Distressing thread titles.

[itsmeafterall]

I don't think iIABU but there seems to have been a recent sharp rise in really distressing thread titles -without a trigger warning. By the time I've read them it's too bloody late.

There is so much terrible content on the internet at the moment - especially with the Epstein shit in spades so, sadly, plenty of grim material to discuss. Not saying it shouldn't be raised, but a TW should be used.

AIBU in asking people to be a lot more
Thoughtful when posting - MN can't be asked to be in top of editing with immediate turnaround.

TW coming up of a recent example below.

Im referring to titles like the one I just saw about a woman having her spine broken on video. Seriously grim.

@mnhq please can I ask you to issue a reminder to people to be more careful?

The thread title mentioned in the OP is indeed distressing. I hid it, and I hardly ever hide threads.
But not in a million years would I think that the person who started that thread should have avoided the distressing words.
It is in the nature of a public place that there will be people whose sensitivities and tolerances are different from yours, and that you will encounter things that are upsetting, disturbing, offensive, etc.
It is amazing how much more censorious people are than they were just ten or twenty years ago.

I just don’t see how this would work. You can warn people that the contents of the thread might be disturbing by putting TW in the title so they have a choice not to open it. But as you can’t pre-warn them not to look at the title itself the only way to avoid upset is to keep it so bland and vague we wouldn’t know what the thread was actually about.

No-one’s got time to be opening random threads on the off chance they might be of interest so these threads would end up with no traffic. The title’s the hook, without that… Which would be a shame for threads raising awareness of important topics, or by posters who really need support.

There are a lot of subjects I find upsetting, conception for instance, and various types of bereavement. I scroll quickly past these posts quickly and don’t open them - and I hide them if they keep appearing. But if they were actually medically triggering to me so that the very sight of the title would be too much to bear, then I wouldn’t be scrolling around on a general forum or frankly on the internet at all.

It’s not on the world to edit itself to protect me from my personal issues, it’s on me to stay away until I’ve worked on ways to deal with them.

duplicate post.

Hard agree. Please, please no.

Same

All of this.

”Triggered” doesn’t mean “I found that a bit gross” or “it made me feel squeamish or sad”. It’s so undermining to those with actual PTSD to bandy the word around any time something makes you feel a bit uncomfortable.

And slapping “trigger warning” on everything the way people do now is of absolutely no use anyway! You have to actually SPECIFY what the trigger is that you’re warning about.

Are you always this oversensitive? Life isn't all pink and fluffy. I think you need to stay away from the Internet, maybe watch daytime fluffy dramas instead?

A Sensitive Topics area on MN would only result in such posters coming back to AIBU because no-one would go on that topic. They wouldn't get the attention.