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

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

#111

Post by a1369209993 »

komali2 wrote: post #52
all2well wrote: post #10

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.

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…

> "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.

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

#112

Post by A4ET8a8uTh0 »

kuramitropolis wrote: post #108
A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

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.

I actually admit I kinda like the idea ( and having just discovered IMDb' tags, it may not be as a herculean a task as I initially thought ) and I almost wonder if Youtube does not have everything of note categorized already.

It suddenly does not seem as impossible as it did a moment ago and it would actually benefit people, who are concerned about triggers ( and alleviate concerns of people like me, who don't want flags on everything ).

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

#113

Post by snapplebobapple »

asingh11 wrote: post #68
snapplebobapple wrote: post #3

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?

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.

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?

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

#114

Post by concinds »

sbf501 wrote: post #2

"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 implicat…

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.

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

#115

Post by TheGhostOfBoris »

catiopatio wrote: post #89
Mezzie wrote: post #55

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 dis…

> 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.

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.

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

#116

Post by TomSwirly »

wpietri wrote: post #21
civilized wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 wil…

You probably won't read this, but when I saw that movie, my mother who was really not too different from the mother in that film, she had died some years before from some other but overall similar disease.

I had been laughing my head off until that point, but when his mother says, "I didn't want to be any bother," I started crying and just cried and cried through that whole scene you describe.

So I really feel for you. Have a virtual hug.

I have watched the film a couple of times since though. Once you know it's coming, it's just a pang.

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

#117

Post by im3w1l »

Mezzie wrote: post #55

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 dis…

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.

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

#118

Post by josephg »

komali2 wrote: post #51
josephg wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people only extend empathy to their in-group. The left just has a different in-group. Your comment weirdly supports this reading. To me it reads as an attack on conservatives. Ending your comment with “…worth empathy to them .” implies conservatives are the out-group to you. Sounds to me like you don’t think this out-group (conservatives) deserve your empathy either! I might be misreading your intent, but as it…

> Most people only extend empathy to their in-group. The left just has a different in-group. Depends on how you define in-group I guess? Most of my leftist friends are straight and white, yet all of them support LGBT rights as human rights, went to Black Lives Matter protests, etc. Yet similar straight, white conservative former friends of mine do not extend empathy to the black american experience, or will outright…

It’s up to your leftist friends to define their in-group. Not me! Sounds like the in group is queer people, BLM people and so on.

> A core tenant of leftist ideology is universal empathy, as a basis for support for universal human rights, equity, etc.

There’s lots of people the modern “woke” left in the USA doesn’t seem to care about: poor people, people with low IQ, white people in conservative areas, people who live in non-western aligned countries, homeless people, men who have male specific problems, and so on.

For example, a white male friend of mine is utterly crippled by trauma from his absentee dad. He doesn’t feel like anyone in his broader community cares about him and his problems at all.

For a group that talks a lot about compassion, I’m frequently disappointed by how little love I actually see coming from the modern left.

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

#119

Post by Mezzie »

maxbond wrote: post #97
Mezzie wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 f…

What would you think about a casual/emergent ontology, like the way fan fiction is tagged, or like Wikidata? I realize these are very different approaches, but people are already putting in huge effort to categorize content just out of their own passion, and I'm curious what you would think of a user-generated approach.

AO3's system was actually what I was comparing the idea to, mentally. Running AO3 does take a fair amount of $ (although a lot of it does go towards legal and server costs), and the tagging system is centrally managed. I think that people would do that for fanfiction because the people doing it get something out of it, whereas not enough people would benefit from a more expanded trigger ontology. People will fund things that benefit themselves ("Alright, I can find my Kirk/Spock stuff, sweet!") over things that benefit a small population in which they're not included.

And the second problem remains. I do not trust volunteers to treat my PTSD experience with any respect. The type of person who would volunteer to do this are likely to be either people who have PTSD themselves (which represents a burden on them/is likely to be difficult/might possibly not be emotionally stable enough to do this work well) OR the virtue signaling/social control type. I've seen too much open grifting and hypocrisy from progressives to trust randoms claiming to want to help us.

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

#120

Post by Mezzie »

kayodelycaon wrote: post #102
Mezzie wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 o…

I think that the people in the middle don’t stand out. I’m in a group of writers. None of us are jerks about “trigger warnings”. We just put some obvious content warnings (rape, suicide, etc) before the main text and call it a day. You’ll never be able to put in every trigger. For example, angry drunk people. I’d never expect anyone to warn me about that in any form of media. (Goodfellas is awesome, btw) There is a r…

> Is mentioning your story includes a graphic depiction of rape difficult? I had a rather frank discussion with a fellow author who gave me that one without warning me.

My point is that there are conditions where yes, that's difficult. What counts as 'graphic' versus any depiction? I would genuinely have no idea because I'm so desensitized. Getting a 'frank discussion' over it and acting like I'm that way on purpose is just telling me not to be in the group because I don't share the invisible sensitivity level. It's the invisible part I object to, by the way. If there's a list of things to warn for and guidelines, I have no problem with it. But most people/groups won't do that because they like to pretend that there's something objective about what they chose as sensitive subjects rather than admitting 'hey I think we need some cultural boundaries around what's acceptable in a public space, let's discuss it' because they know it opens the discussion to other (usually more conservative) cultural boundaries.

For example, those spaces warn for suicide but not blasphemy. Or how about explicit consensual sex? Sex involving trans people? (Depending on the sex act/how it's treated, it can be triggering to some people's dysphoria)?

The middle ground is still a value judgement. Just admit it instead of dancing around that it's for the disabled. It's not. Stop using us as a shield for what is considered moral or not moral or disturbing or not disturbing. Just say "Most people find rape abhorrent to read about, so warn about it".

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