A meta-analysis of the effects of trigger warnings and content notes

by snomad • 4 years ago

81 128 4 years ago

sbf5012• 4 years ago

"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.

civilized• 4 years ago

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.

everforward• 4 years ago

I typically see content flagged NSFL when it's generally repulsive regardless of background (excepting those seeking out the content). Stuff like graphic videos of beheadings or people set on fire that's upsetting even to people with no traumatic background. It's kind of like a trigger warning for an average person; background doesn't matter if the content is bad enough.

wpietri9• 4 years ago

Exactly. If I'm going to warn people about content, it's because of what those specific people might struggle with. It was something I understood better once I found a piece of pretty ordinary media traumatic. And here I should say: content warning for cancer and death.

Some years back my mom was getting treated for a brain tumor. It was a glioblastoma, and as one of her surgeons explained, "This is the thing you will die from." Median survival time, 14 months.

I was very involved in her care and it was draining. She was still fighting hard at that point, but we knew that a moment would come when we'd have to decide to stop treatment. So when I saw that a local theater was having a triple feature with one of my favorite directors, Edgar Wright, I immediately bought tickets. At last, a light and fun evening.

What I had forgotten in the years since I had seen it was that in Shaun of the Dead, a zombie rom-com I adored, there is a scene where the protagonist's mom gets bitten. That protagonist, played by Simon Pegg, struggles with what to do. When his mom turns into a zombie, he is forced to shoot her. At that point I was about a month away from having to pull the plug on my own mom, and the scene was just devastating. I had to leave the theater. A decade later I've still not been able to watch the film.

I should be clear here: I'm not saying Shaun of the Dead should have had a content warning. I had seen it! And I think that sort of need is better served by things like https://www.doesthedogdie.com/ . But I am saying that it was a profoundly shitty experience. In the same way I'm going to avoid literally stepping on somebody's toes (because that hurts!) I'm going to avoid retraumatizing somebody when I can.

I think people already do that pretty naturally with things that are widely seen as disturbing. E.g., I was visiting a friend and went to pick up a textbook on his coffee table. He warned me not to open it, as it belonged to his brother in law who was studying to be a hand surgeon. I was grateful for that warning, as I can't unsee that stuff. To me content warnings are just extending that courtesy to less common horrors.

weinzierl• 4 years ago

I absolutely agree that different people are triggered by different things, and in my opinion it's good that we recognize and respect that.

On the other hand I'm convinced there are things that are universally NSFL for everyone and I believe that the parent comment is geared in that direction.

The meta-analysis seems to include only papers that deal with the first kind of trigger:

" The warning, as conceptualized by the authors of the relevant publication, was intended to notify participants that forthcoming content may trigger memories or emotions relevant to past experiences."

drewpc• 4 years ago

Does NSFL mean "Not Safe For Life"? I wasn't familiar with this term before and have never seen content labeled with it.

andy81• 4 years ago

Exactly. It differentiates e.g. gore from pornography.

Pxtl• 4 years ago

I usually hear it as "not safe for lunch", as in something so horrifying it will make it difficult to keep food down.

tomjen33• 4 years ago

Yes.

The trouble with NSFW is that it covers things you want to seek out, e.g porn, but also things you might want to avoid, e.g war pictures.

roughly• 4 years ago

From the discussion, this stuck out:

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.

lazide5• 4 years ago

Eh, NSFL type warnings (and experience) might provide an alternative explanation?

The warnings don’t help when people’s curiosity (morbid, compulsive, or otherwise) has not been counteracted by learned experience (or tools via therapy) that they don’t like it or it doesn’t help them.

The warnings are generally not generic (aka ‘bad stuff here’), they’re usually quite descriptive of what category it covers. Far more than a NSFL warning for sure!

If someone keeps going, it’s not because they did so accidentally. They either thought it was going to be fine and they could handle it (and most can), or couldn’t stop themselves even if they knew it was going to be bad.

sbf5012• 4 years ago

if you don’t have the means or experience to prepare for it.

