fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #4168 ]

I can't stand caveats and disclaimers. It all smacks of phoniness and keeping up appearances to me. I don't use them when I talk about things I like, which has actually become a good way to weed out "friends" who would clutter my dash with their social justice stuff anyway.

Believe it or not, OP, there are people out there capable of talking about things without that tiresome layer of moralizing. Mention this book sometime without the caveats, and you might find a few of those folks.

Not OP, but at the very least, I would be quite surprised if someone recommended a book to me and didn’t mention that it was racist.

I'd be more surprised to read a book written in the 80s and largely set in the American South in the 1940s and '50s that wasn't at least a little racist. Maybe people should exercise a little common sense instead of expecting their friends to continually warn them that life exists beyond their bubble.

I'm a different anon jumping in. I'd totally offer some caveat to what I recommend. Some stories are not what people need right then and there. It's easy to drop a book that some other person recommends if it turns out to have some negative stuff in there or not be as immediately cool and amazing as was recommended.

There can be a caveat for inoffensive stuff. E.g. "Deadly Premonitions is a game with shitty tank controls, and just plain moving around is an exercise in frustration, but please stick with it because if you do you're going to discover an incredible plot."

There can be a caveat for offensive/triggering stuff. E.g. "Hey

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I'm a different anon jumping in. I'd totally offer some caveat to what I recommend. Some stories are not what people need right then and there. It's easy to drop a book that some other person recommends if it turns out to have some negative stuff in there or not be as immediately cool and amazing as was recommended.

There can be a caveat for inoffensive stuff. E.g. "Deadly Premonitions is a game with shitty tank controls, and just plain moving around is an exercise in frustration, but please stick with it because if you do you're going to discover an incredible plot."

There can be a caveat for offensive/triggering stuff. E.g. "Hey <insert story with mentions of racism, suicide, bullying, etc., here> is a good story. It's has a bit of some difficult stuff here, but god is it so good."

There can even be a caveat for your own self. E.g. "I know I'm recommending this controversial thing to you, but I trust you to not take it the wrong way, and I'm not recommending it to you for the bad stuff in there. No, I don't have a kink for incest, and that's not why I'm recommending you this anime with incest in it. Oh, and there's a lot of lolis too." I mean I'd still side-eye the example case here, but if they didn't warn me then I'd assume that they 100% have a kink for incest and lolis. Here, I give them the benefit of a doubt.

Second example of the above: "I know <so-and-so author> went off the deep end and became a violent misogynist who later joined both the KKK and neonazis, but this one book of his before that was pretty good? What? No I only like this one book of theirs because it was before they became a piece of shit."

A caveat is to me a plea for the reader to keep reading something that they would otherwise not bother with.

I don't know... I really hate getting recs with caveats, especially if the person knows me well enough to know I don't like reading that kind of stuff. Like, I don't watch shows with on-screen rapes. Does this mean I'll miss out on the cool stuff in Game of Thrones? Yes, but there's an awful lot of good TV I now have time for. I also don't read books with graphic miscarriages, really traumatic childbirth scenes, or dead babies on page, and even though that means there are some good dramas I'll never read, I don't sweat it. There's still 500+ other books on my Goodreads To Read list that I can work on (and the list is always growing!). Getting recs where someone says "I know you don't like watching/reading X, BUT" is just kind of obnoxious. I'm not pushing my electric pow-wow or electro-swing music on friends who don't even like electronica, even with a witty caveat.

You're assuming people are giving caveats to get around your dislikes. That usually isn't the case. Most people give them either because they don't know what your specific issues are but know a lot of people have trouble with, say, onscreen rape, or because they do know you have trouble with onscreen rape but aren't entirely sure if you have trouble with rape that occurs offscreen but still has an impact on the plot or characters and want you to be able to make an informed choice about the thing they're reccing.

