Trigger Warnings: Preparing to Get Offended

Is there really a difference between genuine distress and seeking to tear someone and something down just because?

Often enough we see these things called trigger warnings placed upon content that is defined as "extreme". Subjects such as genocide, rape, suicide, sexual abuse, drug abuse, alcoholism and other such things that essentially wouldn't be brought up at the dinner table. Today I'm going to tackle this issue from both perspectives, the perspective of the content consumer and the content creator.

If you're like me and looking at something thinking, "should I put a trigger warning on this?", the very first step in deciding is look inward. Think of yourself first. This is your content and, no matter how much you may want it or how censored it is, it won't be everyone's cup of tea. You will have critics, you will have haters, you could create a genderless, sexually flavourful, biracial, agnostic, spiritual character in a book that ticks every single current social acceptance box possible and there will still be people out there that accuse you of not being 'woke' enough. So you may as well write whatever the hell you want.

So, you've looked inward and thought, no, there isn't anything here I want to change. I have a male gay character and that's enough for me because those are the important bits that make my book work! Now you have to look outwards. I used to be of the opinion that, if you don't like my themes, you can suck it. However, we need to bear in mind a very real struggle that many people go through each day and that is PTSD.

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, as a lot of people know, is a disorder that is borne out of experiencing a severely traumatic event, resulting in numerous medical issues that can occur from remembering or reliving said experience. Many people seem to believe that this disorder is only exclusively for war veterans, purely because they experience it most commonly. Any war dog returning from seeing death all around them and constantly being wary of danger at any turn would more than likely fall victim to this horrible disorder. But it isn't only exclusive to veterans. Which is why we do, in fact, need trigger warnings. It's all well and good thinking, "I don't need to censor my work. If you are triggered, go somewhere else". You have every right to think that. But as a creator, you have a duty to protect the health of your readers too. You can't just turn a blind eye when someone recounts a traumatic experience from your book and starts having recurring nightmares afterward. Remember, writers. Butterfly effect.

And now we go to the perspective of the reader. Now, there will definitely be some genuine instances where a person needs a trigger warning, so that they can prevent coming across some potentially upsetting content and avoid reliving a horrifying trauma. If it were you, I can imagine you would want to sleep peacefully at night as well. So why are trigger warnings seen as something childish, ridiculous and unnecessary? Because of the Internet. The actually small percentage of bigots, lunatics and educationally impotent on the internet that hide behind their so-called trigger warnings and use the very real issues of others to needlessly censor content creators.

I'm sure you readers have seen their ilk a hundred times over during your usual browsing and they have been around centuries before the Internet even existed. 4chan, Reddit, Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, all social media platforms have bred people like this. It is trolls like these that have stained the actually righteous tool that is the trigger warning.

For my fellow content creators, identifying the frauds is almost easy enough. Just beware sometimes they will slip under the radar. The easiest ones are the screamers. The caps lock captains. People who will take your content and scream a hole into it in order to take it down, under the pretence of being triggered. The others are the lecturers. People who won't just explain why a trigger warning is required but will give you an entire university essay on their feelings. There's a fine line between expressing how you feel and guilt tripping whilst grovelling for attention. Third signs, the diplomats. People who will quickdraw their apparent psychology degree and give you the "intellectual definition" of triggered and use their fake study knowledge to laud themselves over you and feed their superiority complex.

So, my personal opinion? Trigger warnings are a good and sensible safeguard to ensure nobody gets hurt when experiencing your writing and can still enjoy it but be careful. Only place it if you know you want it there. Trigger warnings are a huge gateway to having the internet cancel you and your book on the word of some uneducated, mouth breathing troll. I, for one, will have content warnings on all my future Maleos books since there will be some heavy stuff in there. But what do you think? Trigger warnings, necessity or nonsense?

J.J. Matthews