Content Warnings on Trial

I think content warnings are over emphasised, over deployed and generally just treated with too much gravitas.
I’m not convinced that they’re completely worthless, or that they’re insidious, evidence of any secret agenda, none of that culture war shit.

I just think they’re usually a bit silly and the people that get zealous about them are generally also being a bit silly.
There are exceptions, but they are relatively few and far between and to me they are usually easy to articulate.

I think more than three quarters of the content warnings I see on the bits of the internet saturated with them (I’ll call it the cuddlynet) were done for the sake of form, not because the author was genuinely seriously concerned that they were going to upset people.

Why do I think that?

To be totally honest my gut feeling is that almost all content warnings are unnecessary and they are more often deployed in service to ideological goodthink and tone policing than to any benign purpose.

Examining past that gut feeling for more than a few seconds lays this bare for what it is: a kneejerk emotional reaction to a thing that smells a bit off to me, with little detailed reason behind it.

Because of course it is, it’s a gut feeling.
There are a million holes in that feeling, a million caveats and “yeah buts”, and don’t you worry, we’re going to go through them.
But that is what I feel.
So why do I feel that way?

Content Warnings = Censorship?, Censorship = Bad!

I have an instinctive dislike for anything that vaguely seems like censorship and content warnings have always smelled a little bit off to me in that regard. Obviously content warnings are not actually definitionally censorship, but in my head they are connected, as are euphemism and infantilism, two other cuddlynet stalwarts.

For good or ill I don’t ever really take heed of them, if they’re particularly long or particularly twee they may solicit an eye roll, but they’ve never stopped me reading or watching something.

I WANT to see the guts, always, I want to climb down into the mess of things, see the actual picture, roll around in it. It’s who I am, I love unfiltered nasty shit, I crave hard experiences; the gut punch, the smell that makes you retch. Life is not a pretty thing, it’s often viscerally ugly, so meet it as it is, honestly, as you are.

If I’m clicking on your blog post about the horrible experience you’ve had being newly disabled and getting treated like shit by the government I do not need a content warning telling me there’s going to be discussions of poverty and ableism in your post, maybe some other bad things in there too. I am an adult, reading another adult’s words, if something you say shocks and upsets me it’s because it probably should and my reaction is appropriate. Negative feelings are not exclusively bad.

The Come the Fuck on Test

While we’re on the topic of shocking and upsetting I suppose another part of the answer has to be that content warnings are often deployed proactively and with excruciating amounts of caution.

I find myself applying what I call the “come the fuck on test” when reading things: If something would make the average stiff on the street groan and go “come the fuck on” it’s probably unnecessary and the person that put it there is probably being overly cautious.

Consider:

I wrote a 200 word post about going for regular walks and losing 5lbs! (CW: Fatphobia, Weightshaming, Body image issues, Misogyny, Ableism etc, etc.)

Come the fuck on.

I have written a 5000 word expose on the sustained campaign of abuse a local teenage girl received after complaining about bullying at school (CW: Fatphobia, Weightshaming, Body image issues, Misogyny, Ableism etc, etc.)

Reasonable, I would argue not really necessary for most posts, the title is enough context, but reasonable.
There are about 10,000 examples like the former for every example of the latter.

Why are People so Cautious?

I think it’s down to good old peer pressure.

Once a community settles on something as an obviously good thing™, as many online communities have done for content warnings it’s very very easy for the boat to slide away from a reasonable and sensible position (you probably shouldn’t link to detailed descriptions of certain topics without some kind of disclaimer) to a silly position (you linked to something I dislike, I have found an excuse to give you a smack) quite quickly. If you’ve been around for a while you’ve seen this in some shape or form, probably more than once.

It isn’t anything new, small communities based around individual popularity, which is what most web forums are, are very susceptible to groupthink and circlejerking around anything you can think of. In some places suggesting that the Soviet Union ever did anything wrong gets you banned, in some places linking to a YouTube video without a paragraph length CW does.

Different symptoms, same illness.

And this breeds a culture of ass covering. Once you’ve had fifteen do gooders jump into DM’s and down your throat for not labelling something innocent as potentially harmful you either leave or do one of the following:

1. Go all out into edgelord territory and alienate yourself from this community that presumably does give you something.
2. Start being really fucking careful about toeing the line.
3. Take your licks and let it happen again in a couple month’s time.
4. Stand and fight and probably get banned.

A is obviously not helpful, but I don’t think B is either.

Option A is the spiteful brat’s preferred option, monkey shit flinging for the digital age. If you’ve ever seen someone in a group chat or IRC thread blow up and start posting gore, slur walls, or illegal content this is what they’re doing. You told me off and I don’t care if you’re right or wrong I think it’s bullshit so I’m going to break everything. Such people deserve nothing but contempt and kicking them out is almost always a positive.

