PLEASE BE ADVISED: The fol­low­ing includes cyn­i­cism, mock­ery, increduli­ty and what the sub­jects of the exer­cise may con­sid­er an insult­ing tone. Chil­dren exposed to adults who require this and sim­i­lar ‘trig­ger warn­ings’, how­ev­er, may find it useful.

The fore­go­ing ‘Trig­ger warn­ing’ (a phe­nom­e­non so com­mon it now only needs the ini­tials TW to iden­ti­fy it), was prompt­ed by my atten­tion being drawn to the web­site for a Broad­way revival of the musi­cal “1776”. The per­for­mance was tout­ed as “an epic show of pas­sion, debate, and roof-rais­ing musi­cal fire­works” per­formed by “A glo­ri­ous mul­tira­cial cast of female, trans­gen­der, and non­bi­na­ry actors…”. The pub­lic­i­ty blurb then warned in a red box that it includ­ed, among oth­er things, “sex­u­al­ly sug­ges­tive themes, occa­sion­al strong language…and a gun­shot sound effect.”
That adults attend­ing “1776”, or any oth­er play with that kind of pro­mo­tion might need such a warn­ing is both laugh­able and dire. Any­one who does ought to car­ry the fol­low­ing when in the pres­ence of chil­dren:“TW: I am nei­ther emo­tion­al­ly nor intel­lec­tu­al­ly suf­fi­cient­ly devel­oped to pro­vide you with guidance.”
If that seems over-stat­ed, con­sid­er Halloween.
A rel­a­tive here in Cana­da was advised to take a pil­low­case along when she accom­pa­nied chil­dren trick or treat­ing, which, bizarre as it seemed, turned out to be grounds for a TW: “ATTENTION: A sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of the adults you encoun­tered have no sem­blance of com­mon sense, fun or proportion.”
Among the idi­ot­i­cal­ly copi­ous amounts of choco­late and can­dies placed in small children’s goody col­lect­ing bags were cans of soft drinks and bot­tles of Gatorade.
How did the givers expect kids to lug them around? What­ev­er hap­pened to a few ‘can­dy kiss­es’ and a lol­lipop or two?
The answer came from – where else? — FOX News.
As far back as Sep­tem­ber the network’s star hel­met-hair heads were issu­ing fraught alerts that “immi­grants” (aid­ed and abet­ted by Democ­rats’ poli­cies of course) were bring­ing in can­dy laced with the killer drug fen­tanyl to give to kids on Halloween.
At the time of writ­ing pre­cise­ly no evi­dence what­so­ev­er of any such can­dy being dolled out for “trick or treat” has sur­faced. That alone ought to be grounds enough for par­ents who expose their chil­dren to the net­work on a reg­u­lar basis, to put a notice on top of the fam­i­ly TV screen:“TW: FOX talk shows include strong­ly stat­ed false­hoods, delib­er­ate­ly mis­lead­ing infor­ma­tion, and rit­u­alised stu­pid­i­ty dis­guised as jour­nal­ism. View­er judge­ment is advised.”

                             THE KIDS ARE ALRIGHT

Respon­si­ble par­ents do their best to teach chil­dren to recog­nise and avoid Inter­net groomers.
Sure­ly then, politi­cians who spout, but can­not or will not back up con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries as part of their elec­tion cam­paigns, ought to pro­vide a TW: “BE ADVISED: My rhetoric has the same lev­el of cred­i­bil­i­ty as anony­mous fig­ures on social media or a mad preach­er rant­i­ng on a street cor­ner about aliens or the end of the world com­ing tomorrow.”
Then there are the “adults” who feel the need to pose on city streets and near vot­ing sta­tions wear­ing tac­ti­cal gear and tot­ing assault rifles to assert their “rights”.
Fine, it is (weird­ly enough) legal and makes them feel brave and hap­py. But for the sake of pass­ing kids, they ought to be required to dis­play at least one poster-sized TW: “NOTE: This gath­er­ing includes imma­ture, inse­cure, ill-informed peo­ple whose inten­tions are poten­tial­ly harm­ful to chil­dren and others.”
They’re from the same branch of soci­ety dri­ving the book ban­ning crusade.
To judge from stu­dent protests against it, how­ev­er, kids are issu­ing par­ents a TW: “BE ADVISED: Your chil­dren are smarter than you and con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry pro­mot­ers who want your vote think they are.”
For starters, none of them are dress­ing up as cats and using lit­ter box­es in class­rooms as toi­let alter­na­tives, a fan­ta­sy stat­ed as fact by four Repub­li­can mid-term can­di­dates and a right-wing “influ­encer”. And if that’s not grounds for a TW to accom­pa­ny their cam­paign ral­lies, adver­tis­ing and blogs, I don’t know what is.
The bad news is that new and exten­sive research has con­clud­ed that “trig­ger warn­ings are at best triv­ial­ly helpful.”
Sor­ry kids, it seems that adults may be beyond redemp­tion, and you’re on your own. Con­sid­er­ing what you have to deal with when it comes to advice-givers, how­ev­er, that may be no bad thing.
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