On CW/TW/PSA

Hello,

It is my understanding that some of you who sign up to TG, have previously been in environments where Content Warnings, Trigger Warnings and Public Service Announcements are a common thing. And you might be used to requesting your account deleted if you see something that offends you.

Here on TG we don't do those things. I understand if you need a little while to get used to the culture, so I don't care about stuff I think is inappropriate in your introductions, however you are expected to be able to "read the room" here and figure out how to be respectful of others.


Like @Zefer Nezumi says, we really don't ask much of people who wish to join TG. However, given the prevalence of these TW/CW things in the wild web, I feel I have to explicitly point these things out...

TG is like a family, you aren't just a number. We don't treat people here like large corporations do, such as Twitter and Facebook, who will delete you on request and never ask you about how you are. This means we care about how you are doing, and you don't get to present to us with some kind of constructed identity that you have decided to use. We don't care about your pronouns, we care about who you are as a real person. The more honest you are with us the more you will get out of TG.

We don't call out other members if we think they offend us. We don't shame them in public. Everyone is free to voice their own opinion and you are expected to be able to cope with disagreements in a civil manner. You can reply to them and explain why you believe differently, but you may not attack them or call them out.

If this doesn't sound acceptable to you, we're not forcing you to sign up.


We don't do trigger warnings and we would ask that you do not spoiler stuff, unless you actually don't wish that most people see it, or you're talking about squished brains in a conversation about puppies or something.

LycanTheory Wrote:CW/TW/Tumblr type stuff is harmful, especially to younger users who grow up believing they're entitled to never having to face anything they don't like.

It effectively overshelters people in a delusion that real life is "safe" and the delusion manifests into expectation which results in a maladaptive response when an individual realizes they've been living/believing a lie.

We have scientific articles which agree with what we are saying here. Staff are all old enough to be parents and we feel responsible for everyone on this forum to grow up to be healthy well-adapted adults.


If something you are going to post is not something you'd want a 13-year-old to see, either post it in the adult forums if you are over 18 (or if you are under 18, just don't post it).

If you see something that offends you on the forums and you think something should be done about it, don't post about it in public, make a thread in the Write to Staff forum. Staff will determine what is to be done.

Believe it or not most people do not want to deal with drama. If you try to circumvent us and attack another TG member or cancel them or whatnot, whether you feel justified or not, it will not go down well with the staff. That said, our Write to Staff forum is always open for any concerns you might have.


Thank you for reading.

LP,
Dusty

If we were asked to put trigger warnings on stuff, it'd have to be on basically everything we say, because you never know what could 'trigger' someone. And trigger warnings just seem a bit over the top, I've seen them put on stuff that (at least in my opinion) really doesn't need it. I really don't agree with them.

There's stuff I simply can't read let alone watch. Ends in me being nauseous and trying to just get it out of my head.

Only once an online post made me send my phone flying so far. And once almost made me throw up.

The thing is: No one TW's the stuff I have these problems with. Since it's not the usual stuff. And I know that if I go online I might encounter it.

Like @Bubbles said: Everything can be a trigger for someone. So these warnings would have to be anywhere and that would be one crazy world!

I have had problems with things triggering. Simply I was reading something and it went off onto hard topics for me. No ones fault, just happned.

I do agree it gets rediclous if every thing was trigger warned but on some generalised subjects it can be.
Take film rating for example, contains violence. Thsts enough for anyone who doesn't like fighting to avoid. I don't see how something like that would be needed on tg but some subjects discussed it might.

I'm not saying it's something people need to do, or stopping people from doing. And I guess we have an adult fourm for a reason to put topics that youngsters and some adults would find uncomfortable.

As others have said. There is no reason, at all. Why, if someone is triggered they should shout abuse at others for it. Its a complete waste of everyone's time. Seek comfort and help if anything. Shouting gets you nowhere.

(2021-09-25 11:45)Cordyceps Canine Wrote:  There's stuff I simply can't read let alone watch. Ends in me being nauseous and trying to just get it out of my head.

Only once an online post made me send my phone flying so far. And once almost made me throw up.

Perhaps you should be more careful about what you read.

Also those reactions don't seem reasonable to me, especially as a reaction to something that doesn't really affect you personally. Perhaps you should try and control your behaviour a bit more.

Imagine how it would be if you applied for a job and during the interview your to-be employer asked you something uncomfortable and you threw your phone at them. I imagine that would not work out very well for your employment prospects.

LP,
Dusty

(2021-09-25 8:36)DustWolf Wrote:  We have scientific articles which agree with what we are saying here. Staff are all old enough to be parents and we feel responsible for everyone on this forum to grow up to be healthy well-adapted adults.

Abstract Wrote:Trigger warnings alert trauma survivors about potentially disturbing forthcoming content. However, empirical studies on trigger warnings suggest that they are functionally inert or cause small adverse side effects. We conducted a preregistered replication and extension of a previous experiment. Trauma survivors (N = 451) were randomly assigned to either receive or not to receive trigger warnings before reading passages from world literature. We found no evidence that trigger warnings were helpful for trauma survivors, for participants who self-reported a posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) diagnosis, or for participants who qualified for probable PTSD, even when survivors’ trauma matched the passages’ content. We found substantial evidence that trigger warnings countertherapeutically reinforce survivors’ view of their trauma as central to their identity. Regarding replication hypotheses, the evidence was either ambiguous or substantially favored the hypothesis that trigger warnings have no effect. In summary, we found that trigger warnings are not helpful for trauma survivors.

