Trigger Job
Let me be clear:
If you ever object to anything I write, draw, or say, using the words “that triggers me”?
We’re done.
If you’re over the age of 21, you’ve likely seen some shit. You’ve experienced trauma. This is not a strawman argument – I have had more than a dozen people, usually within the ages of 20-25, object to something in my ways with those exact words.
The people saying this are being fucking insulting when they say it.
First, they’re insinuating that the traumas they’ve experienced are obviously SO MUCH WORSE than the bad times the person they’re objecting to has experienced. This is usually a very incorrect assumption.
Secondly, they’re demanding that others kowtow to their trauma, rather than learning to deal with it themselves. Nope. Fuck that. I won’t do it. Life’s tough. You either pick yourself up and go on, or you suffer needlessly, long after the trauma occurred.
Don’t ask me what brought this on. Someone pissed me off.
If clowns trigger you, I hope you watch this:
Denis Leary: “Life sucks, get a helmet.”
I get that there are people who have suffered traumas I can barely imagine, and I sympathize. I detest the ones who think the interbutts should be their own private Safe Space and that everyone should somehow divine their fears and terrors before even knowing that the person exists in the first place.
I once saw someone completely lose their shit about a sarcastic comment about the Columbia (the Shuttle, I mean) disaster. The ranting meltdown was truly epic. What was the cause?
Their mother was a teacher, and apparently all teachers everywhere are somehow related to Christa McAuliffe, so teachers are indelibly linked to NASA in general and Shuttles in particular. True story.
Me, I’ve thought about doing an animated gif of my draw-and-dry-fire drill and post it to the self-portraits comm on LJ, very cleverly placed behind a cut with the text “Possibly triggering”.
In this particular case, I think it would be more appropriate to say “The internet sucks, get a helmet.” Why complain about someone else’s website or YouTube video or whatever when you could just steer your browser someone else? The world wide web is infinite, and (with all respect to Mel and James) one little webcomic is barely a drop in the bucket. And someone’s complaint about that one little webcomic? Infinitesimal.
The internet doesn’t suck. It is a magical place.
Like Tahiti.
But yes, safety equipment is necessary.
How apropos. This is, after all, the very impetus towards gun control: “I have a right to FEEL SAFE. The country has to change to accommodate me.”
No, it doesn’t. If you think you’re at risk, make changes in your life, not everybody else’s.
I have no idea how you summoned up the willpower to not put in an “itchy trigger finger” joke in here somewhere. I’d be walking around throwing confetti saying “Ahh? AAHHH?” with a shit eating grin on my face by now.
I wanna shake your fucking hand.
My God,
people who are so easily offended just sets me off!
i c wat u did thar
I am not easily offended, but out of curiosity where does one draw the line on what is and isn’t offensive? Do you (generic ‘you’) try to base it on known or suspected experiences of your target audience? I mean this more in general conversation, not internet terms, since obviously internet audiences are unpredictable and… off their meds.
Ahhh clowns one of the many reasons I love my guns. Creepy smiley bastards.
Isn’t this the moisture worshiping phone salesman? Kind of fits that he would a holier than thou asshole. To bad it’s illegal to beat them up.
A-fucking-men.
I am so sick and tired of this “trigger” bullshit. You can’t go anywhere on the internet anymore without someone claiming to be a ” survivor who then says, usually in the same breath, that something is their trigger.
Sorry, but if something is still “triggering” you, then you’re not a survivor, you’re a victim.
A victim is the person who lets it define them, a survivor is the one who lives and deals with the trauma without being a bitch about it.
my friend is a moderator on fetlife, and the “trigger warning” crap that happens over there is pretty stupid.if you’re THAT damaged that you can’t read about a sunny day without a TRIGGER WARNING about it, you shouldn’t be on fetlife. or the internet. or anywhere outside 4 rubber walls and a padded floor and ceiling.
I know a few friends of mine that have triggers from some seriously unpleasant things…and *all* of them do their best to avoid the things that trigger them without asking others to stop doing things that could trigger them. (insert obvious exceptions of close friends being warned of them and the like). Yeah, shit happens, and if fireworks bother you (fairly common, for vets), stay inside, play loud music and the like…don’t ask for the fireworks to be stopped on your account!
