A Reddit group lets people announce their novels and asks the authors to include any appropriate trigger warnings. The implied assumption is that fiction routinely contains passages that will trigger anxiety attacks or PTSD and that readers ought to be warned. It’s part of a trend calling for trigger warnings everywhere.

This approach has a couple of problems. A trigger warning is a spoiler. Shocking events in a novel aren’t as effective if the reader knows about them in advance, even in general terms. Imagine “Bambi Meets Godzilla” with a trigger warning. Second, it’s not clear whether they help. Psychologists have argued that treating people as fragile may only make them more fragile.
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