Red vs Blue takes on Trigger Warnings

[Batou667]

I only ever see Trigger Warnings (as opposed to content warnings on media, allergen information on food packets, etc) in the parts of the internet that could be best described as misguidedly zealous enclaves of liberal sentiment. I strongly suspect they're utilised mostly as a kind of self-congratulatory in-group signifier that lets people be smug about how much more considerate and aware they are than us coarse Patriarchy-brainwashed normies.

 

[sonicneedslovetoo]

Before this goes any farther we have to separate out the people who associate trigger warnings with things like really jacked up stuff you need to be warned about and people who associate trigger warnings with "tumblr" things.
Because generally when I see trigger warnings I see them clarifying things that somebody could justifiability get angry about seeing if they weren't expecting it. Somebody might not be in favor of (insert internet thing you wouldn't want your parents to know about here) and they may be right or wrong for not liking that but I think its justifiable to expect a warning with how dank and absolutely insane the internet can be.
However I can accept that has been associated with PTSD and my definition here could easily just be called "content warning" and leave behind a lot of politics still keeping people from viewing whatever thing offends them. In fact I think that's better because most sites have some expected level of "content warning" associated with them already and that should really only be used when things are going significantly beyond that.
Also I want to ask which definition of this do you most often see this used in, and by that I mean how much of this problem could be solved simply by telling people to use "content warning" instead of "trigger warning" on their stuff?

 

[Thaluikhain]

However I can accept that has been associated with PTSD and my definition here could easily just be called "content warning" and leave behind a lot of politics still keeping people from viewing whatever thing offends them. In fact I think that's better because most sites have some expected level of "content warning" associated with them already and that should really only be used when things are going significantly beyond that.

Shakesville replaced trigger warnings with content notes for that reason, yeah.

 

[Kameburger]

I don't really like trigger warnings for what they represent, and how pervasive they are in our day to day discussions. This is, I think, the result of many people using them for tweets and for small blogs and articles talking about the day to day discrimination or hardship that people might go through, as if it is all PTSD inducing and debilitating. I think the first time it really struck me was during the whole gamergate debate, early on where people were tweeting in the middle of emotionally heaving discussions "Great, I'm triggered now, Thanks assholes" and things to that effect. I think we could all do better when looking for ways to encourage discussion, but I am firmly against the idea of adding official rules and regulations in public and private institutions, that would allow individuals to stifle learning for others.

That is just to say, I don't think the idea of trigger warnings are bad, but just that I don't think students should be able to get teachers fired over them (not that this is whats happening but just that kind of idea). It would be like having review sites, have manditory rules against spoilers, that could get reviewers fired etc. It's better as a courtesy then some kind of concrete rule.

Of course that's just my opinion, but I'll stand by it.

 

[Strazdas]

Sure, the media can encourage people to expose themselves to triggers, but it should remain people's own choice as to whether they want to do it at any given particular time or not.

I believe mental healthcare should not be optional. That being said, having no trigger warnings does not remove peoples choice, unless they are in Clockwork Orange situation being forced to watch stuff. As far as i know they can still turn off their computers/tvs/radios.

Because, yes, trigger warnings are intended to avoid reminders of their trauma (to avoided being triggered, not discomfort, mind), and qualified therapists exposing people to triggering things under a developed hierarchy, getting rid of the first hardly equates to the second. That's like saying I get to throw spiders at random people without warning because people with Phds might expose arachnophobes to spiders are part of their therapy.

Not equivalent sitaution. Equivalent situation would be if say you were making a stage show and you were to use spiders as part of your performance and Arachnophobes can choose to come to your show or not.

 

[Gorrath]

As one of those vets people seem to like to reference, I'll throw my 2 cents into the ring.
*snip*

Hope my experiences give some insight, even if they are just one person's opinion and experiences.

Thank you for sharing your insights.
From what what you described, you're acutely aware of your triggers and know the risks, and I completely respect that.

Some I worked with...were not so aware. However they also weren't living without assistance and I sincerely doubt they were being turned loose upon the amorphous and dynamic media beast that is the Internet.

I do have some direct, albeit limited experience here.

Spoiler: My Experience. Kinda long

During my later years in high school, I entered a volunteer a program aimed at assisting others with disabilities and mental illness/trauma (for therapy and recreation). I learned a number of things, but first and most relevant to this subject, is that those with real disabilities (especially mental trauma, and who are aware of it) DON'T WEAR THEIR PROBLEMS LIKE A BADGE.

Because they're still just people trying to live normally.
(There's a fine line between empathy and condescension, and one I learned through hardship and necessity.)

The second thing, is that PTSD and other mental trauma varies heavily from person to person. One thing I noticed among the "socially functional" (those that lived without assistance) is that they are aware of their condition and their limitations, and thus, they took responsibility for themselves.

