why skyrim modding proves dude spaces understand content warnings– they just hate ones that aren’t for them

betterbemeta:

The dude-dominant trend of mocking trigger warnings or content warnings and ‘safe spaces’ is obviously bullshit but let me tell you a story. (long post)

So my friend and I decided to publish a mod for The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim. They had been working on it for a pretty long time, and I helped out by providing some of the written materials, beta testing, and concept work. It was a pretty extensive mod, overhauling many aspects of the game and adding some entirely new ones.

This means that it would be incompatible with many other popular mods to install. This didn’t bother us because other overhauls of the same scale exist already, and they do well enough.

And it made hot files! It was pretty cool. We decided to provide involved support for it, especially after launch, as we still were fixing bugs and tweaking features. Their feedback also may be important for future updates.

However, because our mod made so many changes, we released a full readme with what types of things the mod changed, and what sorts of mods would probably not work with it. Our landing page gave a good sampling of the features within, way more detailed than most of the frontpages of whole video games on Steam.

But neither were good enough.

I can’t really presume their genders, but the heavily male-dominated culture over on NexusMods wasn’t comfortable with anything but a full spoiler list of every single tweak. Where to get every new item. Every change made, a full list of every available perk, beyond a simple summary. Previously secret or hidden surprises had to be spoiled, because how else would they know what they were getting?

The constant questions, ‘is this mod compatible with X’ despite pretty clear compatibility directions and restrictions continue. They want to know everything about the mod, every tiny detail of how it might interact with other mods we didn’t even consider, before trying it. And they’ll ask us before reading the readme or even the landing page and figuring it out themselves. 

This isn’t about content as sensitive as personal stories of trauma, disturbing content, or anything along those lines. This is, presumably, mature people not willing to try a mod for a video game without the creators themselves personally holding their hand and spoiling all the content’s details to them, or asking for 1:1 geek squad support over reading simple compatibility notes.

We’re not entitled to anybody playing with our work. That’s up to each person to decide. But as we published and then were faced with that we (mostly I) had woefully underestimated the need for total detail disclosure. It became clear to me that this is a level of detail that blows simple “CW: blood” out of the water.

And it’s normal for them. To them, media isn’t like the “back in the day, you read a book and whatever was inside was inside!” situation that a lot of them tout. It’s like buying a car. They want to know the mileage of the car. They want to know if the car can be tuned up or have parts swapped out. They want to know about the measurements of the car, its headroom, the width of its axles, how high it is off the ground. They want to know what noise the unlock of the car makes, its emissions, its safety rating, who else owns the car, and what other cars that it’s similar to.

And that’s not unreasonable, at least for a sensible level of detail. But the reality is, if you said “no, I won’t tell you, you need to find out for yourself” these people wouldn’t suck it up. They would pass up your product because they do not know if it contains something that is displeasing to them– whether that is in a technical sense that it would not work well with other modules, or a hidden message or piece of unmarked content that may insult or disgust them.

Plenty of shitty clickbait has been written about how content warnings, media ratings, and clear specifications of a product are different from the plague of ‘trigger warnings’ but so far the only observable difference between them is the audience that trigger warnings is intended to serve: people with mental health concerns.They are all notes that may be in varying detail, that forewarn an audience or consumer of the content of something presented before they commit to it fully.

That speaks to me that what trolls really mean when they say ‘suck it up’ is anything but– They do not want others to stop having feelings or stop being cautious of potential hazards, but to be subject to them on purpose. Meanwhile, they get all the level of information they want about what they care about. It solidifies them as a legitimate audience and their needs as legitimate, and others and their needs as less so.

What they really mean is, “I would rather you not be informed, or see you being informed.” They would, in a matter of speaking, prefer that women and people of color and PTSD sufferers be continuously sold a mystery car, even a shitty one. They do not want to hear that the car they like, or the mod they want, or the books they read, or the movies they watch, do not suit the needs of someone else. Because if they like something, and someone says that it just doesn’t work for them, then that thing can’t objectively be always worthwhile or ‘good content.’

They don’t get upset when their peers request if this extensive overhaul is compatible with any number of extensive overhauls that touch similar features (spoiler: it’s not). They aren’t special snowflakes for wanting to know, even if they are very annoying and obviously aren’t using their brain or even reading the content warnings before asking for personalized assistance. The opposite: they chime in and even help provide the information to their peers or advice to the media maker unasked-for, or even demand more detail so they can begin optimizing before they even download the content at all. 

They already are fluent in the idea of marking content according to the needs of a potential consumer– even entitled to more of that information than someone making media might want to divulge openly. What is despised is not somehow information cowardice or a potential echo chamber but that someone other than themself might have needs.