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>That costs a lot less to comply with. You think it does, but you couldn't be further from the truth. The very concept of trigger warnings are costly: Anytime

>That costs a lot less to comply with. You think it does, but you couldn't be further from the truth. The very concept of trigger warnings are costly: Anytime you want to voice an opinion, you're forced to enumerate all the possible ways every reader might be offended or triggered or upset by what you're saying. It's an unscalable solipsistic self-centered notion that implies people are not in control of their own feelings and emotions and how things affect them (I say this as someone who has dealt with mild PTSD). Trigger warnings on banal content trivialize the whole thing, and encourage people not to help themselves. Getting triggered sucks and is painful and throws everything off balance and is just a horrible thing to experience. But only a fool feels those things and blames the stimulus that brought up the associations. The last time I felt those feelings, I realized that I needed to get help or I was always going to be a broken, unhappy, scared person. The problem as I see it comes from the fact that a bunch of teenagers on tumblr co-opted trigger warnings from legitimate uses (like on PTSD and abuse forums) and started applying them to idiotic things like fat shaming and otherkin.

philh 12y ago
Nobody's forcing me to use trigger warnings. I choose to use them for some things. I don't choose to enumerate all the possible ways that anyone might be upset by my writing, and nobody's asking me to do that. There is a potential slippery slope, but even if I go a little too far down it, I'm not worried about going all the way to the bottom. (I don't read tumblr, or any blogs where I think trigger warnings have gotten out of hand. It's possible such blogs exist. That doesn't mean my own use of trigger warnings is excessive.) Not everyone can easily get help. If you want a therapist for example, that costs time, possibly money, and depending on your social circle you might fear being made fun of or cast out if they discover. (Actually, as it happens, I approximately never write anything that needs trigger warnings. I'm mostly speaking in the first person for simplicity, and as a hypothetical "this is what I think I would do if I wrote about such things". I don't recall ever issuing a trigger warning though, so it's possible that I'm being somewhat hypocritical here.)

philh 12y ago

Nobody's forcing me to use trigger warnings. I choose to use them for some things. I don't choose to enumerate all the possible ways that anyone might be upset by my writing, and nobody's asking me to do that. There is a potential slippery slope, but even if I go a little too far down it, I'm not worried about going all the way to the bottom. (I don't read tumblr, or any blogs where I think trigger warnings have gotten out of hand. It's possible such blogs exist. That doesn't mean my own use of trigger warnings is excessive.) Not everyone can easily get help. If you want a therapist for example, that costs time, possibly money, and depending on your social circle you might fear being made fun of or cast out if they discover. (Actually, as it happens, I approximately never write anything that needs trigger warnings. I'm mostly speaking in the first person for simplicity, and as a hypothetical "this is what I think I would do if I wrote about such things". I don't recall ever issuing a trigger warning though, so it's possible that I'm being somewhat hypocritical here.)