Interesting Links for 08-01-2023

[andrewducker]

1. The Power of Indulging Your Weird, Offbeat Obsessions

(tags:obsession science research advice viaPatrickHadfield )

2. Trigger warnings for innate parts of people's lives are not a good idea

(tags:triggerwarnings minorities )

Comments

[dewline]

Hashtags, right?

And those thankfully work both ways, for screening in as much as screening out stuff, depending on the needs and wants of the individual reader. And this ties back into the first item on your list today as well, particularly where "screening in" is concerned!

[andrewducker]

Would have been tricky with the way I'm automating it right now. For now it just says "link-post" at the start of the post. If I ever get the chance then I'll definitely do that.

[mellowtigger]

Triggers are still on my list of "unpopular opinions" topics. (Thankfully, I've knocked out 2 of these lingering thoughts in recent months.) I already use Mastodon filters to hide many posts that use certain keywords, and I enjoy this feature a lot. I think that trigger warnings need to just go away in principle, instead opting for a culture that encourages appropriately labeling discussions.

[andrewducker]

How is a trigger warning not just an appropriate label?

[mellowtigger]

As implemented in Mastodon programming, the content warnings are a visual mess, even if you choose settings that automatically show them so they aren't also a carpal tunnel hazard. Instead of being metadata that the viewer can choose how to handle, they are actively bad gui features. Separately from Mastodon, as a concept, they don't help trauma survivors. A recent meta-analysis reached the conclusion that they simply don't work for their intended purpose.

[andrewducker]

That didn't really answer my question though

You said we should label conversations better, but also that you were against trigger warnings. And I don't understand what a trigger warning is that isn't a label.

[wildeabandon]

A trigger warning is a very specific kind of label, which implies that the thing which is labelled is likely to be traumatising. A culture of providing content notes on a neutral basis provides all the benefits of trigger warnings, but doesn't cause the problem highlighted in the post you linked to of making people feel as though there's something wrong with them because an aspect of their life is being flagged as traumatic.

[mellowtigger]

Ah! Yes, hashtags are already far into that territory, simultaneously an unobtrusive part of the grammar while also meta-tags that can be used for filtering. That alone might suffice if people and platforms used the technology more commonly. Hashtags don't have to be provided before/after/outside other text, because they are explicitly part of the text already. Use accurate words, and your text is already self-identified for topic indexing. An index which the reader can choose to use as labels, providing "Warning: Hazardous Content Ahead!" interruptions not specifically provided by the author.

If that explanation doesn't convey a distinction, then perhaps a counter-question would help. Why would a subject field on a webpage or a chapter title in a book ever need the words "Content Warning" included, if the subject or title was itself an accurate description of the following contents? I'm arguing that those two words chosen by a text's author will add no value. Instead, offer automation that allows readers to customize their personal experience so they feel more self-agency in the resulting interaction. Chapters and indexes are the solution used prior to the computing era, but they work only if they are accurate, not leading readers into inaccurately-identified distractions. Use accurate words, and automation can provide the rest. (Like hashtag filtering, but maybe in the future with AI providing useful "topic clouds" from our actual text, upon which our personal customizations will choose to present/hide discussions for us.)

[andrewducker]

Ah, so like the tags on this post, which inform, but don't specifically call out some specific things as being traumatising?

Yes, I agree, things that already have tags don't need anything more specific in general.

If only more sites allowed separate meta tags.

[poshmerchant]

I have a very bland example of why CWs are better than filtering. My anti-sports filter on Mastodon is now up to 48 keywords and I expect that I will continue to grow indefinitely. People who like sports keep finding new ways of describing sports. I'm a glutton for punishment because I browse the federated timeline (i.e. firehose of everything) to discover new people to follow, so I keep seeing sports

Now, I don't have PTSD around sports. I just loathe them. I have other filters (e.g anti-orange guy filter, anti-bird site owner filter) where my tolerance level for the subject matter is a lot lower. For those, I wish people were much more eager about CWing their own posts

A CW is just a subject line

[mellowtigger]

I do the same with all things Trump, Musk, Twitter, or new Star Trek. I enjoy seeing those miniscule messages that something on that topic is currently hidden from me. The author still gets to enjoy their exposition, and I still get to enjoy my continued ignorance. :) Filtering (and its opposite, hashtag subscription) is very effective.

The content warning method leads to faster permutation explosion, though, since it requires every author to anticipate every possible reader's every possible reaction. When everything is content warned, then there's no longer any such thing as actual text exposition. I've seen at least once site that wanted all posts unrelated to that site's reason-for-existing to be content warned, so they wouldn't normally show up in full height on the local feed. It leads to everything being gated eventually. Which makes simple tagging of topics much more effective, since it can be done automatically without even the author's effort (but it's better with the intentional work). Leaving control over it to the recipient is what provides self-agency and psychological relief, not gating words... or so I'm arguing, at least.