In praise of the content warning

These days, other than spending minimum time on Tumblr to chat with friends and queue up posts, my main hangouts are here on Dreamwidth and over on Mastodon, specifically the Fandom.ink instance run by our lovely mod alisx. Though my longform stuff is obviously here and I love commenting and interacting with people in thoughtful ways, the place where I spend the most time online is definitely the Mastodon instance, with its cozy community, nearly real-time interactions, and old-school forum feel.

I think one of the things that keep me coming back to Mastodon, in addition to the factors mentioned in my review of the platform, is something I only mentioned in passing in that post because I had so much else to go into: The content warning.

The content warning (CW) is much like the fold or the cut in blogging software, complete with a text label that you can put on a post to tell you what's behind the cut. People can click on the 'read more' button to unfold the post and see the rest of it, if they so choose. Users can also choose to unfold content warnings by default.

( In which I wax lyrical about the CW )