Trigger warnings are getting excessive

339 40 32
                                    

Maybe I'm alone in this opinion, and I may get backlash for this opinion, but I'm okay with that. This rant isn't as structured as I like, but I'm bored and have had this opinion for a while and I needed to update this book. 

But as the years have gone on and society has gotten more sensitive, I've noticed books on this platform adding trigger warnings for the ever-so-slightly mature things.

Why do you need to add a trigger warning for drinking? Or Death? OOOOHHH A CHARACTER DIES!?!?! THAT NEEDS A TRIGGER WARNING!!! HOW DARE A CHARACTER DIE EVEN THOUGH AT LEAST ONE CHARACTER DIES IN LIKE 80% OF BOOKS AND THE AUTHOR NOT ADD A TRIGGER WARNING???? People drink alcohol and die in PG-13 movies and games. Hell, people die in children's movies. But a website that requires users to be at least 13+ and that features 85% mature content? Death needs a trigger warning there!!

bUt iT mIgHt tRigGeR sOmEoNe. Not wanting to upset someone is understandable, but I am not going to list every single mature thing in my book simply because it may upset probably just a single person. That's the point of marking the story as mature, so people see it's marked as mature and see it has some graphic stuff in it. And if we're being technical, absolutely anything could trigger anyone, it's unfortunate but you can't make every person comfortable with your content.

Now, I believe it's fine to add a TW for things like suicide, rape, self-harm, abuse, drug use, very violent things, the hard shit that has a higher chance of upsetting multiple people. That's a good benefit to online publishing like wattpad, you can add things for that. Or incest, I'd like to know beforehand if I'm gonna read about a girl getting sodden panties over her brother... But drinking? Death? Blood? Why? The chances of your book upsetting someone for this shit is very unlikely.

When you purchase a real book, there's no trigger warning for swearing or death or drinking, or even the hard shit I mentioned above. If you see a chapter is going into a scene that makes you uncomfortable, you just skip over it. It's what I do whenever I see something that makes me uncomfortable, I'm not going to demand the author put a trigger warning simply because that particular thing made me, one single person, upset. I cannot logically expect random people to cater to and add cushions just for me. In the past I've added trigger warnings for minuscule shit myself because I didn't feel like someone messaging me whining about it, but I really don't give a shit anymore.

So in conclusion, stop asking authors to add a TW for every little thing you don't like, and authors stop adding TWs for PG-13 shit that 10-year-olds know about. Just mark your book as mature and/or 18+. If you're so emotionally unstable that reading about a character in a book dying or having a drink bothers you that much, you most likely don't need to be on the interwebs anyway and should be in a therapy clinic getting treatment for whatever's causing you to be so easily upset. I'm not saying that as an insult, I'm saying that as a fact.

Why Your Story SUCKS | Writer's rants & discussionsWhere stories live. Discover now