Has anyone here ever decided not to read something because it had a trigger warning? I can’t imagine doing so myself, but that may be the typical mind fallacy.
Has anyone here ever decided not to read something because it had a trigger warning? I can’t imagine doing so myself, but that may be the typical mind fallacy.
I have chosen not to consume media (including but not limited to text) because of an explicit trigger warning. Not often, though; most trigger warnings relate to topics I don’t have trauma about.
More often, I have chosen to defer consuming media because of an explicit trigger warning, to a time and place when/where emotional reactions are more appropriate.
I have consumed media in the absence of such warnings that, had such a warning been present, I would have likely chosen to defer. In some cases this has had consequences I would have preferred to avoid.
I haven’t, but I think that were trigger warnings are appropriate is in things that hurt a few people disproportionately. If something hurts everyone that reads it you shouldn’t write it at all, and if it hurts no one more than it is worth it isn’t a case for trigger warnings. But if it is something that needs to be said to many people, and there is a significant group (perhaps those that have had a certain experience) who would suffer a lot from reading it, then you put a trigger warning that would be recognized by that group at the top.
TLDR If most people never care about trigger warnings, then they might work as intended.
Trigger warnings are stupid in general, I think they do more harm than good.
Even people who fear being negatively affected will mostly read the content, if only because forbidden fruit are the sweetest and because they are curious. The trigger warning will then already have put them in a frame of mind in which they expect a bad emotional impact of some sort—clearly predisposing them to react much worse than if there had been no trigger warning in the first place.
I concede that some people may in fact heed trigger warnings and not read the content, but an overall utility calculation would probably favor no trigger warnings at all.
Even people who fear being negatively affected will mostly read the content, if only because forbidden fruit are the sweetest and because they are curious.
Probably, people for whom that is true (while constituting probably the majority of regular Internet users) are not the same people as those for whom trigger warnings are written. See e.g. this discussion about the relationship between the openness personality trait and the memetic analogue of parasite load.
I have chosen not to Google something that I was warned would involve seeing particularly horrific images. I imagine that if said topic was put in blog post form with a trigger warning up the top, I would probably choose not to read it.
EDIT: It’s probably worth adding that I adopted this policy after discovering the hard way that there are things out there I would really prefer not to see/hear about.
I haven’t, but I have never experienced a serious trauma that I don’t want to be reminded to me, so I’m not the kind of person that people who write trigger warnings are thinking about.
Has anyone here ever decided not to read something because it had a trigger warning? I can’t imagine doing so myself, but that may be the typical mind fallacy.
EDIT: People do use the warnings. Good to know.
I have chosen not to consume media (including but not limited to text) because of an explicit trigger warning. Not often, though; most trigger warnings relate to topics I don’t have trauma about.
More often, I have chosen to defer consuming media because of an explicit trigger warning, to a time and place when/where emotional reactions are more appropriate.
I have consumed media in the absence of such warnings that, had such a warning been present, I would have likely chosen to defer. In some cases this has had consequences I would have preferred to avoid.
I haven’t, but I think that were trigger warnings are appropriate is in things that hurt a few people disproportionately. If something hurts everyone that reads it you shouldn’t write it at all, and if it hurts no one more than it is worth it isn’t a case for trigger warnings. But if it is something that needs to be said to many people, and there is a significant group (perhaps those that have had a certain experience) who would suffer a lot from reading it, then you put a trigger warning that would be recognized by that group at the top.
TLDR If most people never care about trigger warnings, then they might work as intended.
Trigger warnings are stupid in general, I think they do more harm than good.
Even people who fear being negatively affected will mostly read the content, if only because forbidden fruit are the sweetest and because they are curious. The trigger warning will then already have put them in a frame of mind in which they expect a bad emotional impact of some sort—clearly predisposing them to react much worse than if there had been no trigger warning in the first place.
I concede that some people may in fact heed trigger warnings and not read the content, but an overall utility calculation would probably favor no trigger warnings at all.
Probably, people for whom that is true (while constituting probably the majority of regular Internet users) are not the same people as those for whom trigger warnings are written. See e.g. this discussion about the relationship between the openness personality trait and the memetic analogue of parasite load.
I have chosen not to Google something that I was warned would involve seeing particularly horrific images. I imagine that if said topic was put in blog post form with a trigger warning up the top, I would probably choose not to read it.
EDIT: It’s probably worth adding that I adopted this policy after discovering the hard way that there are things out there I would really prefer not to see/hear about.
I’ve decided not to listen to some radio segments because of such warnings. Similar principle.
Have you had an experience that might cause you to be triggered by the kind of thing that gets trigger warnings?
I haven’t, but I have never experienced a serious trauma that I don’t want to be reminded to me, so I’m not the kind of person that people who write trigger warnings are thinking about.
I know a person who chose not to read something (MAX Punisher #1) based on my warning of explicit sexual violence.
Anecdotal and incomplete, but most of an example case...