Tumblr—a popular pastime for your average art school student. For those of you who don’t know (which probably isn’t a lot of you, let’s be real), Tumblr is a website akin to Pinterest. You have a blog, you post or reblog pictures, stories, or information that interest you; it’s a relatively simple concept. Now imagine one day--on an average day you come back to your dorm after class, tired but relieved to sit back and just enjoy the rest of your day relaxing on your favorite website. Logging on, you come across a post with the words, “Trigger Warning,” stamped across it in italics and bolded. You scroll on, relieved to have passed up a possibly offensive post that could have really upset you. Or even better you have the phrase, “Trigger Warning,” blacklisted altogether; any post with that in the tags doesn’t even show up on your dash.
A Trigger Warning is a statement of precaution, typically on a piece of reading that alerts the reader that it may contain upsetting or angering material. It’s a simple yet nice way to allow people that option of avoiding being unsettled, for the most part. But here’s the deal, are we really helping young adults, or are we hindering them? Trigger Warnings have been getting some pushback lately, since there has been some talk of introducing them into college classes and curriculum. As an avid Tumblr user myself, I frequent the website often and have come across some pretty disturbing Reddit level content. Like some seriously messed up stuff, and yeah I appreciate the warning beforehand. But as a student at Columbia College Chicago, I’m going to be very frank right now: I understand that life doesn’t come with Trigger Warnings. Yeah, I said it; you read that correctly.
The millennial generation has become a generation of, well, sissies. We’re just too darn sensitive now. Now before jumping to conclusions and coming at me for the usage of that word, let me first explain what I mean. Yes, be militant, speak up on moments of injustice in the world. You think racist jokes aren’t funny? By all means speak against them. You hate sexist comments? Stand up for yourself and tell your problematic friends what’s wrong with them. And for the love of God let everyone in your life know that jokes about rape are not funny. But here’s the thing, finding something offensive isn’t being sensitive, being sensitive is painting this world of perfection where everything and everyone bends to your way of being. When someone offers you insight into a different state of existence, a different perception, well you cave. We’re getting to that point where we would rather close our eyes and stick our thumbs in our ears and pretend that shi*t doesn’t happen, that this world we live in is completely perfect for everyone involved. On the internet that is fine of course, because hey, it’s your Tumblr dashboard, right? Put whatever you want on it, and blacklist whatever you want too. It’s a form of expressing yourself, that I get. But here’s the thing: Life doesn’t come with a blacklist button. All your life you are going to run into nasty people with nasty opinions and while it may be nice to fantasize a place where you can just say, “You’re triggering me,” and walk away from them forever that’s just not a believable reality. And really what does that even change? Absolutely nothing. We are becoming a rigid generation of people who can't handle issues out of our level of comfort. Trigger Warnings are, in a way, teaching us to avoid our problems instead of dealing with them head on. Your next boss may end up being a horrible racist and you might just have to see him every day. Your next teacher might be an insufferable egomaniac who can’t stop using the classroom as a place to toot their own horn, a place to make their students feel like idiots. So what do you do? Quit your job and work somewhere new? Drop the class and take a different one? Yeah, you could do both of those things. Or maybe you could just learn to deal with the fact that life isn’t going to be perfect and you might just have to become more fluid. Stand up to that boss, stand up to your teacher. Learn how to handle upsetting situations head on, and learn how to work through it and grow as a person instead.
The bottom line is this; here you go right now, this is a Trigger Warning about life. This is it, you only get one, as you should. Your life isn’t going to be perfect, and it’s not going to be the way you imagine it. The people you come across aren’t always going to bend to your will, and they shouldn’t have to either.
