04/06/why-half-...
https://theoutline.com/post/6140/a-brief-history-of-batshit-...
>
Do you want to fit somewhere but haven't yet found a place to fit, or do you not care about fitting anywhere?
Seems somewhat personal, but I will respond. Neither. I see myself as an outsider, which allows for a very different set of perspectives. For better or worse, I like the fact that I do not belong everywhere equally.
<< But, as you indicate, conflation of lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transgender, transsexual, and a variety of other groups make it difficult at times to figure out what people are actually in favor of or opposed to.
I did not directly say that, but that is a good catch.
<<The Log Cabin Republicans
I will admit that this portion of history was news to me so I appreciate you sharing it ( this is why I like HN; you get to learn things ). It is a genuinely sad story to me ( and were I in their place, I would be livid ).
That said, Republicans have learned some lessons it seems ( creations of GAG - https://www.gaysagainstgroomers.com/about; expanding into black and latino communities ).
<< It's all sides. If you're noticing one side and not the other it's because of the bias of the media you're consuming.
I agree in general. This is also why I qualified my statement with lately. Between BLM/WFH phenomena/movements ( last 2 years ) the majority of the recent effort does not seem to be on the republican side ( statement, which your links actually support ). Anecdotally, even I am aware of crazy religious group trying to ban Quake ( but that is ancient history by internet standards ):D
For what it's worth this is a particularly common worldview for a particular couple of personality/motivational types (of which I, and many other people in places such as HN, happen to be a member of one).
"Content warning" is fairly well-accepted (and broader, in that it makes more sense to use it to describe things that people simply _do not want to see_; see discussion of NSFL elsewhere.
Without getting too far into the weeds of partisan politics, I’m not sure how you got this impression.
Ask your local school board or your local library which political side spends more time trying to get media banned.
The presumption of this article is that trigger warnings get you emotionally ready for an adverse subject, but I'm pretty sure that's not what they are for.
I figure most people often want warnings on their books/videos/etc "e.g. this is a live-leak of somebody dying" so they can avoid the material.
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Per his twitter "Well, too bad for all y'all. Trigger warnings do not seem to encourage avoidance." ... Sounds kinda us-vs-them.
I'm 100% sure I do not click on videos on reddit that indicate they are videos of somebody dying. No amount of statistical papers will change that. I highly doubt I'm the only one.
Trigger warnings are content warnings, just spelling out what the content is: i.e. suicide, cutting, rape, etc.
To use one of my stories that's on a podcast:
> This is an adult story for mature listeners, if that's not your cup of tea or there are children listening, you can skip this story and come back next week. Content warning: this story contains mentions of past self-harm and past traumas.
Maybe that's a little specific, but it gives you an idea of how graphic the content is. Regardless, I personally know some of the people listening who will want to skip my story.
So, the basic intent, on the face of it, is a little different (a "trigger warning", properly, warns of something which may trigger PTSD, a content warning merely warns of something without any particular view on _why_ someone might want to avoid it), but in practice they're functionally similar.