So the way I see it, treating them like people means recognizing that responsibility just as much if not more than their condition. I don't mean to say that we should pretend their issues don't exist (quite the opposite; I'm all for assistance and therapy, as I am for any problem), but I draw a line between those that expose themselves to triggers/risks through planned therapy, and those that just want to extort personal convenience from the public at large (and social leverage from this brave new "outrage culture").

IMO, Trigger Warnings sound like a good idea (akin to epilepsy warnings) but only on paper because (again, just my limited experience) triggers and reactions vary WILDLY. Some clients exhibited general anxiety when exposed and were pretty to avoid triggering, while others went off seemingly at random.

I recall one poor kid (IIRC a child abuse victim) literally soil themselves and run screaming in adrenaline-furor at the sight of a Popsicle. Yes, a damn orange Popsicle. It sounds kind of morbidly funny out of context, but it was an eye-opening and frankly, frightening experience for me.

Outside of my Peer Partners experience (the program), I know people in real life with PTSD.
One of my friends has PTSD due to an incident of gang related violence that occurred in his home country (he moved to the US partially for treatment; I met him about 2 years after the incident), where he was shot in the stomach at point blank with a handgun, and just prior, watched one of his friends suffer the same fate and die.

That wasn't related to me just by him, but his family when I called his ICE number.

In the 8 or so years I've known him, I've witnessed some of his episodes first hand (some taking the better part of three hours) involving, phantom pains, complete emotional breakdown, and reflexive behavior like curling up in the fetal position. His most common trigger was the sound of an ambulance siren, and I say "was" (tentatively) because he worked for years in therapy to lessen that (kinda important since he lives and works in an area with three hospitals within 5 blocks of him).

My point in in all this: He took responsibility for himself, and emerged better for it. I understand that others may not achieve the same results, but the key point is that without taking that responsibility (and foisting it upon others) he would never have overcome in the first place.

Yet, if I were to go by the "Trigger(warning)-Happy" crowd, the internet should post things like "TRIGGER WARNING: AMBULANCE" or "TRIGGER WARNING: SIREN" on anything with something even just RESEMBLING an ambulance siren.

So lets stop and think about that. Yes, it sounds reasonable on the surface but only because I KNOW HIM AND HIS SPECIFIC CONDITION; the general public DOES NOT and CANNOT.

If I extrapolate his scenario to thousands of others and their widely, various triggers (even excluding those that are just pretending to have PTSD; which boils my blood something fierce) I realize the task is simply infeasible; it'd require nothing short of public clairvoyance to achieve.

As cold as it sounds to others, I think it's far better for someone with real triggers to get help, or at least realize the risks involved in dealing with a seemingly "random" public rather than demand warnings for every single thing.
(Yeah, some PTSD is loosely categorical, like war vets' combat trauma, but the bulk of it really isn't.)

And in that, I thank you for showing responsibility and foresight.

Thanks for sharing in return Atmos. I've seen some of my peers with far more severe manifestations of PTSD than what I deal with and over the years the impact has lessened on me to a degree. I like that you talk about personal responsibility of those who know what triggers them since that is precisely how I feel about it. I still go and see things that I know will trigger me because I am able to enjoy those things despite the anxiety attacks. I'm responsible for managing my issues, not society at large. For those who have a wide variety of triggers, some of which they don't even know, trigger warnings become useless, as you say. Thanks again for taking the time to write all of that. Cheers!

 

[Strazdas]

Right, and you as a decent person mention in your advertising that "Arachnophobes beware" or something to that effect, and nobody is hurt, and nobody is inconvenienced.

Not necessarily, unless my advertisement is based on tongue in cheek jokes about arachnophobes. It is likely that the advertisement may feature spiders if they are a big part of the act, but thats about it.

 

[FuckingCalligraphy]

2. If you do have a real trigger (as opposed to "thing you don't like"), then it's your responsibility to work on getting rid of it.

They did take responsibility. It's called a trigger warning.

 

[Batou667]

I've never actually heard that kind of language outside of people mocking the supposed excesses of "Tumblrites". I wonder how common those people being held up as paragons of a larger group really are, and how much they make for a convenient straw man for the intellectually lazy.

I don't really understand what you're saying or even whether you agree or disagree with me.

Are you saying that there aren't sizeable and relatively mainstream communities out there (both IRL and online) whose bread and butter of discourse includes intentionally baffling and opaque language appropriated and bastardised from the fields of sociology and psychology? Because there's ample evidence to back that up. Are you saying it's a strawman to point out that the concept of triggers has been taken to a ridiculous usage of in-vogue moral posturing? Again, examples plop unbidden from social media, blogs, communities, conferences and college campus discussions.

I'm not saying all unironic uses of trigger warnings are cause to scoff... but it's a fairly good bet.

 

[Eddie the head]

I guess that's fair enough. A nice gesture, but ultimately no one is obligated to do it. More so than the "golden rule" I find it's better to understand no one is obligated to treat you in the way you would like to be treated.