Option B is a tough one. It might be the reasonable person’s option, or it might be the spineless option.
Maybe because you like these people when they aren’t telling you you’re bad and because you’re a reasonable human being capable of receiving criticism you convince yourself that they’re actually right and you did something wrong. That isn’t great for you, and it will happen again, moreover it also damages the community you’re letting yourself be stepped on to stay in, unreasonable people getting their way leads to their preferences becoming the accepted norm.

This is something you see IRL all the time and it’s a normal (but nasty) part of being a social organism.

Or maybe you take Option B because it’s the easiest way to maintain good standing, you will play the political game, pretend to hold values you don’t in order to keep the peace and keep your position.

Spineless, contemptible.
Also completely human and totally normal.

I don’t tell my colleague that I think he’s bad at his job and makes bad decisions because I like being employed and him thinking I don’t hold him in low esteem makes my life easier.

Option B, taken for this reason is another extension of normal (deeply ugly) human behaviour into the internet.
Option B can sometimes also be the actual good option that you should take, we’ll circle back to it later, so remember it, OK?

Option C is the action you take when you know this thing is coming to an end and there’s not much to do but run down the clock.

Option D is probably the best to take if you legitimately feel that you’re in the right but unless you’ve got clout in the community and don’t mind burning a ton of bridges it isn’t one you’re going to take most of the time. If you’ve got the composure to take this option you’re probably just going to walk out unless you’ve got real skin in the game.

Option B is the only option that lets you stay in the community as a “respected” member for long. If you want to be in the in group, you gotta do the groupthink.

So what’s the actual problem?

Why is this kind of over-precaution bad?
On the individual level it really probably isn’t. One or two delicately labelled posts aren’t going to bring the world down or render intellectual discussion moot.

On the macro level I think this culture of performative fragility is suffocating and channels all conversation down certain acceptable routes. Certain topics become taboo, honesty starts to be perceived as hostility; safety politics provide endless cover for bad faith attacks and ammunition for cry bullies.

It encourages people not to explore outside their comfort zone and it has a tendency to become more absurd over time.
Ironically fragility is self reinforcing.

In a word it’s infantilising: something might upset someone in some theoretical scenario where they stumble upon it so you must wrap bubble wrap around it.

Hey you Stupid Bastard! There are a bunch of really obvious criticisms of your worldview!

Yeah I know, did you not read the start of the article or did you tab off to watch fucking tiktoks between then and now and forget about it?

I said we’d talk about the problems with my thoughts on the subject and this is the bit where we do just that.

Problem One: Content Warnings do not inherently suppress discussion in of themselves

Content warnings aren’t censorship, you can staple as many words of probably unnecessary warning onto a post as you like, it doesn’t really detract from the post itself. I would argue that having to engage in this kind of self policing usually does have a chilling effect, constantly having to think about how something is going to be perceived and all the ways someone might think its contents are harmful will make you less likely to post something.

On the other hand you could argue in the other direction: A sufficiently detailed content warning will prevent people that are going to strongly negatively react to your post from seeing it, while not dissuading people that wouldn’t be upset by it. It might give you freedom to share something you’ve written without concern that you’re dropping a bomb onto stranger’s heads. I think this is a little generous, especially given how silly CW discourse can become at times (what if the content of your content warning was in of itself upsetting to me huh? where’s my content content warning?), but it is a fair point and a valid one to make.

Problem Two: I like guts, many others don’t

I like to see and read and get amongst horrible, upsetting things, I have a strong stomach and take discomfort as a learning opportunity, not everyone is like this, and that’s fine.

Some people really do not get on well with certain topics and would prefer not to be exposed to them if they don’t have to.
Many people just don’t want to look at certain things, they can deal with being exposed to them just fine, but they don’t want to be.
Some want to delve into some topics only at times that suits them, when they have the energy to deal with them, and would prefer such things to be properly marked so they can take or leave them as they wish.

All understandable and legitimate.

I would say in response, where does the line go?
If I put the line down somewhere and say anything past that point gets a content warning, what do I say when someone comes back to me and says “move this subject past the line, it’s upsetting to me and others”?

We’re back to it coming down to taste. Just as it’s acceptable for people to want certain topics put behind a curtain, it’s acceptable for me to think some things are perfectly fine out in the open, and asking me to put my stuff behind a curtain in my space is bullshit.

Problem Three: Reasonable is Relative

You cannot always understand or reasonably predict how something is going to be taken by someone else and it’s entirely possible to cause harm to others without any ill intent. Related to Problem Two, something may well not even register as an issue to me but cause issues for someone else.

Remember what I said about Option B? No? Have you been browsing Tiktok mid article again?
When I’m president you’ll get sent to the mines for such indiscretion. If you don’t remember go back up and refresh your memory of the topic.

There is a secret good reason to take Option B: When you’ve actually crossed a line and hurt people, without meaning to. What is good for one is bad for the other, I might find something funny or mildly unpleasant, someone else might find it grotesque or horrifying. Everyone has their idiosyncrasies, there are people out there that find the nightmarish mundane and vice versa.

