drama!

@benroyce

What I mentioned here is adds the layers that have actually made me physically sick:
https://4bear.com/@magicalleatherbear/116106609791477917

It all stems from patterns of human rights abuses... many modernized in contemporary times too.

@magicalleatherbear

yeah

exposure to sadistic brutality emboldens resistance to it... up to a point

past that it merely desensitizes and imparts a sense of helplessness

it's a tricky line

@benroyce indeed!!! I saw your messages and I agree with a lot of what you said.... that being said were you aware of Greg Palast's documentary on Vigilantes Inc? Millions of people were purged from voter roles for no reason

@magicalleatherbear

and THAT must be broadcast with a megaphone

@benroyce@mastodon.social
Mhm. I see your point and I am not saying you are wrong because I wanna ponder this a bit. But I wanna offer a counter argument to see what you think about it.
We don't know what may cause people problems.
I have a common phobia for example, but less common than arachnophobia. People sometimes posts spiders with cw. People never post the thing I'm afraid of with cw.
To them the thing is harmless, they don't even think that someone had to quickly look away and scroll the page down. They don't know they likely caused nightmares and worse sleep than usual.

To a victim of abuse maybe even reading about a topic is enough.

Your point of CW as a fascism tool to kinda censor things is an interesting one though.

@benroyce

I tried but nobody said anything about it.

https://4bear.com/@magicalleatherbear/116080541595793999

What happened in 2024 Trump is of course trying to do again.

drama!

i need to rant about #ContentWarning creep

i posted once of a Ukrainian reporter whose corpse was abused by Russia. i got calls for #CW. no pictures, no text details, just a link to a story

i suspect some CW calls are a manipulation to hide fascist abuse

certainly some are sincere

but they aren't serving a valid goal. an extreme level of sensitivity is absurd and unactionable

gore? absolutely CW

but some calls serve #fascism by hiding abuse. abuse we rightfully need to broadcast

@benroyce If you look through mainstream news photo annuals from WWII to the 1970s, or Life magazine, it’s astonishing how much gore they printed. Our contemporary media has protected society from the real violence of everyday life as well as war. Instead, we have a cartoon or video game understanding of what real,violence entails.

@raccoon

i would reply with:

some topics are cut and dry obvious CW topics

but some topics are only triggering for some, some topics for a few, and some topics for vanishingly few

and so the question is where we draw the line

and it is simply a matter that we can draw the line at the wrong spot, in either direction

such that there is no clear answer, it is a large grey area. and it all depends on intricacies of context and intent and the exact nature of the content

@benroyce@mastodon.social
Yeah I agree. A thing I say about this topic is what do we do? Do we content warning everything because there's potential triggers everywhere? Do we cw only some stuff, leaving some to unfairly deal with their phobia/trauma? Or do we stop using cw completely?

I think, the way things are now we have no good tools for this.

The built in cw tool is the stuff one would use for graphic things you don't wanna risk opening around people (boobies, corpses...) But we need a solid system that allow us to post stuff and let people filter what they don't want to see.

Example, if I post a spider I could avoid adding a cw, but I could add a hashtag and people with arachnophobia could have a filter than removes spiders from their timeline.
But I'm going off topic here.

drama!

i need to rant about #ContentWarning creep

i posted once of a Ukrainian reporter whose corpse was abused by Russia. i got calls for #CW. no pictures, no text details, just a link to a story

i suspect some CW calls are a manipulation to hide fascist abuse

certainly some are sincere

but they aren't serving a valid goal. an extreme level of sensitivity is absurd and unactionable

gore? absolutely CW

but some calls serve #fascism by hiding abuse. abuse we rightfully need to broadcast

@raccoon

no you're not going off topic, appropriate hashtagging is absolutely necessary for this grey zone

@benroyce I think there is nuance here around where we go for news. Some people come to fedi just to play with their friends, they receive their news from other places and share links with friends and family via signal. Sharing something without a content warning because "everyone needs to see this" implies that everyone isn't already reading the news in other places, putting us a savior/beacon for distributing news that is readily available everywhere. We are aware of the horrors, very very very aware, we are building momentum of revolution. And sometimes we just need a breather from the horrors because the horrors invade every single point of our lives. I do post about #uspol because I want to be a part of the conversations and I want to find other people who align in the revolution. Fighting over how we disseminate information is not going to bring more people to greater awareness. We also need spaces of softness and whimsy to keep us grounded in the tender possibilities of what CAN be built when we aren't lost in the madness of it all.

@benroyce@mastodon.social
​​
I've been saying it for a while but it's not something people hear me out about and often tell me it's not the way to go.
It's refreshing to find someone who agrees with me on this.

@crow

there's more CW topics than just gore and porn

strobe effects are not good for people with certain seizure conditions for example

do we censor a picture of a creepy spider?

and if some people want to content warn *their* posts on levels of sensitivity you and i might consider absurd: that's ok, it's their post, their choice

where i step in and speak out though is when people gatekeep other posters on content that is not straight gore or porn or the other serious niche topics

@benroyce I think there is nuance here around where we go for news. Some people come to fedi just to play with their friends, they receive their news from other places and share links with friends and family via signal. Sharing something without a content warning because "everyone needs to see this" implies that everyone isn't already reading the news in other places, putting us a savior/beacon for distributing news that is readily available everywhere. We are aware of the horrors, very very very aware, we are building momentum of revolution. And sometimes we just need a breather from the horrors because the horrors invade every single point of our lives. I do post about #uspol because I want to be a part of the conversations and I want to find other people who align in the revolution. Fighting over how we disseminate information is not going to bring more people to greater awareness. We also need spaces of softness and whimsy to keep us grounded in the tender possibilities of what CAN be built when we aren't lost in the madness of it all.

@benroyce @crow

Generally, this falls into the HOA category that puts people off Mastodon.

If you don't like the way someone else uses Mastodon you should block them. Then you will never see their transgressions. It is not your job to tell people how to use Mastodon, nor is it appreciated.

Exceptions include things which violate the server's rules. Then you should block them and report them.

It's very simple.

drama!

i need to rant about #ContentWarning creep

i posted once of a Ukrainian reporter whose corpse was abused by Russia. i got calls for #CW. no pictures, no text details, just a link to a story

i suspect some CW calls are a manipulation to hide fascist abuse

certainly some are sincere

but they aren't serving a valid goal. an extreme level of sensitivity is absurd and unactionable

gore? absolutely CW

but some calls serve #fascism by hiding abuse. abuse we rightfully need to broadcast

@mastodonmigration @crow

yeah

busy body controlling types ruin mastodon

they don't understand how toxic they are and how much they work against true community, exactly as they use the lying conceit of "concern for community" to gatekeep, gatekeep, gatekeep

1. unfollow

2. mute

3. block

4. report

in that order

that's the solution

@benroyce @crow

The simple response is to block them. If someone tries to tell you how to use Mastodon just block them.