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Spitballing here (and also I don't care) but given that we're talking about digital content, maybe someone could write a bot that uses AI to review the item and add some reasonable (low-hundreds) list of triggers as metadata, and then the consumer can set their pertinent triggers and automatically receive a warning that they want, whereas everyone else is unaffected.
Again I don't have a horse in this race but this seems workable pretty soon.
In fact, though, I side with those who argue that it's on the consumer to decide what they wish to consume. If there's a market for trigger warnings, well, the market will provide solutions.
I also side with those who suggest that avoiding things which make one uncomfortable (or 'open up' 'past trauma') is a major impediment to the healing process. Trauma-as-identity is a failure mode for human existence and getting over it as quickly as is healthy is imperative. And yes, fwiw I say this as someone with some hard things in my past.
This is probably the ideal solution for trigger warnings for people who may want trigger warnings. (And for those, if they exist, that may benefit from trigger warnings).
I wonder if this solution is adequate for the activist type that might argue on the point of trigger warnings though. I'm sure most reasonable people would be perfectly happy with such a solution, but something tells me there is a small vocal group of activist types that would not be satisfied with such a solution and would rather force putting trigger warnings in front of media. Couple of reasons they might come up with:
I don't think I'm making up a caricature or a strawman here. If you watch the video, near the end of this video Innuendo Studios make the following statements:
"If you are a person with triggers it means other people can provoke a panic response in you against your will. The severity of the response is frankly immaterial. The point is, they have power over you. And if you're going to operate in this world as equals, you need their word that this power will not be invoked."
He also summarized the viewpoint of the Didoer as follows: "Yes I do have power over you... and you should just let me have it."
Would people who view the world in such power dynamics be satisfied with the proposed solution? Actually, your solution might be a really good test to see if the other person genuinely wants to help people who have traumas/PTSD or if they're just ideologically motivated.
(Disclaimer that I know you're not making this argument.)
This seems to map 1:1 with mental illness. Through that lens, anyone could have a powerful and irrational response to anything and of course we all understand — I hope — that global civilization can't entirely rework itself to cater to every individual's specific needs. If the common-sense part of this argument isn't enough, it could be pointed out that those needs are contradictory. The reality is that people are different, and different is inherently unequal, and thus different people cannot operate in the world as equals. This is plain as day to anyone who isn't way up on some kind of blinding ideology.
This is interesting because it makes protecting the experience of the, uh, entriggered person the responsibility of anyone seeking to express themselves at all. A message of "It's your job to improve your life" makes a lot more sense than "It's everyone else's job to improve your life." People with these issues are free and, in my book, even encouraged to agitate for themselves. And the rest of us are free to do the same. The chips fall where they may.
If someone has actual power over you, and that power is intolerable to you, the solution is historically violence. As you suggested earlier, I think, my concern is that something like this ends up being enforced by violence via the state. And, as you say, some people aren't going to be happy with any kind of reasonable compromise.
As always I worry about the power of women's tears in politics.
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I'm pretty sure you can trigger a panic response in just about anyone by pointing a gun at them or telling them their family member was run over by a car.
True, but it sounds like what Innuendo is driving at is the asymmetry of the power differential. You can induce a panic attack in me by pointing a gun at me (or any other of a long list of things which the average person can reasonably be expected to find upsetting), and I can do the same to you - it's perfectly symmetrical. But if I've gone through a traumatic experience that you know about, you can induce a panic attack in me by doing something far less overtly threatening than pointing a gun at me: say, telling a rape joke in my presence. Whereas if I tell a rape joke in your presence, it will have no effect on you. Between us, "jokes involving rape" are assymetric weapons.
Moreover, if you threaten me with a gun you may face legal repercussions (or at the minimum a drop in social standing, if I garner a reputation as a dangerous person), but if you tell a rape joke in my presence, it may have no impact on your social standing at all, while having a devastating impact on my mental health. (Now that I think about it, this may be what woke people were driving at with the whole "microaggressions" discourse.)
In practice I don't think it's anything like as black-and-white as this. Not everyone who's been raped and thinks that trigger warnings are a reasonable accommodation is going to reliably have a full-blown panic attack every time they hear someone tell a joke involving rape, and plenty of people who are opposed to trigger warnings on principle will nevertheless find themselves getting extremely upset about something much less overtly threatening than having a gun pointed at them. Once you know someone well enough, you can push their buttons in all sorts of subtle ways that wouldn't necessarily strike an outside observer as obviously cruel or abusive.
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Yup, which really puts into question the values and philosophies that guide these breadtubers. Fascinating how people view the world through such a lens!
To steelman Innuendo Studio's) point, I think there is an agreed-upon base assumption about basic human decency and respect when operating in the world and that it's safe to assume that normal people will not invoke such a power. So nobody would for no reason just pull a gun at someone or tell them their family member was run over by a a car. Or that the other side has the option to do the same to you. But in the case of trigger warnings, some people can and will abuse such powers if there are enough people on their side that make it socially acceptable. You can invoke their trigger, but they can't invoke such a response in you.
However, I have not met a single person who would knowingly expose a person their their stated traumas/triggers, even amongst the anti-trigger warning crowd. At best some edgy internet trolls, but they do whatever they can to rile other people up. Innuendo Studio makes a pretty uncharitable depiction of the opposing side.
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