Source

Also:

Trigger Warnings Might Coddle the Mind

- Psychology Today
- Harvard

My take:

Trigger Warnings, ect originated from feminist spaces in the late 90s and gained traction on LiveJournal in the early 2000s. The trend didn't begin sweeping the web until Tumblr picked it up and made it trendy sometime around 2009 or so. Now it's a common manifestation on university campuses, nationwide.

This type of overprotective crap is what's lead to the generational trend of zoomers (I will note that not everyone in the age demographic fits the stereotype of being a "zoomer") being the most intolerant and vindictive generation of society we have ever seen.

Zoomers, the Intolerant Ones Wrote:While today’s youth are better behaved, they seem touchier and more prone to taking offense. Philosophy professor Stanislaus Dundon began substitute teaching at the high school and junior high school level after retiring from Sacramento State University in 2006. Dundon loves teaching, and he loves his students, but he’s afraid of them.

Dundon is a passionate advocate for reading and literacy. In his view, book reading is critical to intellectual development. Once when he gave an exam, he noticed that one of his students had finished early and was quietly reading a paperback under her desk. Dundon told her that he was happy to see students reading and she didn’t have to hide her book. That led to a student complaint and a summons to the principal’s office. An anonymous student complained that Dundon had advocated reading in a math class. The authorities deemed his remarks too controversial, inappropriate for the classroom, and reprimanded him.

Source

So to reiterate what I said in Discord last night:

All of this ridiculously oversensitive crap is teaching our youth that all they have to do is claim they are distressed or offended by something or someone they don't like and it's a free pass to getting or doing whatever they want, including malicious harm to others. It's a very large, very real problem that we are faced with, one that is going to eventually lead to catastrophic consequences unless action is taken to avert society's feel-good, unaccountable nose-dive off a cliff.

Atlantis may have said it best on the other thread: "we aren't babies" and if someone here expects to be treated like a baby, I would advise them to look elsewhere.

Savage, of Werelist, once said of the therian community: "this is a place to learn, not a place for children to play". I would only add to that our community isn't a place to teach, encourage or enable maldaptive or unsuccessful coping skills or strategy in dealing with adult life in the real world. It is neither a place for 5 year olds, 15 year olds who act and behave like 5 year olds or 18-20somethings with the emotional and mental maturity of 5 year olds because they've been coddled their whole lives and had excuses made for them and default to excuses rather than accept the world as it is and embrace accountability for themselves.

In my day, if someone expressed being bothered by something, we simply did our best not to rub whatever the topic was in their face and in return, in gesture of mutual respect there didn't exist cancel culture, outrage, or social vindictiveness.

Asking someone to stifle their freedom of expression or speech for your safety is a shining example of egocentric narcissism. It completely dismisses how violated the other person might feel in having to shut up when chances are the reason they brought up any given topic in the first place was a personal need to talk about it.

Demanding that someone shut up for your own personal, self-satisfying sense of "safety" is decentralized authoritarianism, period and taking hostile or malicious action against someone because they've "offended" you is... Let me put it this way. My 8 year old, autistic son behaves better than that.

Lycan

(2021-09-25 17:07)DustWolf Wrote:  Perhaps you should be more careful about what you read.

Also those reactions don't seem reasonable to me, especially as a reaction to something that doesn't really affect you personally. Perhaps you should try and control your behaviour a bit more.

Imagine how it would be if you applied for a job and during the interview your to-be employer asked you something uncomfortable and you threw your phone at them. I imagine that would not work out very well for your employment prospects.

LP,
Dusty

That might be because it's not a reasonable reaction. Both things happened on Twitter, included images and a phobia.

But if you want to assume I throw my phone at random people in real life due to them mentioning stuff then go ahead.

Don't know how you come to these odd conclusions everytime but whatever. I know I'm vague and I guess it's that.

(2021-09-25 22:31)Cordyceps Canine Wrote:  That might be because it's not a reasonable reaction. Both things happened on Twitter, included images and a phobia.

But if you want to assume I throw my phone at random people in real life due to them mentioning stuff then go ahead.

Don't know how you come to these odd conclusions everytime but whatever. I know I'm vague and I guess it's that.

If you don't give people any information, they are going to fill in the blanks with their immagination. It's just the way it works.

However my point was, that on TG, the reasonable is expected.

LP,
Dusty

@DustWolf

Okay from now on I won't even mention stuff like this anymore. It's in my opinion not reasonable to just: fill in the blanks. You do not know me and you can't expect me to put detailed private stuff people can use against me openly on TG.

I'll zip it about my health from now on.

For what it's worth all I did was post a summary of a conversation several members had on TG Discord yesterday.

LP,
Dusty