Or use the word “trigger” to mean mere annoyance. It is tragic that people with a hatred of people living with conditions like PTSD and epilepsy have turned that word into a joke. (I guess most people who use that word now are unaware of this history.) I know people who experience actual triggers and it's a very painful thing.
> Or use the word “trigger” to mean mere annoyance
To be clear, the people that took away meaning from this word were the people that added "trigger warnings" to the most trivial of things. "trigger warning: meat eating." "trigger warning: bad words."
> It is tragic that people with a hatred of people living with conditions like PTSD and epilepsy have turned that word into a joke
> To be clear, the people that took away meaning from this word were the people that added "trigger warnings" to the most trivial of things
I would object to this on two grounds.
Firstly, seemingly insignificant things can be triggers. It doesn't have to be something people without PTSD consider a big deal, because by definition it isn't them who are affected. I have seen this first-hand. The source of the trauma and the thing that is the trigger can even be totally disparate. (Nice use of “bad words” to describe racial and other slurs by the way. That isn't trivial for the people affected.)
Secondly, in communities that centred around mocking people who (among other things) used trigger warnings, there was a self-perpetuating cycle of creating fake posts to reinforce collectively held biases. They began by ridiculing real content and ended up ridiculing fake content because they did not understand what was real.
In any case, it is a choice to decide “people I don't like use trigger warnings excessively” means that you can use the entire concept as a joke and ruin it for the vulnerable group it is useful for.
> That's really not what's happening.
I've seen it play out. There are definitely malicious actors, even if not everyone is.
If you were thinking of some other “bad words” then I'm happy to be corrected. My experience led me to think those must be the “bad words” you were speaking of.