As a vet I love and hate fireworks, but I also own a damn good set of noise canceling headphones and just stay the fuck away from them.
Fireworks can fuck right the hell off, especially when they’re set off practically in my back yard by the local authorities using public money. If you have to waste my tax dollars at least do it in a non-residential area, arse holes.
Just fucking sick of disrespectful noisy cunts.
Just. Fucking. This. Some people will get “triggered” (even though I truly hate the term because of it’s misuse) and of course, that ain’t great. But it’s a big wide world out there and it’s pretty fuckin’ easy to get away from it.
Always annoyed me that everybody puts up trigger warnings for plain text. But nobody trigger warns for stuff that could cause an epilepsy episode.
Did someone stumble across Sarkeesian and Watson?
Anyone else forgotten the full name of the shop? I remember it being funny and a mum joke but my memory sucks!
CTYM Guns & Ho-Made Jerky, IIRC.
Cheaper Than Your Mom
Cheaper Than Your Mom Guns & Ho-Made Beef Jerky. It’s on the cast page.
There’s shit that triggers me. If it’s deliberately offensive, I don’t say “That’s triggering”. I say, “I think you’re an asshole.” For instance, my response to seeing this on FacePlant:
http://clashdaily.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/539623_429595000490617_1492942728_n-630×534.jpg
was, “You know, the kid you’re beating now, will be choosing your old-folks home in 40 years. Or leaving you to rot in your own filth.”
Hehe, that picture cracked me up! My response to that wouldn’t have been “I think you’re an asshole”, it would have been, “Man, that’s funny! Kids today are so friggin’ fucked up because parent’s are all like ‘No, I won’t hit my child, that’s abuse, I’ll just give them a time out, or I’ll just let them do what they want, cause little Billy needs to express himself, and if he does it by breaking the phone, and then torturing the cat as he gets older, and then killing the neighbors as he gets even older, then that’s all ok with me, cause little Billy is a special little unique snowflake and he should never be hit, ever, for ever expressing himself, and he should always get a trophy even when his team comes in last place because he participated and if his teacher gives him less than a B I’m going to complain because he’s ruining little Billy’s life and if he goes for a job interview and doesn’t get it I will sue the company because they’re ruining his life!'”
Yeah, that’s what I’d say! 🙂
Speaking of restraining a child’s ability to express himself. True story.
I was event staff for a small WWII reenactment. After the battle (which ranged over the grounds of the historic village it was held at), the kids loved to collect the spent brass. We made a general announcement beforehand that if the kids did pick up brass, to please have a reenactor or staff member check them before they took them home, because a “live” blank could have been dropped.
Came upon this kid sitting at his parent’s feet whacking the brass with a hammer (he apparently brought his own hammer). Asked the parent if the rounds had been checked. “Oh no, I wouldn’t want to imply that I was stifling his creativity by taking them off him” Would you rather stifle his creativity when he finds a live one and detonates it, and injures himself? I took them off the kid and checked them. Yup, he had a live one that he was going to get to eventually… Idiots. She got nowhere when she complained to the management that I had bullied her kid.
Good on you for that, though I’ll just point out that that kind of moderate, reasonable response is not what was implied in that picture.
Should have just handed the brass back and said “have a nice day.” The best lessons in life are learned through pain.
You know, the kid you’re beating now, will be choosing your old-folks home in 40 years. Or leaving you to rot in your own filth.
I like Omar more and more, every day.
I deal constantly with people who whine about ‘triggers’. Usually, though, it’s because they’ve discovered I’m a gunsmith and want to whine about the sand in their assault-riflegina. I’ve never heard anyone use this particular turn of phrase in a whiny fashion before. I’ll keep an eye out, though, and do my best to spay or neuter them if I run across it.
Bob Barker FTW!
a-fuckin-men
About the video. What the heck did I just watch? I am afraid to go outside and find the universe has been adapted to Salvador Dali’s physics with David Lynch’s logic.
Hey, hey, if you can’t discuss triggers in a gun shop, where CAN you? 😉
Really? There are people out there that get their tighty whities in a bunch over “your mom” jokes?
