Get Alerted to Nasty Fun Scenes With “Is the Dog Die?”
You’re excited about the new HBO show, but the trailers look pretty brutal. You can tolerate some fights, but you really hate torture scenes. Or you hate vomit shots. Or stroboscopic effects should be avoided. Or your real dog just died and you don’t want to be reminded of the movie. Look under the heading ” Does the dog die?” , a site that collects warnings about anxiety and distress in over 6,000 movies, TV shows, books and video games.
The site tracks 57 avoidable story elements, which it calls “triggers.” They range from childish things like “Someone fart or spit?” and “Is Santa spoiled?” to more serious triggers such as “Is someone being tortured?” and “Does anyone die of suicide?” The site goes into great detail about forms of violence and self-harm, but unlike many other content-warning sites, it is not obsessed with sex at all. He is more concerned with questions such as “Is the dragon dying?”
Although the site looks boring, it has a smart interface. All 57 triggers are listed under each heading on the page. Next to each trigger is a binary yes / no option with one of the options highlighted. Look closely and you will see that this is actually a vote. Each user (after logging in with a Twitter, Facebook or Google account) can leave one vote in either direction. If you look at the tiny numbers of votes, you can see if not everyone agrees that a certain scene “matters.” For example, while 23 people say there is no fear of jumping in Game of Thrones , 8 people say there is.
Users can also leave text notes to further explain the scene. Readers can flag the questions that interest them the most and they will appear at the top of each heading page. And some triggers such as “Have your parents died?” hidden vote counting to avoid spoilers.
By default, the first question on every page is “Is the dog dead?” Previously, this was the only question on the site. Creator John Whipple told Lifehacker that when creating the site, “it was originally my sister’s idea. She was uncomfortable watching a movie with a dog because her concern for the survival of the dog made it impossible to enjoy the movie. ” Even someone who is usually into hardcore horror may not be in the mood for everything.
Many of the current triggers were suggested by visitors, he said. “Keeping track of which movies have stroboscopic effects was not what we had in mind when launching the site, but I’m glad we can help!”
The site is great for parents looking for more information than whether a movie has a G rating. (Your child may be getting too into fart jokes right now, so you’re trying to discourage him.) Conversely, if you’re a real sick freak, you can search for titles with the most triggers . So far, the top three include Akira , Wolf and Bait .
We found one problem on the site: it is easy to confuse works with the same titles, so the content warnings for Teen Wolf ended up on the movie page, and some books contain all the content warnings from their film adaptations. This is why you will see books with a “wobbly camera” warning.
To the question “Is someone being sexually assaulted?” links to the Unconsenting Media site, which monitors sexual violence in the media more closely. Whipple says he really helped the creators of Unconsenting Media when they built their site. “I was asked why we do not provide a list of films for some of the most sensitive triggers (for example, films in which someone dies by suicide). I believe that this detracts from our core values and is not the direction in which I want to move on the site. On the other hand, I am not afraid to help qualified specialists cope with these problems. “
Both sites are great additions to the world of content alerts, which also includes IMDb crowdsourced parenting guides (here’s a guide for Batman Begins ), Common Sense Media, and Where’s the Jump? The point, of course, is not to avoid the difficult – many stories are difficult without a single moment of violence or death – but to manage your expectations so that you don’t have to avoid everything. As Whipple put it, “Our goal is to empower people to enjoy the media without fear of being faced with an unwanted provocative surprise.”