Digital Becca

I had to do something I really disagree with today and it’s something I truly believe puts people in danger. I posted an article containing triggering images about anxiety, with a warning for people not to look if they were likely to be triggered by them.

Shortly after I posted it, we had a comment from a supporter saying “Well don’t bloody post it then if it’s going to trigger people.” This is the essence of everything I think is wrong with trigger warnings – the content isn’t safe, we know it isn’t, yet we choose to post the article anyway because somebody came up with a flimsy get out of jail free card which we tell ourselves makes it alright.

The argument I lost in the office today was whether or not a warning gives people a choice about whether to read an article or not. I say it doesn’t, certainly not in mental health, all it does is give people a big red button and a line of text telling them not to push it.

Speaking from personal experience, anxiety and control issues are often about boundaries. Sometimes you want to push yourself, test yourself and see whether it will hurt. A lot of people also want to know they’re not alone in their experiences – they’re following a Facebook page to be part of a community, so posting something and telling a section of your supporters to stay away from it always feels to me like poor community management.

To my mind,  however much we stand to achieve from sharing content, I never want to be in the position of baiting supporters for PR gain. It feels like an abuse of our position and of the trust people place in us to set an example and do the right thing.

In my previous job I was a community moderator and there trigger warnings were constantly misused. People casually posted graphic images of self harm and thought that a lazy ‘tw’ at the beginning of the post absolved them of any responsibility for the harm it might cause another user of the site. We always took those posts down because if something isn’t safe then to us that was the end of the story.

There’s a lot of debate around the issue of trigger warnings but to me it’s simple, do you want to be the kind of community manager who gives people hope or the kind where people say “they’re great, but sometimes their stuff gives me panic attacks.”

I don’t think anyone really wants to be in the latter camp, so let’s stick to the safe inspiring stuff that doesn’t carry that risk.