This is where they therapy side would be interesting to understand. Everyone is going to need a different response plan. Granted, many will be similar, but how do you teach someone to prepare?

XorNot• 4 years ago

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.

concinds• 4 years ago

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.

snapplebobapple2• 4 years ago

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?

asingh11• 4 years ago

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.

snapplebobapple2• 4 years ago

Would they not have seen that in this study if that was the case? It's not like this set of data noone was primed to expect these warnings to help and now they are being primed. Or are you trying to say the effect of trigger warnings is actually negative but because people were primed to get something positive out of them we end up with no effect instead of statistically significant negative effects?

twic• 4 years ago

Twitter thread about the work by the author: https://twitter.com/paytonjjones/status/1563950340944560128

zug_zug• 4 years ago

What the heck is this?

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• 4 years ago

We've had that for decades as PEGI ratings or film classifications. I was under the impression that trigger warnings were something different.

kayodelycaon3• 4 years ago

Personally, the authors I've worked with use Content Warning as the term. For example, the opening of Law and Order SVU pretty clearly spells out you're in for some deeply disturbing shit.

Trigger warnings are content warnings, just spelling out what the content is: i.e. suicide, cutting, rape, etc.

To use one of my stories that's on a podcast:

This is an adult story for mature listeners, if that's not your cup of tea or there are children listening, you can skip this story and come back next week. Content warning: this story contains mentions of past self-harm and past traumas.

Maybe that's a little specific, but it gives you an idea of how graphic the content is. Regardless, I personally know some of the people listening who will want to skip my story.

rsynnott3• 4 years ago

I was under the impression that trigger warnings were something different

So, the basic intent, on the face of it, is a little different (a "trigger warning", properly, warns of something which may trigger PTSD, a content warning merely warns of something without any particular view on _why_ someone might want to avoid it), but in practice they're functionally similar.

all2well4• 4 years ago

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.

A4ET8a8uTh09• 4 years ago

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?

danrocks• 4 years ago

I challenge the premise that Darth Vader didn't love his son.

all2well4• 4 years ago

Good question, I'm not sure there's necessarily one answer to that. That same sort of question arises in many places, though. Some people avoid watching trailers for movies or shows because they don't want to get spoiled by them, but obviously most people like trailers because they can get a sense for whether they'll like that movie or show before they watch the whole thing.

kosievdmerwe2• 4 years ago

So, interestingly IMDb has a pretty detailed parents guide. For example for Shrek: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0126029/parentalguide

igorbark3• 4 years ago

well i'm not OP but here are some of my views:

- one important dimension of the "should" in this question is how much choice the viewer of the media has in viewing the media. this is part of why schools are such a big part of the conversation about content warnings, because the students can't just choose to opt out of readings without consequences

- another important dimension is the delivery platform and audience size. sometimes you can just ask the person who made or is showing you the thing about some very specific content you'd like to avoid or be prepared for, so specifying everything isn't as important there. otoh, if you're a giant media property with millions of viewers, maybe the cost/benefit of listing exactly when/where particular things happen looks a little better

- depending on platform, lots of detail could be more or less practical. e.g. if you're making a web page it's easy to say "content warnings: click for details > detailsdetailsdetails click for more details > detaileddetailsdetaileddetails", which easily allows the viewer to choose how much detail they want rather than picking for them, but that can be harder to pull off in other formats

- if you find this topic interesting, consider looking for literature on topics like accessibility and disability justice (not sure i could recommend a particular one since i've formed my views on this sort of thing piecemeal and through community). there is a lot of interesting moral thought on the subject of "ok so this thing is helpful to some people sometimes, sooo how much should we actually do it?"

kuramitropolis• 4 years ago

Each piece of content's full semantic structure (think https://xkcd.com/657/ but 10x-1000x more elaborate) should be published in a machine-readable format; then in your personal content blocker you can define as elaborate a filter as needed.

