I understand the idea of shielding people from content that would be upsetting, but my own experience is, that I feel a little anxious as soon as I read Trigger Warning […].
How is your experience with it? Are you happy with it, or do you thing there are better ways to address dark topics?
I grew up in the 90’s. The wild West of the Internet. I’ve accidentally seen things so beyond fucked up. I had a friend back then that I’ve lost contact with and she used to email me fucked up images that just opening the email, there it was. But she’d also send high quality jokes or nudes of herself so it was kinda all or nothing. I think at that time my email was @rammstein.com lol. But were talking fatal crash pictures, one was a woman fucking a cactus, stuff seared into my memory that I wish I could get rid of. So yeah, if you think trigger warnings are excessive, you are probably too young to have experienced the 90’s and early 00’s. Even going to picture sites like imgur today, back then nothing was categorized so you’d get everything. Nsfw sites back then included EVERYTHING nsfw, from people smoking pot to stills of decapitations.
The traumatizing shit I saw on the Internet in those days, I’d compare to my experience in Iraq. That’s not to say that visual imagery is as bad as IRL, with the sights, sounds… And smells, but when you’re not expecting that sort of thing, it can be a big deal. Honestly those things probably jaded me to a point where I could more adequately handle war, but in ANY other scenario I’d say those days of no rules Internet were very harmful to a lot of people.
This is a very valuable take and much needed perspective here. I appreciate you sharing it!
Also can’t help but lol at your experience with the wild girl who definitely used Skinner Box conditioning to make sure you always opened her emails! 😂
I miss a lot of the spirit of the hijinks and lulz internet, but I definitely don’t miss all the disgusting shock content that came with deeper web exploration. I visited the famous /b/ exactly once and decided my soul didn’t need that shit.
There’s a lot of gore stuff that I think was photoshopped, but also damn someone spent time making that?! I didn’t care to analyze it, I just wished there was such a thing as brain bleach.
There was also sites that would punish hotlinking by replacing images with the infamous “goatse” (no.), which was really great when trying to send my girlfriend a funny picture I found and she got to it too late. LOL that was fun to explain why she was seeing what she was seeing.
People warned me of misnamed videos on Kazaa and stuff turning out to be abuse material or execution footage but thankfully I mostly avoided that.
I remember clicking a phony download link and getting eyeball-blasted with CSAM ads seared into my brain once. (Actually I think I sent the link to the FBI on this one.)
Yeah, I miss the expressive freedom of “at your own risk” Internet, simply because you weren’t as much constantly being tailed by marketing bots and algorithms, but I don’t miss the mental trauma that came with clicking the wrong link.
You’re right though, in a weird way a bit of prior desensitizing can almost help us keep it together if we find ourselves in a really, really bad place. But I wish for a world where nobody has to do that…
This is all also why, even though I find the Dark Web super intriguing…I don’t need that shit. Lol
Yeah I’ve occasionally been tempted to check out the dark web for things like drugs from stuff like silk road, like mushrooms and DMT type stuff, nothing crazy. But thats opening a door to a world much more dangerous than mushrooms and shit. And I know myself, I’m naturally curious, and I know for certain I’d find things I’d wish I hadn’t. Beyond that, I’m not computer savvy enough to to get there without being looked into by the gov more than I’d like, or obliterating my computer, or losing bank accounts or something. It’s just a door I’ll keep closed.
Yeah she was… An interesting character.