Fine, rename the shop from “Cheaper Than Your Mom” to “Classier Than You, Moron”.
There is so much more in life to be concerned about than a “your mom” joke.
I think the main problem is “comfy nest syndrome”. They are complaining because cold air is getting under their tail feathers.
We need to drop them all in the Philippines, where everything they know and need doesn’t exist, and recalibrate their survival needs zen zero point.
THAT SOUNDS FUCKING AWESOME. Where do I send the “volunteers?”
Okay. You don’t like anyone talking about triggers — so is that one of yours? 🙂
Seriously, though, as a person who has some real issues with certain things (mostly when depicted in movies/tv), what I do is keep my eyes open and ask for spoilers if I have to, so I don’t go to this movie and expect a good time and get instead a panic attack. When in doubt, I just don’t go. Easy peasy.
I must be living a sheltered life. I never heard some whinny pansy complain that something “triggers” them. It must suck to live your whole life afraid of words.
At 2, a van drove through my house and missed me by mere inches. At 7 I watched as my dad beat a confession out of my sisters for something I did. At 8 my sister was raped and murdered, and I was the last family member to talk to her. At 9 I watched as my pet dog was killed in a horrible farm accident. At 11 My home was robbed. At 12 I watched as my friend’s mom hung herself in their back yard thinking, “What is she doing with that rope?” At 15 I was robbed at gunpoint. At 18 I watched as my best friend was blown apart by a high pressure air line explosion(2000 PSI is no joke).
FUCK YOUR TRIGGERS!
I’m really sorry to read that. I hope you’re okay today and you were able to recover at least a little from it all…
I’m actually over it. Doesn’t bug me much. It was more of a rant against people triggered over piddly crap.
That is an absolutely suck childhood. Beyond suck. So the “I am offended because you insulted my brand of feminism” just doesn’t seem quite …. um …. real? Yeah. That. I do hope you’ve gotten some serious counseling, or at least have solid people in your life now, because that is a LOT of shit to have to carry.
Heh if you knew me you’d understand, but I’ve never had to go through counseling. Bad stuff happens. There really isn’t anything you can do about it. You can either let the circumstances of your life define you, or you can take control and redefine yourself. In essence I have learned to let bad stuff roll off me. After I caught my wife cheating, I had the opportunity to be a basket case and all that. Instead, I took the opportunity to tell her new boyfriend “Thank you” for taking her off my hands. The month after my divorce was finalized, my dad passed away. Rough, but I guess he wanted to make sure I was away from my ex for good.
Doodoo does occur. It just seems silly to me when someone acts like the worst thing in the world is a restaurant called the Pink Taco opening in Scottsdale(near where I live) AZ.
For whatever reason, people seem to differ greatly in their resiliency. Your experiences might have put a person with a different genome into a rubber room for life. Very good for you that you have that mental toughness to have ridden all of this out.
“If you ever object to anything I write, draw, or say, using the words “that triggers me”? We’re done.”
Thank you, J. I support this so much I want to legitimately kiss you for being a proper human being and not a debased excuse of human excrement with the ability to whine on the Internet.
I’ve had my share of trauma in life. Which I won’t talk about, but hardly anything of which constitutes a ‘trigger’. One has a trigger when one has a medical pathology, mental trouble, or some other REAL justification. “Trigger warning” bullshit does not count. Don’t go on the internet if it pisses you off so much.
On a side note, I hate tumblr for the above reasons and I will openly wish for this website to die in a fire alongside the majority of its users. There, I said it. Hate me now.
I feel I should say that this comic catches my triggers.
It triggers me into giggling madly, like the sick bastard that I am, pretty much three or four updates every week.
… I apologise if that upsets the author. ;-]
Instead of ignoring, or tolerance, we can now be offended and force others to change or conform. I had one guy get all bent out of shape cause i called him an idiot for thinking Obama was born in Kenya, and wanted ME to apologize
But then again, some issues I can understand, like a Iraq/Afghanistan Veteran going catatonic after some teenagers light some firecrackers near him and drive off.