wincy• 4 years ago

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).

komali22• 4 years ago

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.

a1369209993• 4 years ago

"fascism" which seems to mean literally anything

No, no, that one's simple: "fascism" means anything that isn't anarchism. And "anarchism" means anything that isn't fascism. This is definitely a coherent and useful set of terminology.

evouga• 4 years ago

I haven’t seen “grooming” used in a homophobic way? Instead it has been extended to mean “any relationship whatsoever with a vaguely unusual age gap.”

all2well4• 4 years ago

“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)

A4ET8a8uTh09• 4 years ago

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.

all2well4• 4 years ago

The point I was probably trying to make is that I suspect that the author of this study and the accompanying article probably has a particular political axe to grind. That's mostly just conjecture, though.

Moral panics are nothing new, and (self-)censorship is nothing new either.

I think it's naive to think that conservatives have "gotten over" gay marriage, or gay rights more broadly, especially given how recent progress has been in those areas, and how much opposition remains to things like trans rights. I personally have a number of queer friends who are estranged from their families because they're queer, and those families usually aren't particularly progressive, as far as I know.

anonymouskimmer2• 4 years ago

"because I am sufficiently weird that I do not really fit anywhere"

Do you want to fit somewhere but haven't yet found a place to fit, or do you not care about fitting anywhere? If it's the latter you may have a social-variant blindspot (halfway down this reddit post: https://www.reddit.com/r/Enneagram/comments/kx0wfa/russ_huds... ). If it's the former you're probably just looking in the wrong places, or aren't engaging enough with the right people to find their similarities to you (or find out if they know of someone else similar to you).

"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"

My employer uses a system called "Bucketlist" for kudos or something of the sort. I don't really know because the moment I saw it I created a filter that autodeletes every single email with that word in it. I can handle being reminded of death, but I don't want it popping into my work inbox.

"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."

It depends. Media talking points should never be taken at face value. The Log Cabin Republicans continue to be denied a booth at the Texas Republican state convention: https://www.texastribune.org/2022/07/24/texas-log-cabin-repu...

But, as you indicate, conflation of lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transgender, transsexual, and a variety of other groups make it difficult at times to figure out what people are actually in favor of or opposed to.

"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."

It's all sides. If you're noticing one side and not the other it's because of the bias of the media you're consuming. Examples:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/04/06/why-half-...

https://theoutline.com/post/6140/a-brief-history-of-batshit-...

rsynnott3• 4 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 ).

"Content warning" is fairly well-accepted (and broader, in that it makes more sense to use it to describe things that people simply _do not want to see_; see discussion of NSFL elsewhere.

kweingar• 4 years ago

Lately, it seems, it is not conservatives are not the ones calling for boycots, bans, deplatforming and demonetization.

Without getting too far into the weeds of partisan politics, I’m not sure how you got this impression.

Ask your local school board or your local library which political side spends more time trying to get media banned.

romwell6• 4 years ago

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.

vorpalhex• 4 years ago

The study was about content warnings and anxiety triggers.

romwell6• 4 years ago

My comments were about the study, and how it fundamentally fails to achieve the state objective.

kulahan2• 4 years ago

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.

igorbark3• 4 years ago

this analogy breaks down on a number of levels.

1. patients invented and self-prescribed the pill originally

2. the doctor has concluded that the pills are harmful by studying what happens who do not have the illness the pills are meant to treat take the pills

3. the doctor didn't really keep track of what doses were given to different patients

i.e.

