But anyone with sense does that to some degree. You've never looked at a headline or a post title and decided to nope the heck out of there, for any reason? Yes, bad shit will happen and you can't tell it not to, but at the same time, you also can't give your attention to every single thing on the internet, on the news, in your community, etc. Attention is finite, and it's a health-promoting practice (really, it is) to self-limit, for instance, how much time you spend watching/reading negative news stories.Jake Martinez said:It's amazing to me that certain people live with so much privilege that they believe they can dictate the terms of what unpleasant life experiences they will have.
And here I was assuming that often life was unfair, or cruel, or just down right nasty, and a test of someones character was how they dealt with this fact. How stupid of me. All I needed to do was create a list of things that I didn't want to see/hear/read/think about and problem solved!
I object to "trigger warnings" as such, but support "content warnings". It gets around this entire debate about what's a trigger, does this rise to the level of a trigger, triggers don't exist, triggers are misused, etc. and simply acknowledges that there is some content that people would rather not engage with for whatever reason. I'm not talking about "content includes octopus semen" or something else absurdly specific, but thinking about some of the themes of a piece of media and noting it is a thoughtful thing. Optional, but nice to have on things that are upsetting and stressful for a lot of people. You don't need to be triggered by rape debates to have reason to want to avoid them. Television news has been at least somewhat aware of this for years-- is it that controversial to have a "this story contains graphic images" warning ahead of a news story?
(Also, triggers are often *incredibly* specific things. A certain smell that's reminiscent of your abusive father's cologne. The song that was playing when you were raped. The pattern and colors of the wallpaper in the house where you were molested. The movie you were watching when you got the call your sister had been murdered. The exact curve on Rt. 8 where you got into the accident that nearly killed you. Things you couldn't warn for even if you wanted to.)