| As a war veteran I can confidently say most veterans would probably not be traumatized by work like this. We've all seen much worse and the things that became problematic memories for me had little to do with reading/hearing/seeing the worst humanity has to offer in terms of violence and fucked up shit people do to each other. The stuff that really sticks and eats at you is usually stuff that happened to or close the individual or something that happened as the result of actions taken by the individual or their immediate group. Probably the most important measure a company could take to prevent lasting harm with this kind of work would be to spread it around a whole lot more than just 36 people. The real risk of long term impact here would probably be with persistent exposure to it all day long. Most people can handle reading or seeing some graphic stuff with proper mental preparation for it but to see nothing but that day and day out would quickly wear you down. >Is it ever appropriate or ethical to ask humans to voluntarily subject themselves to traumatic experiences in exchange for compensation? Probably not. Yet people still voluntarily sign up for military service around the world by the millions, and they do so for a bunch of personal, family, idealistic, cultural, and societal reasons that are hard to reduce to a few easy to argue points like a lot of people online try to do with stuff like this. Personally, I think it's admirable to hold the ideal that we should like to never offer jobs like this, we should also like to never offer jobs that involve going to war, cleaning up hazardous materials, dealing with explosives, working around heavy fast-moving machines, cleaning sewers, or a myriad of other terrible experiences either; but we're probably not in a position to make those better choices just yet. Until then, people are willing to do these things for a dozen different reasons per person, only two of which are the pay and support they get from the employer. |