1. trigger warnings were not originally forced on people, they were created by people who found them helpful to help themselves

2. the studies in the meta analysis are all on general populations, in particular mechanical turk and college students

3. there is no discussion of the different effect different implementations of content warnings can have. for example, the only study that measured physiological responses instead of using self-reported anxiety showed the highest anxiety response. probably, because it also gave a completely general and non-specific content warning that went like this: "The next page has the link to the movie clip. Researchers have been asked to give a trigger warning for the clip". so they showed that when told some arbitrary but highly disturbing thing could happen at any point during a video, people in general will be more anxious when watching the video. and concluded that content warnings are a harmful practice.

rsynnott3• 4 years ago

it appears as though trigger warnings only serve to increase anxiety until the trigger is experienced

So, I'd see things like this as more warning people that something contains content they might want to _avoid_. The analysis seems to be more about cases where people read the warning and then _consume the content anyway_, but is that really the common case?

romwell6• 4 years ago

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.

Did it occur to the author that perhaps communicating when the triggering content is going to happen in advance, as well as giving a heads-up right before it to allow the people to make a choice to not experience it would be the thing to try in experiments?

Evidently not.

It feels like the author (and HN) thoroughly misunderstands both the concept of trigger warnings and informed consent.

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?

This analogy is beyond broken.

Ads for medication are required to include possible side effects. That's a closer analogy.

In reality,

In the reality of broken analogies and hacks pushing flawed analysis and misunderstanding as research, I am a very sad person.

Let's be better than that.

valryon• 4 years ago

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.

[0] https://store.steampowered.com/app/1358840

maxbond9• 4 years ago

(TW: Suicide)

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.)

A4ET8a8uTh09• 4 years ago

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.

maxbond9• 4 years ago

There was a TW on the opening screen about suicide. I'd have liked to see it. Obviously that was my friend's error and not the game's, and we discussed this afterwards. What I wanted to highlight is that a trigger warning was erased, and this was a very vulnerable time for me when it would have been very useful.

I'm not entirely sure I've understood your objection properly, but I'll try to address your questions.

Yeah it's expected that I'll be put in unusual situations, no I don't expect authors to anticipate each trauma I could possibly have, but surely the very obvious ones can be covered.

Should art immitate life or be safe? Neither and both, there's plenty of room in this world for the most gritty horror movie and for Blue's Clues.

How could I have known it was the outcome? The trigger warning was as specific as it needed to be - "TW: Suicide" is plenty.

ETA: The general vibe I'm getting here is you're asking, "where do you draw the line?", as if this were a slippery slope. The answer is, it's a matter of taste and judgement. It's not any less tractable then the question, when do you decide a work of art is done?

Naturally this opens up the observation that, if it's about judgment, one could decide to include no trigger warnings, like my friend did when presenting the game to me. And sure, I'm not saying that's invalid. More that its bad taste, and I've elaborated as to why I feel that way.

Gare2• 4 years ago

Was it DDLC? A 12-year old boy in Croatia commited suicide partly because of emotional trauma caused by it.

maxbond9• 4 years ago

No, I don't remember the title (and I feel like the post is better with keeping it abstract, I don't want to get into the weeds of discussing this particular story) but I have played DDLC and it wasn't that one in particular.

That's terrible about the 12 year old boy. I would say DDLC is a powerful and compelling piece of art that subverts & interrogates it's own genre and reveals the flaws of that genre, and I'm certainly not advocating for people not to make really challenging art like that. I wish things could have been different for that boy, but I'm not sure that's something better trigger warnings would solve.

zimpenfish• 4 years ago

Do you have a reference for that? I can only find a 15 year old in Manchester vaguely linked to it (without any real evidence the game was involved.)

https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manches...

Ms Kearsley said it was 'commonsense' to question the game's emotional impact but recording a verdict of suicide, she said: "We can make no direct link between Ben's death and his online gaming. Ben was a young man who potentially had a number of complexities."

tomjen33• 4 years ago

I am sorry that happened to you. However that points to a real problem: how do you make a CW system without being spoilery?

maxbond9• 4 years ago

From where I'm standing, either making them opt-out, or making them out of band.

