How to battle the incapability of 'unreading' something, or, How to prevent from reading offensive material?

You can’t unread something. You just have to learn how to get past having read something offensive.

You can’t. You can only stop reading if you start to get grossed out.

You can’t undo a lot of things. Reading something, hurting someone, offending someone. Once you do it you just learn to live with it and try to not do it again. We can warn others that the piece is offensive, so maybe that would help a little.

Ugly things exist in the world. You can try to protect yourself by cutting yourself from any contact with things that offend you, but it would probably prevent you from knowing what the realities of the word today are. I believe in truth and refuse to avoid it even if it makes me sick to my stomach. If you disagree, be an ostrich and stick your head in the sand. (I don’t think ostriches really do that, but you know what I mean.)

It’s simple. Every time you think about it, give a mental “shout,” and yell, “Cancel! Cancel! Cancel!” It may take awhile, but eventually your mind gets the idea that you don’t want to think about that any more.

As a Christian, I ask God to take it away. Somehow, he always does. : ))

@CaptainHarley I love that: CANCEL! CANCEL! It’s kind of like the mental equivalent of, “Danger Danger Will Robinson!”

Yep, I’m with @CaptainHarley , cancel, cancel, cancel that! lol

I’m not telling the potatoes and jelly story.

I use the regular techniques of skipping certain entries, and I don’t click on links I don’t trust, but when I do accidentally read something, I just learn to deal with it – similar to when I see a squished animal on the road while I’m driving. Unpleasant experiences are part of life.

You can’t unread something or avoid reading something if you’re scrolling through answers. The best thing one can do is stop being so sensitive.

Thanks for this thread. I wanted to expand on the other one but didn’t want to derail too badly.

Do you remember a few years back when a Danish newspaper published an offensive cartoon about the prophet Muhammed? And there was a big controversy, and some papers reproduced the images, multiplying the offense, while some refused to, and were accused of censorship.

The Washington Post’s ombudsman wrote a column about their decision not to publish. He said that part of free speech included the freedom to not say things when you think that’s the most appropriate course of action.

I liked that very much. Sometimes choosing not to be offensive is an exercise of your freedom.

@Kardamom

“Warning! Warning! Alien approaching!” : D

The only thing that bothers me are personal attacks because those are meant to be hurtful. Other than that, words are words and I’m not going to pussyfoot around because someone may be offended. You can’t prevent yourself from reading something you don’t like once you’ve read it, but you can choose how you are going to react. Making a big deal about a word is just silly imo.

oh I’m sorry. should I not have said pussyfoot because someone may not like it? :P

@nikipedia Engaging in arson because someone offends you isn’t really an argument against not offending people, though.

@rebbel I think @CaptainHarley‘s suggestion is the best approach that is workable. Your example of carrot eating is a perfect one to show how much you’d have to censor to avoid every topic and every word someone somewhere finds objectionable. I doubt if there is a food item known that isn’t sickening to some readers.

And for sure, the [NSFW] intro lets you know that if certain sexual acts. If you find certain sex acts are repugnant to you, reading that question might bring you face to face with the topic that’s so emotionally explosive to you. You can either avoid reading it or deliberately DO read it to practice desensitizing yourself to the word or concept that sets your tummy to churning. In the particular case you are writing about, I really don’t see how using a euphemism makes the subject any different than using the real word. If it were me, I’d force myself to kill the emotional charge of the word by using desensitization.

Mindbleach

I admit, it probably wasn’t helpful to bring a certain word to the OP’s attention that I found inappropriate, I could’ve just put up and shut up, but part of being me is standing up for what I believe in and I guess you could say: well if you don’t like that, don’t read it. :P

Being overly sensitive is not any worse than being not sensitive enough.

What has been seen cannot be unseen.

The only thing is to increase one’s tolerance to “what may be seen”. In other words, to be less offended, upset, intolerant, disgusted or whatever. It seems to be a difficult request to make of people.

@Keep_on_running The thing the OP took offense at is that the question was marked NSFW, it had the clinical name for the material in question in the original question, and clearly indicated what organ that material came from. No one would even have to read as far as the question details to kmnow that was what it was about.

Under those circumstances, to not expect to see the slang word that bothered the complainer when they know it is a word commonly used for the more clinical term almost defies belief. That is why the OP thought the complaint must be from someone with a chip on their shoulder looking for opportunities to complain about a certain euphemism.