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Is it retro week? That particular battle of the culture wars seems to have passed years ago. Among other things, it's called a "content note" far more often the

Is it retro week? That particular battle of the culture wars seems to have passed years ago. Among other things, it's called a "content note" far more often these days. Also: nobody cares. But, to just quickly make the argument the author would have thought to mention if they had spend five minutes on Google and were intellectually honest: CNs aren't intended to allow you stop reading, although that may be an option for people that really want to. Their primary mechanism is different: it's a quick, easy, and, for those who don't care, totally trivial signal to the readers that the writer or speaker is aware that the content may trigger strong emotions, but that it isn't their intention to inflict any harm. It's a tiny gesture that, for those where it matters, makes a whole lot difference. If you can't quite follow along, just imagine how different it feels if someone intentionally punches you compared to inflicting the same amount of physical harm inadvertently. If anyone is being overly emotional, it's those who are somehow incensed by others' attempts to avoid harming people. I'm not especially harmed by reading about violent rape, but I can easily understand how someone might be. How its possible to deny that, but get all enraged about a single line of italics at the top of a five-page story is, unfortunately, beyond my abilities. Neither, by the way, is it censorship. It's the opposite, a mechanism allowing people to make informed choices, thereby expanding the universe of possible content that can be used for any given purpose without fear of offending or harming anyone. If you somehow managed to abolish the MPAA rating system, you wouldn't get more of the movies that were previously rated R. You'd get none.

andreskytt 5y ago
Getting similar emotions to having been punched from reading a name sounds very scary. And, if such people exist, how can I tell, what other things can trigger others? People having been involved in bad car crashes might plausibly be triggered by mention of traffic. So the question becomes, why do we afford the safety to certain groups but not others? The simple fact is that any and all text, spoken or written, can do harm by triggering emotions or introducing ideas contrary to one’s beliefs causing discomfort. So how do we choose what to warn people about?
- happytoexplain 5y ago
  We can't create a well defined or objective method of choosing, but we also don't need to. Like most things, it's a judgement call. It's reasonable to add a label for basically anything if you know people are affected by it. It's reasonable to omit a label for something you don't think will affect people. It's reasonable to criticize the absence of obvious labels in obvious contexts, and not reasonable to criticize the absence of non-obvious labels in non-obvious contexts (but it's reasonable to request them politely!). We can't define any of that, but it would be a fallacy to use that as an excuse to attack the concept of content warnings.

andreskytt 5y ago

Getting similar emotions to having been punched from reading a name sounds very scary. And, if such people exist, how can I tell, what other things can trigger others? People having been involved in bad car crashes might plausibly be triggered by mention of traffic. So the question becomes, why do we afford the safety to certain groups but not others? The simple fact is that any and all text, spoken or written, can do harm by triggering emotions or introducing ideas contrary to one’s beliefs causing discomfort. So how do we choose what to warn people about?

happytoexplain 5y ago
We can't create a well defined or objective method of choosing, but we also don't need to. Like most things, it's a judgement call. It's reasonable to add a label for basically anything if you know people are affected by it. It's reasonable to omit a label for something you don't think will affect people. It's reasonable to criticize the absence of obvious labels in obvious contexts, and not reasonable to criticize the absence of non-obvious labels in non-obvious contexts (but it's reasonable to request them politely!). We can't define any of that, but it would be a fallacy to use that as an excuse to attack the concept of content warnings.