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

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.)

https://www.salon.com/2022/10/16/do-conservatives-really-hav...

"that liberals and conservatives alike report more empathy toward members of their own "in-groups" than outsiders"

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.

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.