Trigger warnings or the idea of letting people know what a work contains beyond simple disclaimers and age ratings became popular in the recent years. It was seen as a form of care for the readers’ well-being and the way to generate informed reading. Many even said that the job of people to confront their traumas is in the office of the therapist not in their fiction. And so as a mental health forward organization, we at Muses_Saga decided to keep trigger warnings front and center with our work.
Until new research came to light, that we came across on YouTube.
We also had experts warning us against extreme warnings. Some have also found that even simple reading a warning can trigger the same emotions as confronting the context, and research slightly supports thus by saying that it can increase anticipatory anxiety. Mickey Atkins on YouTube says that our brains have adapted now to get anxious over T/Ws as we know it means distrusting ideas are ahead.
So what have we come across? Long story short, trigger warnings are only virtue signaling or so some experts say because the recent study says that trigger warnings do not decrease stress that a reader gets when confronting material that is uncomfortable for them. Essentially, T/Ws do not help people feel any more empowered to confront any content and may even make people take on it despite knowing it’s not good for them.
Now, in my personal experience they’ve helped me avoid work I am not ready for, hence why our authors have the choice to out warnings in their work, many have found such avoidance can lead us to living without having to hear opposing ideologies. Yet, making them tackle that isn’t our job.
The reason we are considering removing them is, as forementioned, that even reading the warnings can give anticipatory anxiety, making their point moot in many cases. It may still be a question of informed consent, where readers have the choice to leave a work if it has material they don’t want to engage with, similar to rating systems in a way, but research has also shown that very few people tend to leave works that are bad for them based on that.
Yet, we have also had specialists encourage the use of these for our darker works. Not as trigger warnings but a simple disclaimer saying heavy topics ahead regarding so and so. Essentially, T/Ws according to research are not helpful in avoiding causing anxiety or even in terms of informed consent allowing people to step back. Yet, one can’t say they’re completely useless because they do cover the base of a reader knowing what they signed up for, regarding age etc., and also because a few people have had issues with how the research was conducted. Yet, perhaps not every possible trigger needs to be put on every story.
Before we end, here’s my personal two cents. I was once of those people who would avoid people who didn’t put T/Ws or called them a formality, simply because I don’t like engaging in certain works and wanted to be informed so I could step away. This research has made me step off that high-horse, and realize that I can leave a work mid-way. While I still need to know what I am signing up for and would encourage at least a rating system like PG-13 etc. to ensure inappropriate material doesn’t get distributed, I also see how close I came to extreme censorship- and yet I will still not call T/Ws formality because they were based on care and consent.
What do you think? Let us know in the comments!
Author: Anjali Roongta
Editor- Shubhr Aakriti