Had at least one ‘friend’ turn around and try to sabotage my relationships with other people because she felt my spouse was unrespectful of her triggers (by asking her to actually explain a kneejerk reaction she’d given verbally) and by extension, so was I. The problem isn’t that there’s fucked-up people on the internet; the problem is that they want to be fucked-up, as part of their special. I literally applauded when I read your commentary.
I think a place advertising with a sign like in this picture would make me want to go in and try it.
’cause I dislike people telling me what to like or not to like, whether on Yelp, or elsewhere.
As far as I can tell, that shop has had a flawless victory over a self-important douche.
Well played!
“self-righteous cunt”
“don’t worry, he’s not fat”
I see what you did there
I adore you. I totally do. Jesus fuck. Things “trigger” me – that is my problem. Yes, I’ve been through some shit. Not as bad as some, way worse than others, and it’s all my deal. That’s why I pay a nice lady 90 bucks an hour to deal with me. And take some heavy drugs. I appreciate that people will say “this link might trigger a rape survivor” – it’s added information. But “OH MY GOD YOU POSTED A PICTURE OF A PUG AND I WAS RAPED BY A PUG AND HOW DARE YOU BECAUSE PUGS ARE EVIL” doesn’t quite make it in my book. Have I mentioned that as a reasonably liberal, gun owning, Massachusetts raised female-type person, I find you to be both amusing and honest? (I got better. I live in a state where concealed carry, marijuana, and marriage equality are all the law, and one can do all three with a smile).
You know what? There is absolutely shit that triggers me.
You know what else? I try to keep that shit to myself.
‘Cause they’re *MY fucking issues, not anyone else’s.
Carry on smartly.
“That’s a trigger for me.”
That’s my fault?
“You could at least apologize.”
Why on Earth would I do that?
Certain response you come up with long after such an irate customer has left:
“Very well, sir, we shall change the company’s name. Now, could you please tell me your mother’s name?”
“Sir, I understand what you mean about things triggering me, and let me tell you, I have my own. What sets me off into a murderous rage is people with overly sensitive emotions who blame others for setting them off. I’d like to continue this discussion, but I have an overwhelming urge to demonstrate to you the problem-solving capabilities of this shovel and this bag of quicklime.”
“Sir, if you’d like to continue this discussion, you can do so while filling out the 4473 to buy a new firearm.”
“Sir, we stick by our company name, and if you’ve noticed the rise in gun prices lately, it turns out your mother is not that cheap.”
My dad was the one who originally began reading this comic. He passed away just a few days ago, and I wanted to thank you both for bringing him so much amusement that he called me while I was at work to laugh about a new strip.
I don’t do comics for free, and I do make money off them. Not a ton, but enough to justify this hobby.
Thing is, I don’t need justification. I’m a storyteller. I have stories to tell, and FTF is one. I am very sad to hear that your dad was a fan, and never got to see the ending of this. I don’t like losing people who enjoy my work.
Sorry for your loss, and I mean that. Stay strong.
Old reader, new poster; and Mostly because I have a tendency to backspace on these things for fear of reoccurring Hagrid syndrome (“I shouldn’t have said that”), I leave Mr. Steve Hughes to speak for me – particularly on the ‘offended’ part of the sketch, which I think is appropriate to the discussion, and increasingly lolworthy. Enjoy. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHMoDt3nSHs
I just have to say that video is mesmerizing. That is all.
I have PTSD, so I know what it’s like to be triggered by something. But I am of the opinion that the world shouldn’t need to walk on eggshells. I use humor as a defense mechanism and there’s plenty of things that I find extremely helpful that would set off someone else with my past who copes differently. There’s a back button and we all need to learn to handle brief reminders of trauma.
Now if it’s someone who is aware of the trauma and does something they’re an asshole.
True that.
Personal experience, dont have PTSD but I cant be far away from it (I am not a soldier). You need to learn to move on/cope with your life, I dont have a problem with making “muslims are terrorist” jokes (I am a muslim). When I consider that those very same jokes were used to torment me before, I think how much I have progressed.
OH, FUCK YEAH, WISH FULLFILLMENT!!!!!!
WE…are the Self Righteous Twats who say
NI“Trigger”. If you do not appease us we shallsay NIwhinge at you a second time!