I've seen a meme of C-3PO shutting down after Luke and Obi-Wan start talking about Luke's father labeled "Triggered". On one level, it struck me as funny. On another, thought provoking... can an artificial life form be triggered in that sense? But.. The maker of the meme was mocking the mentally ill! What a horrible person!
I once got an email urging me to boycott the T-Shirt I was actually wearing. It was, like the meme, mocking the mentally ill! Those who made it, those who laugh at it, and those who wear it are all horrible people!
Today I was reading a news story about a famous murder case and the comment section was full of condemnation for the reporters. By writing a story which sells (the entire purpose of most mass media), they were propagating the horror the victim's family has gone through. This struck me as very like the reaction to the meme and also quite hypocritical.
Why hypocritical? Two words: Nine. Eleven.
Every year on that date, one of the most horrific things that ever happened on American soil gets revisited ad nauseam. This is a very real psychological trigger for countless people. To this day, I can still hear the voice I think of as the "Oh my god" lady.
In 2011, I was working in the Discharge Office of a local hospital. I collected co-pays and screened patients for possible bill assistance. I also sat less than fifty feet from a television I could not turn off, one that replayed the footage repeatedly for weeks after the event. Thank my god, I couldn't see the screen, but I could hear it. "Oh my god" lady and all.
I was fortunate. My nephew was on his honeymoon in the DC area, but he wasn't near the Pentagon that morning. I didn't know anyone who died that day. I may not even know anyone who knew someone that did. But thousands of us are walking around with psychological scars simply from witnessing it on the television.
The only way to avoid it is to pull the plug on everything, including your phone. For those of us who work or go to school, that isn't possible. The same people who get mad over a meme, a T-shirt, a news story, are getting mad if you neglect to trigger the thousands of victims of 9/11. Social media, including emails and text, is flooded with detailed photos of the towers going down. The mass media runs commemorative stories, usually with the same detailed photos or (worse) video.
The C-3PO meme is mocking those who think everything they don't like is a trigger. My crazy aunt T-Shirt is whistling past the graveyard. I will continue to enjoy those things at least as long as giving me a week's worth of nightmares every fall is encouraged. God only knows what it puts those with real trauma from 9/11 through.
