"Overall, we found that warnings have no effect on affective responses to negative material nor on educational outcomes (i.e., comprehension). However, warnings reliably increase anticipatory affect. Findings on avoidance were mixed, suggesting either that warnings have no effect on engagement with material, or that they increase engagement with negative material under specific circumstances. Limitations and implications for policy and therapeutic practice are discussed."
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.
> 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.
I imagine the things people consider NSFL depend on their personality and background. These studies seem like they'd be more illuminating if they looked at e.g. rape content warnings for rape survivors.
Effects on the rest of us matter as well, but shouldn't be considered the whole story.
There's a very practical use of trigger warnings that's existed uncontroversially for decades and it's the use of story tags for internet erotica, dating back to the usenet days.
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.
There's a big difference between NSFW/NSFL warnings, and trigger warnings.
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.
content warnings were originally and imo ongoingly most importantly an accessibility issue. afaict, all but maybe one of the studies don't delineate between members of the population this accessibility aid is supposed to help and gen pop
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.
I struggle with trigger/content warnings as someone with PTSD stemming from severe childhood neglect/abuse (e.g. I was allowed to just rot in the basement for a week with a fever of 104+ as a child).
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.
Maybe a more generic tagging/metadata system would help people with more idiosyncratic/unanticipated trauma. Something I find promising in this is that it has the hallmark of many great accessibility solutions, it's useful for everyone even if it's more important to a specific group of people (eg, screen readers and sign language are just great tools, but are much more profound for people with sensory disabilities). It still wouldn't be perfect of course, things could be mislabeled, or the label you would want could still be missing, or like you mention you yourself might not entirely understand what you're looking for.
Apologies if I misunderstand, but what you describe sounds like envy. And it is a pretty common thing, and something that people are in my experience willing to make certain accomodations for. "Flexing" too much on the less fortunate is considered to be in poor taste. Maybe they aren't willing to go as far as you'd need though.
TW, possible depictions of loving families & depictions of unwanted contact:
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.
> I'm often triggered by depictions of loving families.
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.
They seemingly didn’t study the thing that people actually want the answer to.
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.
So the reasons people are for this stuff are pretty uniformly incorrect and the reasons people are against this stuff are either also incorrect or possibly correct depending on the situation?
That's a fair point, but psychology is so malleable and that even if people believe that it helps them prepare/digest sensitive info, it will directly help them digest it ... placebo effect is real.
What about stuff like movie and game ratings? What about things like restricting sexually explicit material to minors? Seems like a weird point to make. What I like about content warnings is that I can choose whether I want to engage with something that might upset me in a more granular fashion than “entire profile.” It’s not like I’d stop avoiding content if there were no CWs anywhere.
I remember as a 14 year old boy with HBO I specifically looking for the “Nudity” warning on late night TV Shows. Teenage me was very disappointed by the TV Show “Oz” (which is about life in men’s prison).
This is a fascinating concept to me. How granular should we get? Say.. in original Star Wars, should we add "Contains scenes of hand mutilation" or "Character may discover he is not, in fact, a child of a loving parental unit"?
I get what you are getting at, but I am curious how much of that profile should be fleshed out in your view?
Yeah this is where I was always confused, I think "trigger warning" has become one of those ill-defined concepts, especially in american political discourse, that mean so many things that they don't really mean anything anymore. Other examples: "liberal," which I've heard mean everything from anarchism through communism and all the way to its actual definition, "communism" which seems to mean fascism, "fascism" which seems to mean literally anything, "grooming" which seems to mean not being heteronormative or heterosexual, etc.
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.
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.
Hmm. I am torn for several different reasons including the topics I would want to address, but I feel I should focus on one thing.
<< 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.
This comes right after the release of our game Flat Eye [0], which includes a quite new Content Warning system.
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.
So it is mostly a shared superstition. “Grugg see four rocks like a paw, Grugg must say doo-doo for good tiger hunt”, except we shouldn't consider ourselves to be much different from Grugg. Of course, it's not the only example of modern day religious practices (cough… cough… masks)…
This study seems to be pretty limited regardless of how it's carried out.
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.
He explains this in the thread - it appears as though trigger warnings only serve to increase anxiety until the trigger is experienced, and at no point does it improve or worsen the experience.
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.
“To many conservatives, trigger warnings are a symptom of a world gone mad: a fragilizing ritual meant to insulate the delicate worldview of a weak-minded generation.”
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)
I think the overall concern is that people in general seem all too willing to ignore reality. I can't really speak for any particular group in US ( or even in the old country ), because I am sufficiently weird that I do not really fit anywhere. Yay me.
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.
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.
---
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.
I grew up in a religious fundamentalist household that tried to shelter me from every "bad" thing in the world. I wasn't allowed to watch many cartoons because they were "too violent. It's probably for that reason that few things fill me with more disgust and rage than trigger warnings and censorship. Thank God for the Internet coming along to enable me to see every form of violence, abuse, pornography, torture, death, suicide advocacy, and bomb making material in the world. I am eternally grateful to be the worldly person I am to day and horrified to see trigger warnings appearing in most of the executive communications at my workplace. I used to have crippling anxiety, PTSD, thought of suicide every day, and struggled with a large assortment of chronic mental health conditions that disable many people, so in theory I'm someone that should want this. Deliberately exposing myself to as much of the worst of the world as possible made me much happier and stronger.
sbf501|3 years ago
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.
roughly|3 years ago
> 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.
civilized|3 years ago
Effects on the rest of us matter as well, but shouldn't be considered the whole story.
XorNot|3 years ago
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.
drewpc|3 years ago
concinds|3 years ago
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.
igorbark|3 years ago
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.
Mezzie|3 years ago
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.
maxbond|3 years ago
im3w1l|3 years ago
lanyard-textile|3 years ago
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.
catiopatio|3 years ago
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.
Spivak|3 years ago
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.
kayodelycaon|3 years ago
I feel like I'm not asking for much here. :(
twic|3 years ago
snapplebobapple|3 years ago
asingh11|3 years ago
all2well|3 years ago
wincy|3 years ago
A4ET8a8uTh0|3 years ago
I get what you are getting at, but I am curious how much of that profile should be fleshed out in your view?
komali2|3 years ago
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.
maxbond|3 years ago
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.)
tomjen3|3 years ago
Gare|3 years ago
A4ET8a8uTh0|3 years ago
<< 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.
valryon|3 years ago
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.
[0]: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1358840
ogurechny|3 years ago
romwell|3 years ago
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.
vorpalhex|3 years ago
kulahan|3 years ago
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.
all2well|3 years ago
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)
A4ET8a8uTh0|3 years ago
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.
aaron695|3 years ago
[deleted]
kadoban|3 years ago
[deleted]
Filligree|3 years ago
[deleted]
zug_zug|3 years ago
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.
---
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.
robertlagrant|3 years ago
unknown|3 years ago
[deleted]
TexanFeller|3 years ago