Being on Mastodon is fun, but holy smokes, those guys want you to content-warning everything, it feels like--even crying. And I'm like, what, a basic display of emotion gets a content warning? It's not even extreme sobbing over some dead body; we're not pondering skipping out on a viewing of Grave of the Fireflies because we're already in a downer mood; it just appears to be a character sheet that happens to have several headshots of example emotions, and crying happens to be one of them. I see them on more advanced ref sheets all the time.
I get the warnings for, like, blood or guns or spiders. I can imagine why someone might not want to see those, but yeah, I dunno. Like, by this logic, you could content-warning happiness, too, if you're sad and you don't want to see someone else being joyful. Like, where is the line between content warnings, and regular run-of-the-mill content tags? Is just the semantics of it tripping me up?
I think a lot of people on Mastodon have forgotten what Tumblr taught us about trigger warnings and trolls
this is sincerely one of the major reasons I just can't use mastodon. My friends on there are very soft hearted and want to protect people from harm but this leads to what feels like every other post having some content warning for something extremely mild or anodyne and I just can't deal with it. It's one of the few things that makes me feel that icy touch of "the conservatism of age" that we were warned about, so I have to keep myself out of it so I don't lose my empathy or sensitivity.
and here's why, imo
content warnings for 'just in case' someone is upset -- as jack halberstam notes -- run the risk of reinforcing normative structures of surveillance. sara ahmed (of feminist killjoy fame) reminds us that content warnings oughtn't make spaces "safe," but rather productively uncomfortable. sarah schulman's book conflict is not abuse similarly cautions us against utilizing trigger warnings in such a way that they recuse us from the difficult work of interrogating the systems that uphold colonialism, racism, or sexual violence because they make us feel bad. this round table from 2020 furthers this line of thinking, with neel ahuja arguing that it is regressive to try and control a conversation in such a way as to make everyone "safe." safety is not necessarily the goal. it follows, then, that finding unnecessary trigger warnings annoying does not make you a bad leftist.
of course, all of these pieces have valid criticisms (i mean, this page alone) and the internet is not the same as a classroom. we're not all in our local anarchist bookstore sitting in plastic chairs and talking about our neighborhood, im literally trying to look at pictures of eggbug. basically, the logics of transformative justice are difficult to map onto the geographically dispersed communities that operate Online. i feel like we've all, by now, been encouraged to read the revolution starts at home, or perhaps we've heard about morally motivated networked harassment. what is "accountability" On Here and how does it operate? what do we owe to each other on the TL? the internet is purposefully distributed -- can that even form a "community"? must we self-destruct?
anyway do what you want i guess send tweet
