Do aggressive words like “birth control” and “climate change” get you in a tizzy?
Well, Gabe Whaley has a Chrome extension for that (yes, we know that doesn’t roll off the tongue as well as “app for that,” but go with it).
The 27-year-old runs MSCHF - a new media company that focuses on creating “internet,” as he puts it, to tell stories. You’ve likely seen his work before (e.g. FriendsWhoLikeTrump.com), but his latest creation is Alt-Space.
Once affixed to Chrome, Alt-Space will literally send users a “trigger warning” whenever they encounter words that might offend.
It looks like this:
The extension current alerts users of the words you see above, but also “LGBTQA,””Obamacare,” “police brutality,” “white privilege,” and others.
Whaley said he was driven to create the extension amidst the current political climate.
“You hear Trump supporters referring to the left as ‘sensitive snowflakes’ all the time, brushing off many of our concerns for equality and justice as if they are completely unfounded,” he told The Huffington Post via email.
“But what’s ironic is when you try to have a real conversation about a real issue that is VERY present right now (like birth control, women’s rights, bathroom laws, LGBTQA, or police brutality) - they immediately get very defensive, or pretend it’s not a real issue.”
He elaborated by saying that conservatives have appropriated so many terms and “bastardized their definitions, the most recent being ‘fake news.’”
“The idea of a ‘safe space’ and ‘trigger warnings’ is something they have mocked and belittled,” Whaley told us. “This Chrome extension is kind of way to turn those words back against them, and expose the hypocrisy that we all know is there but maybe haven’t fully recognized yet - that the right is full of ‘sensitive snowflakes.’ They need the safe spaces. They need the trigger words. Because they refuse to acknowledge truth.”
If you have words of your own that you believe incite trigger warnings, you can email Whaley about them.
Whaley’s ultimate goal is that the extension “makes people think” and says his company has more coming “to ease the pain of 2017.” We can’t wait.
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