I've never really found them to be spoilery though? So perhaps I'm the wrong person to ask.

igorbark3• 4 years ago

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.

Spivak2• 4 years ago

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.

kayodelycaon3• 4 years ago

I definitely use content warnings to avoid stuff. If I see suicide, "that's a nope from me dawg".

I feel like I'm not asking for much here. :(

catiopatio5• 4 years ago

Lots of overly fragile people have hang-ups, and lots more will claim them — or wallow in them — if there’s an advantage to do so, and even if that advantage is merely a boost to their ego: you’re special, you’re unique, your problems and inability to control them are not a failing, but a genuine disability society should accommodate.

We can’t possibly account for every possible form of extreme emotional fragility, nor is it our responsibility to account for it.

The attempt to shift that responsibility to speakers is itself just a form of social aggression, status-seeking and control.

So yes, it is asking for too much.

tomjen33• 4 years ago

How would you have a CW: suicide without spoiling that a suicide will happen?

TexanFeller• 4 years ago

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.

Mezzie9• 4 years ago

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.

maxbond9• 4 years ago

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.

Mezzie9• 4 years ago

It's possible, but I doubt that would come to pass for two logistical reasons (putting on my librarian hat):

1.) Nobody would want to pay for a central organization/group to make the ontology or labeling system. That would be a complex undertaking that would require a substantial amount of domain knowledge, not something that could be thrown together by volunteers.

2.) Keeping it up to date would require disclosure from people with PTSD to said central group and for various reasons a lot of us wouldn't be comfortable with that.

lanyard-textile• 4 years ago

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.

Mezzie9• 4 years ago

I appreciate that, but I don't think it's necessary. It's more a commentary on the fact that trigger warnings are so varied and personal that accurately making them for all of us PTSD sufferers puts a huge mental burden on people. Sometimes, that's appropriate - I have no problem asking my friends, remaining family members, or therapist/other medical providers to accommodate my desires, but I think asking strangers on the Internet to do so in public spaces is placing an undue burden on them. And for healthy people, that might not not a big deal, but a lot of people without PTSD might still be depressed, anxious, bipolar, ADHD, etc. or just plain exhausted and it may represent a prohibitively difficult thing to ask of them. Never mind once we get into things like cultural differences.

In my experience, the people who are most zealous about enforcing content warnings are people who like the social power it gives them over others and who lash out when they're made uncomfortable, and that's not acceptable. Being uncomfortable or triggered is obviously fine and you can't control that, but that doesn't give us the right to lash out at others or expect people to just 'know' what might set us off.

catiopatio5• 4 years ago

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.

Mezzie9• 4 years ago

I generally agree.

I mean 'triggered' in the PTSD sense of the term since I have PTSD. I'm nominally the population served by trigger warnings, but I find the cultural practices around them not helpful because they assume a common experience when PTSD triggers are very personal and in addition trigger warnings are accompanied by a 'walk on eggshells' culture which clashes with the desensitivity/disassociation that also accommodates PTSD.

And I am in therapy, thanks. You should probably take some reading comprehension classes though.

TheGhostOfBoris• 4 years ago

Its disappointing on HN to see posts like yours voted down, presumably because somebody disagrees with it, rather than them taking the effort to post a sensible rebuttal.

im3w1l• 4 years ago

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.

Mezzie9• 4 years ago

Personally, I've learned to deal with it. (Not saying everybody else should, but that I personally have coping mechanisms in place precisely because there's no way anybody could guess my triggers).

It's not envy. It's a trigger because one of the women who abused me was really into socially appearing to be a good mother and therefore that was part of the 'act' and I was forced into acting like part of those happy families. So I tense and have emotional reactions because my brain is fucked up and therefore reads the depictions as abusive.

(I have a great deal of envy - I'm working on it - but that means I definitely know the difference!)

ogurechny2• 4 years ago

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)…

A meta-analysis of the effects of trigger warnings and content notes

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