Trigger warnings are hyper-specific to the audience and could involved thousands (or infinite) potential 'triggers' and a huge variety of audience categories/groups. The burden on the platforms, writers, and general audience is magnitudes higher for some questionable value.
E.g. you'll see posts of the inside of wasp nests and the like being marked NSFL on Reddit.
NSFW has also evolved to mean "disable preview", among other things. E.g. it's used to hide the punchline of visual jokes on Reddit.
Some years back my mom was getting treated for a brain tumor. It was a glioblastoma, and as one of her surgeons explained, "This is the thing you will die from." Median survival time, 14 months.
I was very involved in her care and it was draining. She was still fighting hard at that point, but we knew that a moment would come when we'd have to decide to stop treatment. So when I saw that a local theater was having a triple feature with one of my favorite directors, Edgar Wright, I immediately bought tickets. At last, a light and fun evening.
What I had forgotten in the years since I had seen it was that in Shaun of the Dead, a zombie rom-com I adored, there is a scene where the protagonist's mom gets bitten. That protagonist, played by Simon Pegg, struggles with what to do. When his mom turns into a zombie, he is forced to shoot her. At that point I was about a month away from having to pull the plug on my own mom, and the scene was just devastating. I had to leave the theater. A decade later I've still not been able to watch the film.
I should be clear here: I'm not saying Shaun of the Dead should have had a content warning. I had seen it! And I think that sort of need is better served by things like https://www.doesthedogdie.com/ . But I am saying that it was a profoundly shitty experience. In the same way I'm going to avoid literally stepping on somebody's toes (because that hurts!) I'm going to avoid retraumatizing somebody when I can.
I think people already do that pretty naturally with things that are widely seen as disturbing. E.g., I was visiting a friend and went to pick up a textbook on his coffee table. He warned me not to open it, as it belonged to his brother in law who was studying to be a hand surgeon. I was grateful for that warning, as I can't unsee that stuff. To me content warnings are just extending that courtesy to less common horrors.
The challenge society wide is, of course, where is the line, and when is it useful to do at all?
Which the study seems to be saying, it isn’t generally useful for the ‘less common horrors’, at least not with a somewhat generic warning.
Your example is very relevant as it's both very real and also extremely specific to your own world and context.
Trying to predict every potential 'trigger' imposes a major mental burden both on the authors/editors to find them and on the reader in the distracting way it's prominently appended to information
If you're talking to a very specific audience I don't see anything wrong with it. But making it a common/general practice seems like a completely wasteful exercise. Especially with the way the grievance crowd is never satisfied with only a few people getting special treatment, the list always grows exponentially. Then eventually there will be a mountain of trigger warnings for every potential niche.
So if we agree there's some very real (growing) costs involved, the other factor is does it provide real benefit for x% of readers? Then you can evaluate the ROI. If studies show people are even more likely to read it anyway (or maybe can't "prepare" themselves in a meaningful way) it's hard to see much benefits vs costs.
That said, I think there are plenty of people who feel resentful that people are now asking them to be considerate when before they could get away with being thoughtless jerks. That's especially the case when the requests for consideration come from groups constructed as lesser (women, non-dominant ethnic groups, gender/sexuality minorities, etc). Those people can go fly a kite.
I disagree that the costs are growing. My experience is that I spend an approximately constant amount of time on consideration. On occasion, somebody points out how something I said could be unpleasant or harmful to some set of people. I think about it, usually find another way to make my point, and move on. From what I've seen, the only people who find this burdensome are the ones who are resentful that they have to think about people unlike them, and so don't end up learning. That's a choice that they can make, but I don't see any reason to coddle them.
> From what I've seen, the only people who find this burdensome are the ones who are resentful that they have to think about people unlike them
This sort of smug/stereotypical dismissal of why people dont care to add preambles to every comment/paragraph they write or say outloud that might offend or upset someone is exactly why people push back on this sort of thing.
Ignore all counterpoints and just accuses them all of not caring about x victims predicament.
You seemed to have glossed over all of my comment where I said the IRL costs of doing so significantly overshadows the returns. It's unrealistic and naive. And this sort of glib attitude towards how other people are expected to know and react ahead-of-time to hundreds (or thousands) of potential niche cases is not helping your case.
Being sensitive to a highly specific audience whom you're directly talking to != attempting to predict every potential scenario where you might upset someone whenever you write or say anything in public.
Don't confuse the two. One's a common sense social expectation the other is a major change in how people communicate.
And earns you enemies from all but a tiny fraction of people, regardless of the validity of your point.
You can always say no, politely. Or leave. Or refuse, etc.
I don’t care for the original persons point, but I also don’t care for you. To be clear.
To my mind that's quite nasty, even when it's cloaked in false, high-minded BS about free speech and the like. So am I going to be frank in return? You bet.
If you really care about people being nasty, I am sure you'll now start hectoring those nasty pro-kyriarchy types. But what I think is actually happening here is that you'll continue to only object to anti-status-quo frankness, while happily accepting pro-status-quo nastiness as long as it's got a modicum of civility glossed over it.
Strangely enough it left me immune to images and videos of human suffering, and they now have no effect on me at all.
But I can't deal with anything to do with animals in pain or suffering.
I wonder if it's something to do with communication. He would communicate what was happening very clearly and was very rational about his wishes.
I'm glad you had that much time with him and that his mind was unclouded. Even now, years later, I treasure those moments of presence.
I had been laughing my head off until that point, but when his mother says, "I didn't want to be any bother," I started crying and just cried and cried through that whole scene you describe.
So I really feel for you. Have a virtual hug.
I have watched the film a couple of times since though. Once you know it's coming, it's just a pang.
In the same manner, those who've seen the war may not react well the “Top Gun” style ass kicking with a happy end. There problem here is not within them.
On the other hand I'm convinced there are things that are universally NSFL for everyone and I believe that the parent comment is geared in that direction.
The meta-analysis seems to include only papers that deal with the first kind of trigger:
" The warning, as conceptualized by the authors of the relevant publication, was intended to notify participants that forthcoming content may trigger memories or emotions relevant to past experiences."
Effects on the rest of us matter as well, but shouldn't be considered the whole story.