Don't pull the trigger.

I need to address a quick disclaimer regarding one of the newest trends on vlogs, and now works of literature…

Trigger Warnings”

 

The thought of “trigger warnings” included, embedded, preceded, blurbed, posted, and/or infringing upon in  any form of written literature, be it books, blogs, poetry, articles past present, and future, genuinely urks the living crap out of me.  You will never see any serious “warnings” about the content within my blogs, online writing portfolio (including all writings within that portfolio), stories and/or books written (distributed/non-distributed, published/not published).  Without getting into my opinion about the adaptation,  conformity and sensitization of our current state of society, I will just say that I find it ridiculous. 

Reading is an adventure… sometimes of the mind, the imagination, the heart and sometimes the soul. When we go on true adventures, we don’t know what is out there. There’s no “warnings” about what to expect. You don’t see signs in the wilderness that say “watch out! If you take this path you might get attacked by a painful memory!” The thrill of the unknown is a big part of any adventure, and I'm not a fan of spoilers in any way, shape or form because it takes the fun out of it. What good is an adventure without fun? 

Normally (but not always)  in most situations,  we do not pick up something to read and not know what we are reading or what we are going to be reading about. Books, for example, have “blurbs”. It's either on the back cover, or on one of the first opening pages of the book and it tells  you what it  is about. Any reasonable person could read the blurb and should have a good  idea as to what content may be included based upon its description. So if you pick up a book who’s blurb basically mentions “serial killers”, and you are triggered by the subject of “murder”, why would you read it, and why the hell do WE as writers, have to waste space in the front of our book with a “trigger warning”?????????????????

We have survived millennia of writing and beautifully crafted works of writings without “trigger warnings” and LITERALLY NO ONE has ever died purely from reading its contents.  By including one, I might as well say that we should go back and start adding them to the existing works of Shakespeare, Edgar Alan Poe, Maya Angelou, Steven King, etc.   

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Well look what just happened. I just created a blog based on something I said I would not dedicate even a page in a book for. Great. Thanks guys for keeping me on track. Well, I guess now you will have to wait for Part II.