niki

I have 15 filters in place.

Of those 15, 9 of them are about topics that seriously impact my mental health. They range from genuine phobias, to the topics of rape, child sexual assault, and so on.

Across those 9 filters, a total of 50 words are specified.

Any post containing those 50 words is hidden behind a content warning for me so that, when I am best able to, I can still read through that post, thread, discussion, topic, or article.

I have taken it upon myself to filter out, as best i can, the things thst cause me harm when I use this site.

I still think people should use content warnings, liberally, on basically anything (within reason) that could make people's lives/mental health worse by constantly being confronted with it.

Why?

• My 9 filters of 50 words doesn't even make a mark in the number of words people use (and don't use) in their posts about triggering topics.

If your post is about rape or child abuse, but never once uses the word rape or child abuse (or instead uses something like "r*pe" or "grape"), then my filter doesn't pick it up and I, a survivor of multiple rapes and of child sexual assault, am now stuck reading a post that will trigger me, all because you think it infringes on your free speech to be asked to warn people about what you're talking about.

• A huge number of people, an ever growing number, do not include alt text in their images or videos, meaning a filter will not pick up on those things.

• You are not the only person talking about the thing. It might just be "one post" to you, but to others we're being bombarded with triggering material, daily

• While it absolutely is the responsibility of the user to take the neccessary precautions to make the internet safe for themselves, it is also the equal responsibility that we make it safe for others, by tagging posts correctly and warning users of what is being posted about...like a, uh...warning of content...

"What does 'Within Reason' mean?"

One of my filters is a personal phobia, it is the planet Jupiter. I do not expect the world to cater to such an obscure phobia, so I filter that myself, but I would expect people to warn about something like spiders or bugs, a fairly common phobia.

World politics, war, bigotry, sexual assault, etc, are not obscure topics and are widely accepted and known to cause mental health issues due to the 24/7 news cycle and the insistence that, like, every woman really needs to know how much men hate them, every BIPOC person needs to be made aware of racism, every trans person needs to be aware of every law and hate crime happening right now, etc. A content warning on topics like this is just...good etiquette, a courtesy to show you care more about the affected audience than you do about "engagement" on your post.

I can't filter out every single potential word that is in any way related to what could trigger me, but you can very easily give the briefest warning of the subject of your post, and if you slip up and somebody asks you to add one? It is not difficult, within reason, to add it.

"I Don't Know How To Explain To You That You Should Care About Other People"

But I've tried my best.