I would say in my defence that A) Harm is also relative, and B) Reasonable inside context is not all that relative. What I mean by those:

1. Harm is relative: Mildly annoying someone by posting a risque joke they think is unfunny does not cause the same degree of harm as linking to gore without warning, nuance is a thing, as much as some pretend it isn’t.
2. Reasonable inside context is not all that relative: Unless we are interacting completely stripped of context or in violation of the norms of the space we are interacting in the chance of either of our definitions of reasonable being super far apart is actually fairly low. This assumes that the space we are in has reasonably well defined norms, which most spaces applicable to this conversation do in fact have.

That said, sometimes it’s best to take your oil and recognise that you’ve fucked up and should pay a little more attention to how other’s feel.

Problem Four: You can’t control who sees what you post or where it gets shared

Once something is out there it’s out there, I write a post, the initial readership find it OK, someone reading it from a third hand link to it get sent into conniptions by it and has an awful time. A content warning could’ve prevented that.

I don’t have a great answer for this one to be honest, other than that I am responsible for what I write, I’m not responsible for who reads it or where it gets shared (other than where I post about it directly, which to be fair is 98% of this site’s readership atm)

If we have such a responsibility to treat every potential reader with kid gloves why was the linking party not at fault for not putting a CW on the link? How far does this line of reasoning go, if people share screencaps or extracts from something without the content warning intact is that also the original author’s fault?

Not a very robust answer on that one

Yeah you’re right it isn’t, but I don’t feel like I need much of one to be totally honest.

Why not?

Because my honest instinct is that most of this is bullshit.

Kind of an edgelord asshole answer that!

Kind of, yes.
I don’t have a good detail answer for this point, but I genuinely don’t feel that I have a responsibility to any random that stumbles on my work, nor does any other person on the internet. I am responsible for making sure my own actions are right, and nothing else.

Problem Five: Children (some of whom will literally be neurodivergent minors) might click on something they shouldn’t if it’s not CW’d

Again not my problem, not my fault, not my responsibility to deal with. Kids are more robust than people think, and a list of badthink topics in a CW isn’t going to put any of them off.

Kids love fucked up shit, they seek it out, stick their little heads into it. Other than shoeing them away when their presence is obvious and keeping an eye out for people looking to exploit them there isn’t much most communities can do about this.

Adults have an absolute responsibility not to enter Children’s spaces and deliberately expose them to things they shouldn’t be exposed to.
We have no responsibility to carefully childproof every little thing in case they stumble across it. Because they’re going to, they’re good at getting around childproofing, and most of the time we don’t realise that they’ve done so, or that they were even there.

Furthermore CW’s do nothing to stop actual bad actors getting access to kids and other vulnerable people, and they don’t do anything to help those people’s guardians keep them safe online. If little Timmy is browsing nightmareporndawtcom or getting really into hyperborean esotericism (Nazi bullshit for those of you not conversant in loser) it’s probably because he has unsupervised internet access and his parents are idiots. No fixing that with a Content warning.

OK, Mr.Edgelord free speech crusader, what does all this mean?!

First of all, I am not one of those people.
You know the ones.
I don’t think my right to freezepeach is being impinged because I can’t spam slurs in threads or because you won’t go on a date with me after I said all those interesting things about Jews.

This isn’t some dogwhistle thing.

I’m just convinced that a lot of this kid glove stuff isn’t really worth doing. It’s not helpful, most of it isn’t really doing that much to protect anybody, maybe it’s a little bit harmful most of the time, very harmful a little bit of the time.

I think most of the people that engage with it are doing so for mostly good reasons, but I think those reasons are often a bit overblown and maybe a bit hazy.
And I think this stuff really is used by bad actors to attack other people, fairly frequently.

You’re three thousand two hundred and one Words into the article, get to the damn point!

Wow OK.
Rude.
It’s my website I pay the hosting fees I’ll type as much as I want.

The Point

TL:DR I think content warnings are mostly dumb but sometimes they aren’t and I’m open to being convinced otherwise, but I’m not sure what would. I understand why other people value them and this isn’t really an attempt to change their minds, more an exploration of my own.

What does that mean? The following:

• No Content Warnings on this site, pages with them will have them removed (I bowed to peer pressure a few times, lmao, bad, stinky)
• When posting to other places I will follow the set rules on using content warnings (When in Rome, do as the Romans do)
  • If asked about them I’ll be honest about my opinion per the TL:DR above
  • I will advocate against overly onerous CW requirements when the topic is up for discussion
• I will invite reasoned critique and feedback of my opinion, as I do for everything I put out. (you can email me about my dogshit opinions on this topic and others if you like)
• I will not go out of my way to antagonise people that strongly prefer CW’s, that’s asshole behaviour and not a reasonable response to finding the things annoying.
• I will break these rules before they cause me to do anything obviously stupid or horrifying. (Nuance is a thing remember?)

And that’s it, we’re done.
It’s 4am, I’m going to bed. I love the way the word autocomplete in Kate covers the word you’re typing, very good UX, not annoying at all.