I don't know -- it sounds like you're giving caveats as a substitute to actually talking to your friends about issues that affect them. Like, if someone says they don't watch media with onscreen rape, wouldn't it be better to ask them if they're okay with offscreen rape that impacts the characters and move on from there? It certainly would be easier and more effective than reccing them potentially triggering media with a bunch of caveats that wouldn't be necessary if you just talked to them.

Different anon than who you were talking with: How about not thinking of it as a caveat? Talking about them openly about stuff that might be harmful to them is okay and it's what caring people do. I think people on the internet giving caveats are in the same heart as trying to be caring with anybody who might be interested in a certain type of story. It's just that on the internet you're not really going to have the chance to sit down and have an honest, friend-to-friend conversation with strangers in the format of AO3 tag list.

I don't think I've seen a bullet pointed list of caveats. I've seen trigger warning tags. I've also seen shitposts that say "so-and-so may be a kusoge, but it's dear to my heart". I'm pretty sure any brief list of caveats is just due to the limited and often impersonal nature of the internet. I'm sure if you wanted to have a conversation where you get to ask if they're okay with offscreen rape and move on from there, you can, but most of the time those personal conversations are well... personal, and don't get posted/seen as often.

I'm not assuming that. I used the word "especially" to describe the kind of recs with caveats that I disliked the most, which seemed fair given all the examples in the previous post that I was replying to.

Edited 2018-06-04 01:53 (UTC)

I can't stand caveats and disclaimers. It all smacks of phoniness and keeping up appearances to me.

Uh....

why?

Because people feel obligated to do it. They do it to prove how socially conscious they are. They do it to avoid getting into trouble with the morality police. It's phony af.

How do you know that people only do it out of obligation or for signalling reasons? It seems like a pretty reasonable and useful and considerate thing to mention if you're recommending a book. It's the same as you might mention any other issue that a book might have, to me - no different from saying that a book is on the slow side, or has some annoying characters, or whatever else.

Sure, I guess people could be genuine about it.

“This show doesn’t really get good until episode 27.”

“Yeah, the animation just looks like that. You’ll get used to it.”

“BTW, this show is pretty freaking racist.”

You're the reason companies have to put "Warning, may contain nuts!" on jars of peanut butter aren't you?

How does that even make sense?

If you're going to throw a shitfit because your friend didn't warn you that something like Song of the South was racist, then your self-entitlement to common sense ratios are a bit skewed.

Unless you're asking about the nut thing. Blame ambulance-chaser lawyers who make their living gulling people into class actions for that one.

If you're going to throw a shitfit because your friend didn't warn you that something like Song of the South was racist, then your self-entitlement to common sense ratios are a bit skewed.

Everything about this example is weirdly extreme and unreasonable.

Song of the South is a weird thing to use as an example, because it's actively known for being racist, which isn't usually the case with things. I certainly wouldn't necessarily assume that Fried Green Tomatoes would have racial issues in it. And no one brought up someone throwing a shitfit before you did - I don't even know where that came from. The question was, is it reasonable/polite to have a caveat or disclaimer when you recommend something to mention if it's racist, or isn't it.

So, just, what are you talking about here? How is this situation remotely like getting angry at peanuts for containing nuts? How is that a reasonable analogy?

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(Anonymous) - 2018-06-03 01:47 (UTC) - Expand

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(Anonymous) - 2018-06-03 14:33 (UTC) - Expand

lmao you contain nuts in your brain.

legal issues. not to mention that consistency in labelling, even when it's something obvious, is always important. people with peanut allergies can fuckin die if they eat peanuts, dude. may contain labels are vital shit.

On PEANUT BUTTER? Dude.

/the point misses you as much as you missed it.

Well, no. Because shows aren't titled "This show doesn't get good until mid-way through the second season", etc. You're trying to claim that the contents are more obvious than they are when that's not necessarily the case.

It's a story about two women running a cafe in Alabama in the 1930s, I mean I'm going to have to assume at this point you're being deliberately obtuse.

You sound like such a vile person.

Considering peanuts and nuts are separate things, and many people who have nut allergies are not in fact allergic to peanuts, that's a perfectly reasonable warning.