Trigger Warning: Reality Hurts

The mind is antifragile, and coddling it with trigger warnings hurts rather than helps.

This is a Mindf*ck Monthly newsletter from September 7, 2022. Every month, I send out big ideas I’ve been chewing on in the hopes that it makes you less of a shitty person.

Let’s dive right in.

Trigger Warnings

Years ago, many readers wrote to me complaining that I didn’t include trigger warnings in my articles. This was 2014–15 or so. The trigger warning thing had become popular on university campuses and left-leaning news sites. Given that at the time many of my readers were young students, an expectation arose that I would follow suit.

Yet, I refused (and still do). Back then, this caused a lot of headaches for me and made sifting through my inbox feel like playing hopscotch in a minefield. “How could you not?” readers would write, exasperated. “I thought you cared about mental health issues.” Well, yes I do… which is why I don’t use them.

I remember when I was struggling and broke in my 20s, a family friend bought his daughter — who was a couple of years younger than me — her own house. One day, joking around with my dad, I said to him, “You know dad, if you really loved me, you’d buy me a house too.” He…