And yet this thread is full of comments both confidently and cynically proclaiming that it's totally useless and only there for the lawyers yada yada

Except it's not zero effort, zero cost.

How much effort/time/money do you think they put into that white text on black background that's on screen for like 5 seconds?

It's negligible, I would be shocked if it wasn't the same recycled card over and over again that they have some unpaid intern throw in at some point in the final editing stages

It would probably cost more effort/time/money to do a study on its effectiveness than the pre roll does many times over lmao

This isn’t anecdotal. It’s really quite a common response that only further traumatizes the victims and leaves them with a financial burden.

Not if you're "deemed at threat to yourself or others"

You lose the ability to refuse treatments in any scenario the emergency responders / doctors deem you unfit to make a decision in the best interest of your/someone else health. It's why "baker acting" in Florida is so controversial. Taking someone against their will and locking them in a facility for a minimum time without any real need of evidence.

Someone calling and telling them you said you were going to kill yourself is often all the evidence they need to start the process, whether you really said that is up to the emergency responders. For my friend that was 9 cop cars in the middle of the night. They dragged him out of bed at 4am because his partner at the time said he hadn't been responding to her texts and she told them he was depressed so he might kill himself.

Once he got out he told me about it all and I'm fairly certain he won't ever sleep with his phone on silent/vibrate again. (He broke up with them immediately after, but that has nothing to do with consent)

I'm pretty sure that 13 Reasons Why show had a whole thing involving just this

Lawsuits of “my child died because they copied your TV show” have been going on for decades.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2167702620921341 - the bigger takeaway from this one is that trigger warnings reinforce trauma as a central part of the traumatized individuals identity but they did find some incidence of drawback/harm

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/21677026231186625 meta finding no benefit and actually can cause an anticipatory reaction making the person more engaged with the material

There are others, this is just what grabbed from 30 seconds on google scholar. Its been a bit since I’ve done more serious lit review and it’s not like I keep a directory of papers I’ve read

The issue is the culture surrounding trigger warnings. Let’s be real here, people looking for trigger warnings are generally (perhaps overwhelmingly) not looking for material to help with their exposure therapy. They are looking for a “warning” to help them screen material to avoid. The issue is that this creates an unrealistic expectation that is incompatible with the real world. You can avoid suicide, sexual assault, eating disorders, or whatever in your media (maybe) but real life won’t sanitize itself or warn you. You will encounter these topics, whether through the news, careless speech from friends, or even intrusive thoughts of your own. Research continues to show that avoidance of upsetting topics can worsen anxiety and ptsd symptoms

To your final point the idea of it helping to create a choice isn’t even as clear cut as you describe

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/21677026221097618 content warnings actually increase the likelihood someone will view problematic content. This point is further reinforced by similar findings in the meta linked above

So you have a system that ultimately makes creators feel like they’re doing something noble, that is likely at best useless and potentially harmful. Said system increases the likelihood that a person will view the problematic content but also enables the reality that a person will simply avoid the things that provoke their anxiety which again is more strongly established as harmful

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0005796712001064 - ptsd worsens with avoidance

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0962184904000290 - anxiety disorders do the same

Thank you.

A big part of why I have severe anxiety to this day is because I was exposed to traumatic things far too young/quickly. I was pushed into situations where I was not ready or emotionally/mentally equipped to handle. Constantly.

Exposure is only good if a person is ready for it. Desensitization is only helpful when you are equipped to handle such a thing.

I had an ex who would say that we were doing one thing, then take me to do something completely different, then boast that he was "helping me", which only heightened my fears in the end. As a foil to that, I had an ex after that who was encouraging and supportive and kind, and gently led me into the same situations, where I knew what I was getting into. Guess how which one had me overcoming my fears?

Exposure works best if you are prepared for the exposure and have the support you need in those kind of situations.

I am always thankful for trigger warnings.

Yuuuup, I ended up getting a tattoo on my wrist that is essentially a personal period joke.

At one stage it was crucial for my survival, it was a kind of grounding token to snap me out of hormonal suicidal insanity when my PMS was at its worst. Something I'd see that would bluntly remind me "it's not you, it's your hormones, you don't actually want this"

When I say the urge came and went zero to sixty back to zero in 30 seconds flat, sometimes that was an understatement. I really struggled because in addition to suicidal ideation during PMS, I had undiagnosed and untreated ADHD, which often gets worse with PMS thanks to the way oestrogen and progesterone play off each other.

Guess who's got major impulsively issues. Guess what two symptoms really shouldn't be combined.

I have zero desire to kill myself.

But my hormones seemed desperate to try and make me do it every month, especially as a teen.

It didn't help that I had endometriosis and at 17 developed a uterine prolapse, on top of a rectal prolapse I'd had since I was 12. I was in agony when I was on my period, so sometimes the desire to make the pain stop overlapped with the suicidal ideation. That sucked. Hard to reason your way out of physical pain.

I've had a hysterectomy (from 17-24 my uterus just kept trying to make its own escape anyway despite attempts to sew it in place) and no longer suffer menstrual dysphoria because it turns out that was gender dysphoria not true PMDD. But I still get suicidal ideation as part of PMS, fortunately my ADHD is much better managed so now my tattoo is less a suicide detterant and just a reminder that I still have ovaries (sometimes I genuinely forget, and it takes me a few days to work out why I'm bloated and irritable and why I'm anxious about my sore boobs)