i will never use content warnings on my site

there are many, many reasons i cannot use social media more regularly than once or twice a year. one of them is fairly petty: i don't want to have to use granular content warnings.

i think that content warnings can sometimes help people a lot, especially when one is in an easily disrupted state. sometimes this state lasts so long that you assume it's forever. my website is not for people in this state.

when i am in this state, i don't talk to anybody - as much as it can be helped. i don't watch, read, or otherwise partake in anything new. i retreat to my comfort media and ride it out. it's not forever. sometimes it lasts a few months or longer, but eventually i recover to a place where my entire psychological state doesn't hinge on whatever arbitrary themes somebody decided to include. my triggers are fairly esoteric and even if they weren't, how can i trust every single stranger to accurately and faithfully tag for something i personally find upsetting? must my subjective interpretation of every work of art perfectly align with every artist's in order to feel safe encountering art?

if i have to qualify or quantify what i make, it screws everything up because what i do is not "content". i work very hard to understand and log my thoughts, feelings, and experiences. by accident, you and i are the bizarre manifestation of something our multicellular existence bluntly calls "awareness". just as vines seek purchase and, once found, their cells fulfill a genetic prophecy by working together to curl around it, we seek and curl around that to which we are rather arbitrarily predisposed. nothing exists in a vacuum, sure; but by skipping to the analytical (read: societal) step we are not showing our internal work. when we get too bogged down in "but what kind of content is this?" we become a living demonstration of the symbols room thought experiment but for one's own thoughts and feelings. i cannot forgive the incredibly anthropocentrist hubris of this, the human-exceptionalism of it all.

at one point i considered adding a red border to things i could define as NSFL, then in my laziness everything sat the way it was for a long enough time that i realized it was actually fine the way it is, particularly because defining "NSFL" is incredibly arbitrary. so is "NSFW", and there's no point in delineating exactly which images excite me in exactly which way. in blanketing my entire site with the term, it at least gets across the idea that this isn't for kids; in general, my hope is that i am not causing formative experiences for children. i would rather that my stuff - the unfiltered products of my brain - be experienced by people who already have a lot of context for a lot of things. the required reading is not a bunch of tags like "noncon" or "incest", but having survived long enough to know or have learned how to forgive anything. neither is it brazen acceptance that steamrolls your own feelings, but rather, genuine resonance and understanding - or at least fascination and love for others' braingardens.

let's face it: we cannot know what anybody is going to find more gross than the average person (or peer) unless they tell us. i've seen people wantonly tag every possible thing in the pursuit of traveling through time and space to intuit complete strangers' squicks pre-emptively. okay, well, i have also been people. truthfully, i have spent literal decades frying my nerves off with anxiety about this, only to come to the conclusion that none of it fucking matters. that is to say, for example, that i don't think there's any point in second-guessing whether or not it will cause distress for my friend if i don't preface a pic of a snail with a warning that it is a snail. if i know my friend does not like snails, i won't send it to them - but if they would rather not see a snail from ever again, they either have to communicate this or accept the fact that there is a possibility they will be sent a pic of a snail. if they go online, they may see unmarked snails. if they watch a video, it may have a snail in it. we who are in a sensitive state must accept the inevitable negotiation of attention, expectation, delivery, and result.

there are a small handful of original stories i've scripted that i'd like to share someday soon. one of them is my attempt to answer the question "how do i stop being suicidal?" - it's something i eventually internalized non-verbally, but it's been taking a really long time to articulate even to myself. however, i think a really big part of it is accepting the fact that when it comes to smaller-scale interpersonal matters it is the abused's responsibility to recover, and accepting that responsibility in turn. this is the true shape of one of the greatest tragedies of abuse. there is no "revenge" or other big show of righteousness that will actually help me feel better about anything. i can't trust anybody to take care of me, either. i simply have to learn how to become more resilient and heal myself. otherwise, the cycle of violence and dependence continues endlessly.

the stuff i make and do and AM is not for everybody, or even the overwhelming majority of people. by proxy, i could say the same thing about my site. making my site more accessible is a nonexistent priority. i didn't make it "for fujos", "for crazy people", "for furries", "for the internet", and for fuck's sake it is not "for promotion". it is for me and, secondarily, the people whose needs and pleasures happen to also align with the exact way that i want it to be. i am not providing a product, a service, or something necessarily intended to be helpful. the right people will benefit from what exists here, and i hope my audience is limited to those people alone.

for better or for worse, once upon a time matsuko deluxe said something that really resonated with me, and for its first year-and-change the entry banner for this site included a screencap of it. here is the clip in its entirety, and to this day they are some of the most important words i've ever heard.

whether or not any of this is for you, i am all the more grateful that you have spent your time and attention with my thoughts today. thank you for being here.

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