 

[Strazdas]

Your reply seems to be out of step with your previous discussion, and my reply to it. Are you saying that you'd feel so offended or burdened by adding a content warning for arachnophobes, that you wouldn't do it?

No, i am saying that i would not add such a warning because i dont think such warnings are needed, not because i find them burdening or offensive.

Capcha: i can fix this

No capcha, i dont think you can....

 

[Batou667]

See? You understood exactly what I was saying, you just disagree. Of course I'd say that if you want to prove "Sizable" and "Relatively Mainsteam" communities online and "IRL", you should start coughing up evidence.

Then I'd hope you didn't start pointing to schools for "IRL".

Ah, OK. What you meant by "that kind of language" wasn't clear.

I don't have the time to cite my evidence right now, although I kind of hope I shouldn't have to. I think it's self-evident that there is a large liberal/leftist presence online and IRL. And by the latter, yeah, I'd certainly include some of the sillier stuff that has been coming out of college campus activism recently - here's a relevant example.

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/may/19/us-students-request-trigger-warnings-in-literature

 

[Batou667]

Double double post post.

 

[Terminal Blue]

I'm really tired of this pointless crusade against the "inappropriate" use of trigger warnings, because frankly it's far more prevalent, to my eyes, than the inappropriate use of trigger warnings itself. Furthermore, it's not actually helping anyone, it's not restoring the whole debate on trigger warnings back to a serious discussion on the reasonable treatment of the mentally ill. It's simply mocking the very idea of mental illness itself in service to some pointless and whiny anti-PC internet crusader mentality.

I learned a number of things, but first and most relevant to this subject, is that those with real disabilities (especially mental trauma, and who are aware of it) DON'T WEAR THEIR PROBLEMS LIKE A BADGE.

What are you actually saying here?

What constitutes "wearing your problems like a badge?" Does being open about the fact that you have mental health issues exclude you from actually having them? Does demanding any kind of special accommodation or treatment exclude you from actually being mentally ill? Because, as someone who is mentally ill and has worked with others who are, I feel that's kind of wrong.. I've been in plenty of situations of having to demand special accommodation from people. Heck, I'm in such a situation right now.

In fact, I would go so far as to say that requiring special treatment is part of what makes someone mentally ill in the first place. If you simply think a bit differently from most people but it never affects you or manifests socially, then that isn't really an illness at all.. it's an interior difference which doesn't actually matter.

IMO, Trigger Warnings sound like a good idea (akin to epilepsy warnings) but only on paper because (again, just my limited experience) triggers and reactions vary WILDLY. Some clients exhibited general anxiety when exposed and were pretty to avoid triggering, while others went off seemingly at random.

This is a legitimate concern, and one of the few genuine arguments against trigger warnings. However, it's also based on an assumption that the purpose of trigger warnings is to facilitate avoidance.

Let me give an example: my partner literally tried to jump out of a window once because someone was watching a film in the next room while she was trying to sleep, but I know we could sit down together and watch the same film together without any issues. If your kid who was triggered by the popsicle had been told "you are going to see a popsicle now", would it have had the same impact? People with PTSD do protect themselves, not simply through avoidance but also through cultivating mental states which are resistant to trauma, but that requires control, it requires the ability to preempt the situation.. in short, that requires warnings.

One difficulty of assessing the actual effect of trigger warnings is that their existence generally makes them unnecessary. It isn't simply the case that you have a person who is triggered by depictions of rape, for example, and thus will always be triggered by depictions of rape. It depends on their mental state and the degree to which they are prepared, and if a person knows what is coming they will often be able to protect themselves.

This is actually the principle on which therapy works. Therapy for PTSD is not like fixing a car. You don't reach into a person's brain, find the "trigger" and pull it out and suddenly the trigger is gone. Your friend isn't able to work in a hospital because a therapist reached in and pulled the trigger out of him, but because getting up and going to work in a hospital is a trigger warning. You go to a hospital and you expect to hear sirens, that expectation is control.

Trigger warnings can be misused to facilitate avoidance, but that it is not fundamentally the point. The point is to facilitate control. You talk about taking responsibility, when the ability to take responsibility is completely dependent on context. I've seen my partner lose hours of her memory because someone jokingly used the word rape at a party. I've also seen her sit down to watch the film Irreversible. Context is everything, and the value of trigger warnings is that they give people more control over the context. Used correctly, that isn't allowing people not to take "responsibility", it's helping them to do more effectively.

 

[ERaptor]

Honestly, I dont mind them. It's not any different to me than the whole "Rated A for adult"-thing. If someone wants to include them for stuff like Rape or the like, fine go ahead. And I have yet to see a sizeable portion of people _demanding_ that triggered warnings be included somewhere. Usually it's the same kind of crazy people that Moo like farmyard cattle at Rape Jokes or complain that "series X sucks now" in the comment section. And those are mostly just a vocal minority.

And seriously, some Media actually advertise rather badly what kind of stuff they're gonna show. So a warning or note that warns about certain things might actually not be that bad.