On tagging for epileptics/people with similar visual sensitivities and triggers:

There’s always so much confusion about this, so here are some tips.

Don’t tag something triggery with just epilepsy or seizure; epileptics and others who get seizures tend to, you know, spend time on those tags talking about those things. Occasionally someone will troll the tag with trigger posts—should you see a warning about that, repost, leaving out all the potentially saviored tags/phrases so we’ll see the warning!

For basic tumblr usage, I rely on tumblr savior for a certain level of safety. Because these triggers are not phrases in the body of the post, the tags are really crucial. So: if it moves, tag it. Obviously, there’s a whole slew of different tags available; I focus on the stuff I see most people using on both the warning and avoiding fronts.

There are different levels of movement, and some are infinitely more triggery than others.

Blingees? Tag ‘em, they’re basically flickering lights. I have blingee and blingees saviored.

Anything that moves very fast, very repetitively, flashing lights—think of that old gif of the dj-ing and dancing club cats—that needs either epilepsy or seizure combined with either warning or trigger. Anything that seems strobe-like should get tagged this way.

Simpler gifs, like reaction shots, won’t cause problems for most people, largely because gifs are the lifeblood of tumblr; if you can’t handle slight giffage, you’re not nearly as likely to be on the site. In my case, for instance, when those sort of gifs get to me I need to be off the computer altogether. Nonetheless, I use either gif or moving gif with those.

A single moving gif is processed differently from two distinct sources of independent movement. I personally like having gifset or gif set tagged, as sometimes I can handle a single gif just fine, but a set will hurt.

A big one: TAG YOUR GIF DUMPS. I have both gif party and gif dump saviored. These are kind of a big deal, because you have tons and tons of distinct movement that can take a while to scroll through, which can be almost as triggering as a strobe-style gif.

I’m very sensitive to visual stimulation, but not so much that I can’t be on the computer—which is, of course, a set of minutely moving lights. My savior constants in terms of epilepsy crap are

gif dump

gif party

blingee

blingees

epilepsy warning

epilepsy trigger

seizure warning

seizure trigger

[Occasionally I see strobe warning or strobe trigger, but that’s far less common. It’s useful—just not standard.]

When I’ve got a bit of a headache but not enough to log off, my savior also includes

gifset

gif set

I know other people who sometimes need to savior

moving gif

gif

When in doubt, go a level higher—I dislike missing neat posts, but I hate seizures a whoooole lot more.