Intended Response 1: Extended, Exclusive and Explicit

PTSD is a mental disorder that usually effects an individual after a traumatic, and life-altering event, and leave survivors of such a tragic catastrophe vulnerable to the reality of the ‘outside world’. That being said, the idea of ‘trigger warnings’ have emerged in order to prevent those who suffer from PTSD to be reminded of the horrific experience they have been through. But are they really necessary? In Sam Finch’s article, he explicitly explains the ignorance of those who find trigger warnings annoying, trivial and unnecessary using an informal, modern language, while also expressing what he thought, or what he believes a person so ignorant would think to say, through eight bullet points of why they believe trigger functions are useless or irksome. He uses insensitive diction to describe their heartless and crude behavior or such a topic and uses a word like ‘lolz’ to demonstrate that such insensitivity is coming from the new generation of society (also using the letter ‘z’ to describe unneeded laziness). On the other hand, he fails to really establish much of its importance, other than his personal experience that was barely explained in a paragraph (pathos), due to his anger, thus this implies that the audience that Sam was intending to write to are those who know about trigger warnings to some degree and are also quite furious about this. The page layout of small and numerous paragraphs also resembles a young audience who do not want to read tedious long paragraphs, and the author being transgender and his experience with his sensitive friend shows how the author’s history and background can implicate such a passage. Meanwhile, in Jenny Jarvie’s article towards the controversial topic of trigger warnings, the writer is uses more sources, references and recent studies, with longer paragraphs. This implies that Jenny’s audience are more curious towards the topic, possibly vacillating as to which side to choose, thus Jenny tries to lure the audience in through data and facts in order to demonstrate her cause of disagreement. The author uses a large font for paragraphs demonstrating new sub-topics, similar to a newspaper, and uses a quite vast use of vocabulary in comparison, which demonstrates the contrast of audience of ‘New Republic’ to ‘Every Feminist’. Also, Jenny must have not experienced anything like PTSD beforehand, which is a possibility of her lack of similarity to Sam. In addition, her former articles seem to demonstrate a lack of sympathy towards mental differences in society (disorders, sexual orientation. Etc) which is almost the opposite compared to Finch’s life and articles (modern vs conservative conflict). Overall, I believe that Jenny was far more convincing and was able to offer far more evidence towards the uselessness of trigger warnings, hence her perfective use of logos and ethos. Albeit I believe that trigger warnings everywhere could develop into social lassitude, I could see why one would side with Sam, as Jenny and Sam’s social and cultural contexts resemble a disparity.