An editorial from The Daily Athenaeum
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — Trigger Warning: The following editorial talks about trigger warnings. Anyone with a past experience with trigger warnings might find the subject matter distressful. To avoid discussion of trigger warnings, heed this trigger warning and put down the newspaper.
If you don’t know, trigger warnings appear at the beginning of some media to let consumers know the material might ‘trigger’ traumatic and stressful responses.
If you use Tumblr, you might have seen something like this. In recent months, news of higher educational institutions across the country have come to light, and with it has risen a discussion: are we trigger happy?
Phillip Wythe, from The Daily Targum at Rutgers University, said that “‘The Great Gatsby’ possesses a variety of scenes that reference gory, abusive and misogynistic violence.”
There’s an inherent problem with trigger warnings becoming popular: too many people think the warning is for them. Slapping a trigger warning on whatever risque material that’s being distributed seems to be the “in” thing to do.
More people see them, more people read them and more people pay attention to what could upset them.
A trigger warning suggests that whatever media a person interacts with is potentially dangerous and that it could cause them harm.
Here’s the thing: some material should harm us…
