#paywall
Trigger warnings don't work, and make us weak — so why do we have a trigger warning for a business model?
One predictor of backlash I’ve discovered is the use of the hashtag #paywall on social sharing sites. It’s a trigger warning that serves as a trigger itself for those who are devoted to the idea that all content must be free, even if they themselves are relatively wealthy and of means.
More and more research and thinking is revealing that trigger warnings aren’t working as intended.
Jill Filipovic recently wrote in the Atlantic about trigger warnings in an essay titled frankly, “I Was Wrong About Trigger Warnings.” Her observations — mostly around more difficult issues like sexual trauma, emotional trauma, and battlefield trauma — still have bearing, even to the relatively anodyne world of access trauma. That is, “protecting” people from triggers may actually cause their coping muscles to deteriorate to such a degree that everything becomes triggering, every minor provocation is viewed as traumatic.
When your hiking legs atrophy, every molehill is a mountain.