You might have recently seen a meme of a woman with glasses with the word ‘triggered’ popping up around the internet lately surrounding anything having to do with offensive topics.

It sprung up from the idea of bloggers on the internet claiming something triggers them whenever it comes to anything that makes them uncomfortable.

It has started popping up more recently, but this isn’t a new topic, according to the national services for PTSD, this has gone as far as World War II.

The only problem with this is that it takes away from people who honestly do need a trigger warning.

Veterans, sexual abuse victims, people who took part of a traumatic experience—those are the people who need trigger warnings.

A lot of them get triggered by loud sounds and even words, so having a warning can be beneficial to them.

What does this have to do with bloggers? A lot.

Bloggers on social media sites such as Tumblr throw out the word trigger like it’s free candy during a parade. Scared of spiders? Trigger warning. Don’t like skinny or fat people? Trigger warning. The list continues growing and a number of people not taking trigger warnings seriously grows as well.

No one seems to take into consideration that there are people out there who genuinely can’t watch a traumatic video or talk about an event because it brings horrible memories back.

People stopped referring to veterans and started seeing trigger warnings as the Tumblr girl who wants to drink man tears.  That is toxic.

When someone genuinely needs a trigger, they’ll only be ridiculed and told that political correctness is destroying this country, so all the hard work they went through to live, to push back the memories and start again will be for nothing.

It’s understood why the idea of a safe space and trigger warnings sound ridiculous, but sometimes it is done for the good of others.

Even then sometimes when it comes to college, it isn’t even students or the school who are enforcing trigger warnings.

According to a survey done by NPR, most professors said they used trigger warnings out of their own volition, not because of a student’s request or administrative policy. It’s not politics forcing professors to do this.

Do I think political correctness can be damaging? Yes, but I don’t think it’s damaging in this sense.

I know people who, if triggered, have been on the verge of suicidal tendencies, and I wouldn’t want to ever go through that pain. If anything is possible, just ignore the bloggers who are triggered by the stupidest things and begin to take something like this more seriously.

If someone tells you upfront that their trigger is XYZ, listen to them. Don’t laugh in their face and send them that triggered meme.

Learn how to separate people on the internet just looking for attention and people who are serious. It could save a life.