[ SECRET POST #6895 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #6895 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.


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03. [WARNING for discussion of sexual assault]




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04. [WARNING for discussion of underage]




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05. [WARNING for discussion of pedophilia]

[National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo)]



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06. [WARNING for discussion of SA/suicide]
























Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 00 pages, 00 secrets from Secret Submission Post #984.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[fscom]

06. [WARNING for discussion of SA/suicide]
https://cdn.imgchest.com/files/16ebbd2ba0af.png

[(Anonymous)]

This is a thing in fandom too? It's bad enough in real life, without having to deal with trauma dumps in escapist hobbies as well. Ugh. (If it's in a clearly-marked thread, it's OK, of course.)

*upvotes you a million times*

[(Anonymous)]

It's worse in fandom IME. In fandom you always get those people who wield their personal traumatic experiences like a weapon in arguments about characters or situations, and everyone lets it slide because there's a faction of people out there that think triggered people are excused from social rules because they can't be expected to control themselves.

IRL if someone starts doing that, other people are like 'sir, this is a Wendy's, y'all need to work on that at home'

[(Anonymous)]

There used to be a simple system for it in public spaces:

Poster warns, and other people choose to engage and get upset? Readers are the assholes
Poster doesn't warn, and other people are blindsided and get upset? Poster is the asshole

I can't count how many times I have had to tell people that I am exiting the conversation because they're traumadumping without warning and I was absolutely not ready to handle discussing their experiences at length or how they're projecting it all over whatever character or story we're discussing. But I can count how many times I have received an apology from from those people afterward, instead of them acting like they did nothing wrong. It's 0 times

[(Anonymous)]

I was going to say that I was luck to not have seen it on the wild, but then I remembered stumbling by recent posts in my fandom of someone that projects themselfs in a character way too much, and has very strong opinions on their role on the story, while calling anyone who disagrees or has a different opinion 'entitled' or a 'bigot'.

[(Anonymous)]

Fucking yeah people are so bad for doing this, and as another anon has said it’s worse in fandom because I think being behind a screen just makes people loose sight of others humanity and emotional capacity. Like if someone’s going through a rough time then I am sorry, but I am also not a shoulder to cry on because I’ve expressed sympathy about the situation.

I’m not a therapist but too many people in fandom want to use others as free ones, or at least as trapped sounding boards for their issues, and frankly I have plenty of my own to want to be weighed down by an internet strangers problems.

[bannedbookweek]

Is it actually "trauma dumping" or is it dogpiling someone for relaying pertinent information? I've seen a lot of people getting screamed at for "trauma dumping" in a chat because they talked about why they understood a POV in material depicting abuse (such as the Black Swan movie) or why they engage with darkfic (like working through their own history of abuse.)

What trauma dumping actually is sure does seem to change depending on what the local bullies need so that they can bully their targets effectively.

[(Anonymous)]

See... this is exactly the response that people give that make people feel free to dump detailed descriptions of their trauma, unwarned for, in unsuspecting people's laps. This whole thread is about when people do this without warning people, but someone took the time to insinuate people who are saying they don't want to be hit with this without warning of being bullies :|

[bannedbookweek]

And I understand that but I also see the phrase "trauma dumping" being weaponized against people who are having every day conversations or are giving background to certain topics that are already heavily traumatic, like I've seen this shit happen in NBC Hannibal fandom where people got dogpiled for saying they were able to relate to Abigail. And that was called trauma dumping, except there wasn't any. Do you see? :|

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah, I do see that you are talking about something totally different from what everyone else is talking about and insinuating that people not talking about that are bullies. Which is why I said something lol

[bannedbookweek]

I don't really see why it's different, if you're talking about traumatic media (which is often covered with trigger warnings) then it's normal for people to discuss their backgrounds and how that influences how they interpret that piece of media. This takes place in Silent Hill fandom all the time without issue and then it becomes "trauma dumping" everywhere else and people start getting dogpiled by multiple users.

And I definitely understand why trigger/content warnings are important so I'm not saying they aren't warranted and shouldn't be used, but I am saying that "trauma dumping" is a phrase that has a conveniently changing definition that can mean whatever the dogpilers want it to mean.

[(Anonymous)]

...? Some people using the word "trigger" to mean "squick" or "thing I don't like" doesn't mean that the term doesn't have an actual meaning, or has "a conveniently changing definition."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotional_dumping

Part of the meaning is not considering that you might be triggering others by going suddenly into detail about things without warning. There's no real sign of anyone here using the phrase incorrectly. Bullies misusing a word to bully people doesn't mean that actual people don't do this in inappropriate places, at inappropriate times, to inappropriate people all the time, which is what you implied

[(Anonymous)]

You are being extremely fair and reasonable and making a totally valid point here, and the anon replying to you is really just not extending you the same courtesy. Like, how dare you recognize that actual trauma dumping exists and it's fair to not welcome it, while also recognizing that sometimes people mention their trauma in a totally relevant context and get accused of trauma dumping, and that both those things suck? Stop trying to have a reasonable conversation! Don't you know that anything short of complete and total agreement with OP is a hostile act?!

[(Anonymous)]

That's being a lil dramatic anon, I am pointing out that the original comment 100% questioned whether offensive trauma dumping was real and not only bullies bullying.

