smudged

hey lol this place is neat

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a cat tbh
ANE Director & Media Advisor
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cis male pansexual poly
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I've been trying to put thoughts I've had re: content warnings and the ongoing Mastodon discussions into words that make enough sense to post and I think I've got it figured out now?

so it's like, the very short of it is that when CWs get used so frequently for so many things, they begin to feel not like a positive thing to help others avoid seeing something, but a negative implication of shame on the person posting it, if that makes sense

and I really wonder if this is essentially just re-inventing the hashtag

or more like, in the same way you've got likes and dislikes, you're adding a second grouping of hashtags intended as warnings

here's a probably terrible example: I've seen a bunch of people use CWs for posts showing/about food (assuming this is primarily for the sake of people with eating disorders) and going "CW: food" is like saying "sorry for posting this but..." whereas having #food #cooking etc. accomplishes the same thing, people can search for it if they want to see that kind of post, and now also people can exclude it from searches or add it to their account-level filters

that's getting a bit too technical and I'm sure someone will tell me that's exactly how CWs work on Mastodon or wherever and cool, it's just that warning people I'm doing something feels shameful while just saying what I'm doing feels more natural, especially when it's something so basic in terms of everyday survival and function

and I'm not even going to go near some of the other stuff I've seen, like I saw someone angry that they posted a selfie and people told them to add a CW for "fat" because of their size, and that's a tremendous oof on so many levels


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in reply to @smudged's post:

Yeah, that's a similar read to what I've figured out about it, too. I've gathered this sort of explanation on the subject: "CW's are just a suggestion. People like to know what they're going to see before they open an image."

It's weird to me that they keep using the term "content warning" for it, if it's apparently just being used by most users as descriptive text for images!

I've also seen it's decently common for people to use the CW's as jokes, like, posting a picture of a dog with the CW's for a selfie. It seems to turn to an environment where the CW means nothing, and people only complain about you not tagging your stuff because they prefer to have everybody's images be click-to-view.

That "CW: fat" anecdote is pretty crushing, too. Like, holy shit. "Your body could be potentially triggering to somebody" is NOT the innocent "just a suggestion" comment they might've thought it was. x.x