“So, you mean they’re homophobic?”
“Well, no, but-”
“So they’re misogynistic? Racist? Transphobic? Ableist???”
“N-no, actually they enforce strict banning on all those things, BUT-”
“So they bully people into suicide?”
“Nooo, they require content warnings for even mentions of suicide, BUT!”
“…Yes?”
“I saw one of them say 'death to nazis!”
“So they’re the opposite of 4Chan?”
“NO!”
Ngl I don’t fully understand the point of content warnings in so many cases where the warning is equally as potentially triggering as the content itself.
I get it if the content of the post is actually worse, but in a lot of cases it’s like, people already mention the same exact thing they’re giving a warning for… by saying it in the warning. Example:
"CW: SA
They were sexually assaulted"
For myself, i’ve found that the point of CWs isn’t always to avoid such content altogether, but to not take a closer look when i’m having a bad day, or don’t want to be upset, or something along these lines. It’s not a taboo, it’s more like a form of media hygiene and limiting exposure when needed. Like, transphobia is definitely something that requires a CW for me, but i see transphobia every day, it’s unavoidable to begin with. And it’s not that i can’t handle it, there’s just a point where it’s better for my well-being to limit exposure and not dwell on it too much. And going into a thread where it’s the very topic will mean i’ll get exposed to a lot of discussion about it, and have to mull it over a lot. So there’s situations where i see a CW: Transphobia and don’t click on the thread, but most of the time, i’ll do, because discussing the subject is different from seeing a clip from Matt face the Wallsh or smth like that.
It’s not that way for everybody, particularly when it comes to PTSD and forms of SV / SA, but CWs get used for all kinds of things. And often, the people who’d be happy to have a CW do not use it the way most people expect it.
tbh i find abbreviations to be fine for my PTSD, as a survivor of SV. sticking to abbreviations like SA and SV and nsfw tagging posts (hide nsfw in your profile) will help limit exposure. im a big proponent of NSFW tags and abbreviations to keep our more vulnerable users safe, though i would like to see more tags in the future and even tags for comments that can hide chains. i guess the abbreviations make it more clinical rather than personal for me.
spoiler
the slightly longer r word is very bad for me though
Ideally tags (besides NSFW) would exist as their own “thing” on lemmy and people sensitive to X type of content would be able to opt out of those posts. This feels like the best thing short of that.