They walked that back later, but the comment I replied to had none of that in it

[bannedbookweek]

Not really "walking anything back" at least not intentionally, I just add on ideas as I think of them and then try to bring them back together at the end. I think that "trauma dumping" is a phrase that gets weaponized by users and that anything can be labelled "trauma dumping" if they want to pick a fight. It doesn't mean that there aren't people who talk about very heavy stuff when they shouldn't but frankly I don't see that happen very often anymore. It's simply gone out of fashion since millennials turned 30.

[(Anonymous)]

I see, never mind, less sympathy then. You not seeing something happen doesn't mean it doesn't happen, unless everyone else in this thread is lying about their experiences for some reason.

Someone who goes into people discussing triggers happening and only pointing out that some people abuse this word for emotional manipulation and questioning whether other people's experiences are real is, well... would be doing something similar to what you're doing here. There are people in the thread who are literally saying they were trauma dumped on and in turn triggered and you're going like "but was it trauma dumping tho? Sure you aren't bullies using the term wrong? I, personally, don't see this happen, so..."

Super strange of you to do that, but oh well.

[bannedbookweek]

This comment definitely proves my point.

> Someone who goes into people discussing triggers happening and only pointing out that some people abuse this word for emotional manipulation and questioning whether other people's experiences are real is, well... would be doing something similar to what you're doing here.

Me pointing out that I don't see this happening "very often anymore" is in fact the exact opposite of "questioning whether other people's experiences are real." Especially when I already said:

"It doesn't mean that there aren't people who talk about very heavy stuff when they shouldn't"
and I even agreed with you on this part:
"And I definitely understand why trigger/content warnings are important so I'm not saying they aren't warranted and shouldn't be used"

So yeah, this is more you being put out that you have a single person asking questions about this. I already acknowledged that this kind of "trauma dumping" is real and that it should have trigger warnings/content warnings attached to it. You made up something that wasn't true and then tricked yourself into believing it. I can't help you with that.

> There are people in the thread who are literally saying they were trauma dumped on and in turn triggered and you're going like "but was it trauma dumping tho? Sure you aren't bullies using the term wrong? I, personally, don't see this happen, so..."

That's not true because I'm only talking about my personal experiences. I'm not doing what you are doing, which is going into other peoples' threads and then getting mad at them for talking about their lived experiences. I 100% believe that the other commenters have experienced people suddenly talking about traumatic events without warning. If I didn't then I would have simply gotten in their faces and called them liars. And you know that or else you wouldn't have to use weasel wording where you're trying to rewrite the actual content of my posts into something that it wasn't. Nothing I've said has been remotely close to what you're writing here.

> Super strange of you to do that, but oh well.

And it's super strange of you to just sit there and lie because you're seething that someone noticed that you're a bully who tries to trick people into believing things that are not true. I would call it strange but well, it's not actually, is it? It's the oldest trick in the book.

You made this secret because you're angry at other members of fandom for doing something you don't like. Fair enough but the fact that you got this snippy over a single person saying "this ain't right" tells me a lot about you and what you must be like to interact with.

[bannedbookweek]

I think that OP is just an uncharitable person in general. I'm not even that good at debating stuff, my initial point was to ask about scenarios that I have actually seen happen in front of my very eyes and OP got weird and sullen about it.

+infinity

[(Anonymous)]

Goddamn do I feel this.

[(Anonymous)]

Definitely a reflection of the current times we're in, sadly. People are lonely more than ever post-pandemic with the internet being one of the means of communicating - especially with a generation who have essentially grown up in an internet-centric world and are growing up from being ipad babies.
I strongly suspect a lot of people's social habits have been affected with the need to reach out to total strangers, trying to bypass the getting-to-know-you stage and lay out their very personal problems in hopes of being heard.

Of course this isn't a problem that strictly involves a younger generation and it has always been a thing in some capacity well before the pandemic (I certainly have a few memories of certain people from my Livejournal days decades ago) - its just something that's quadrupled over recent years and with everything being not so great, its probably going to become even more frequent in places like fandom spaces.

[(Anonymous)]

Like, for me, there is a HUGE difference between someone acknowledging something traumatic and someone being unwilling or unable to have a conversation without throwing something potentially triggering in your face.

I have dealt with (triggering topic no one needs the specifics of) and I have a lot of sympathy for someone going through the same. And if I say to someone 'hey, I know what that's like, where are you right now emotionally?', it's because I'm prepared to handle an in-depth talk about that thing and the feelings that come with it. If I offer anything OTHER than to listen to someone's deep emotional trauma and am still met with that, it may in fact trigger me because I'm NOT in a place to handle it. And there are times when an expression of sympathy is not an invitation to unload.

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah, there's always been people who do this, but it's a lot more common these days and people seem to use it to win arguments or shipwars, which I hate.

[(Anonymous)]

The young people (like early 20s) who I regularly come across on the internet are so bad for oversharing. I hope it's something they'll grow out of rather than a generational shift. One of them is the only other person who regularly writes fic for my otp and has a habit of putting "life updates" in their ao3 fic notes (which I suspect are at least partly aimed at me because I don't have social media … but they don't seem to have considered why that might be). Their fics are reasonably good and I used to enjoy reading them but I feel much less inclined to interact with them now.