AIBU to think this phrase is useless at best and at worst actively harmful?
I'm absolutely in favour of treating upsetting subjects sensitively when posting on the internet, for example by giving some thought before posting a thread with a disturbing title. But more and more I'm seeing this 'Trigger warning' appearing on MN and it properly gets my goat.
I believe the idea is to warn off people who have PTSD and might be triggered by the content into experiencing flashbacks or other distressing symptoms. But (I have a professional qualification in this area) just putting 'Trigger warning' on something that you think might be vaguely evocative of a traumatic experience doesn't actually do anything.
Two reasons. Firstly, the thing about PTSD is that actual PTSD triggers are hugely specific to individual traumatised people. Just speaking about a similar trauma won't necessarily be triggering, while an apparently innocuous smell, a noise, a texture or something else totally random could send someone into terrifying flashbacks.
Secondly, trying to avoid triggers actually makes PTSD worse. It's well established that the way to treat PTSD is with extremely careful, calibrated exposure therapy, handled by an expert clinician. So even if posting 'Trigger warning' was an effective way of signposting to traumatised people that there was content somewhere that they should avoid, doing so would be feeding into the vicious cycle of PTSD and actively helping to make their suffering worse.
So AIBU for asking people to just stop posting 'Trigger warning' on things? It might be well-meaning but it's of no real use to PTSD sufferers and IMHO its only function is as a way of signalling 'Morbid content lovers over here! I have some morbid content for you!'. If that's not what you're trying to do, why not just give some thought to posting sensitively and leave it at that?