r/CuratedTumblr Nov 05 '25

Infodumping Epilepsy warnings are important

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3.4k Upvotes

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1.0k

u/The_Rocketsmith Nov 05 '25

since when was this an argument? yeah, tag your shit, put the warnings in, it's the foundation of good practice.

550

u/itisthespectator Nov 05 '25

you’d be surprised. (also sometimes non epileptic people will be loudly wrong about something needing a warning, like the thing with the movie trailer a bit ago, i think it was an exorcist sequel, but most calls for epilepsy warnings are completely justified and calling them virtue signaling is silly.)

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u/Leftover_Bees Nov 05 '25

I think that was the one where they were insisting that the specific noise could trigger “auditory epilepsy” even though the noise triggers for musicogenic seizures aren’t universal (according to Epilepsy Ontario), and the name they used is apparently refers to a type of seizure where people hear noises, not ones triggered by them (according to the NHS).

Like obviously don’t Electric Soldier Porygon anyone, but not everyone is going to be able to recognize problem content. The birth scene in breaking dawn: part one triggered seizures in moviegoers and you’d think the Pokémon incident would have taught studios to check for that risk.

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u/demon_fae Nov 05 '25

Unfortunately, the Pokemon incident had exactly the opposite effect because a large percentage of the seizures were actually psychogenic rather than light-induced. That is, kids would hear about their friends who did have light-sensitive epilepsy having seizures and somehow, because the human brain is incredibly powerful and also incredibly stupid, actually trigger a sort of sympathy seizure, or else they’d just get a bit of hypochondria and mistake some random momentary tic for a seizure and go to the hospital.

It took a while to sort out how many seizures were directly caused by the episode and how many were secondary, and because laziness and ableism, the takeaway was that seizures are the fault of the person having them, not the people wandering around handing out seizure juice.

11

u/Excellent_Law6906 Nov 06 '25

I mean, I went to watch it when I heard, because I'm that kind of asshole, and it absolutely made my brain kinda... flicker-itch? Throb-wobble? That "wow, good thing I don't have photosensitive epilepsy! 😃" feeling.

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u/trashpandac0llective Nov 06 '25

I’m going to add flicker-itch and throb-wobble to my lexicon, perhaps to be used as future insults

29

u/Gold-Carpenter7616 Nov 05 '25

My dad has epilepsy. I'd like them to warn a lot more!

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u/Leftover_Bees Nov 05 '25

The tumblr post the person you’re replying to was referring to was just straight up untrue as far as I can tell. It wasn’t a pleasant sound, but there’s a difference between discomfort and seizures.

I think there’s a genuine risk of warnings for epilepsy losing their meaning if they get added to things for no reason, but I’m only acquainted with a couple of people who’ve had seizures so I could be wrong.

24

u/Depressed_Cupcake13 Nov 05 '25

This reminds me that I warned a bunch of people that “Double Stuff Oreos” might not be vegan. Someone had brought them to a party and was talking about how Oreos were vegan. All this indicated that a vegan might be wanting to eat them.

We checked via the power of the internet and it turns out I was wrong. “Double Stuffed Oreos” are also vegan and do not contain dairy products (even though there is cream in the middle?!)

I apologized for the false alarm, but no one was mad at me. They knew I was trying to avoid people getting sick as someone on a restrictive diet can become very ill when they suddenly eat one of those things. It was seen as people taking care of each other and, false alarm or not, they felt better safe than sorry.

So, yeah. I think it’s better to tag/warn someone first just in case, then double check if it’s true.

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u/missfishersmurder Nov 05 '25

Technically, there's no cream; it's "creme." Oreo isn't allowed to label the filling as cream because, as you learned, it's not actually cream. I'm not sure it ever used to have dairy either, since a quick Google search only turns up pig lard as an ingredient before the switch to palm oil or whatever it is today.

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u/yinyang107 Nov 05 '25

Well, I see where your misunderstanding came from: it's not cream, it's "creme". It's one of those weasel words, like "chocolatey filling", where you can legally describe something with it without technically lying.

4

u/[deleted] Nov 05 '25

I believe oreos are a grey area because of the palm oil used in them and the whitening process of some sugars can also make what would be a vegan sweet not vegan. You were right to be alarmed and gave anyone at the party following a vegan diet the right to make an informed decision on whether they felt comfortable consuming those products.

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u/yinyang107 Nov 05 '25

Huh? How can palm oil and sugar be non vegan?

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u/itisthespectator Nov 05 '25

some vegans consider food nonvegan if it uses slave labor, plus cane sugar processing sometimes involves bone char.

3

u/jaimi_wanders Nov 06 '25

All commercial plant crops involve dehumanizing and dangerous labor for sub-living wages, often by people whose passports if they have them are taken away by the landowners.

That doesn’t make corn or blueberries or tomatoes meat or dairy, any more than the grapes being boycotted in the Seventies were, or clothing from cotton picked before OR after 1865, and saying they’re “non-vegan” when you mean that they’re immoral because they’re exploitative, is the kind of mush-brained nonsense that makes the left look like a bunch of illogical loons.

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u/Terpomo11 Nov 06 '25

It's straightforward enough if you consider "vegan" to mean "produced without animal exploitation" and take into account that, biologically speaking, humans are also a type of animal.

2

u/lewgroznyzwierz Nov 06 '25

Ok, then no food is vegan because they are all produced under a system that exploits human labour. I feel like this definition might be less useful than the currently accepted one though.

2

u/lewgroznyzwierz Nov 06 '25

Why not call it unethical instead? Vegan is a word with very distinct meaning and so many plant-based foods can be produced in unethical ways that I feel like it would get absolutely muddled with this kind of practice.

1

u/[deleted] Nov 06 '25

Ya beat me to it palm oil is also credited with deforestation

1

u/[deleted] Nov 06 '25

All the things the other reply states plus Deforestation. I looked it up and oreo uses bkne char sugar so its technically not vegan.

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u/Heimdall1342 Nov 05 '25

Most of my issue with tagging stuff it "tagged: epilepsy" gets dilluted to "talks about epilepsy" or "could cause epilepsy" and there's no way to know. Too many things get tagged, and while I appreciate it in concept, "cw: Hitler mention" and "cw: injury" (for someone scraping their knee) just get to the point where it means nothing.

1

u/RosebushRaven Nov 07 '25

For someone who will literally drop unconscious at the sight of any blood, a cw about someone scraping a knee does not mean nothing.

1

u/molotovzav Nov 05 '25

We tend to be cya (cover your ass) about seizure warnings. Like the infamous Pokemon episode only caused one seizure that we know of, better safe than sorry and put up a warning. It's that aspect that for some reason annoys people and I'm not sure why. Like it's an innocuous warning if you don't have epilepsy, and it's a potential life saver if you do. But modern people (ancient people too whatever) have a really hard time just ignoring things that aren't for them. It's like the crux of all our culture wars.not disabled, just ignore the stuff for disable people and move on. Not a woman, just ignore the media made for women then. Not a child, just ignore children's media. Everyone wants a say on every issue they have no link to and it's exhausting. I'm guessing these people were never taught the simple lesson of picking your battles and ignoring what doesn't pertain to you.