Community Ratings are the crowd-sourced answers you've always been able to get on Does the Dog Die — covering hundreds of trigger categories across thousands of titles. They may include yes/no answers, timecodes, and brief descriptions. They're reliable, broad, and permanently free.

Scene Alerts are designed for watching safely, not just deciding whether to watch. Each alert includes a description of what happens before the trigger so you know it's coming, a skip-to timestamp so you can bypass the moment entirely with your remote, and descriptions written in a consistent style — informative, spoiler-conscious, and never phrased in a way that could be triggering itself.

For most people, Community Ratings are exactly what they need. Scene Alerts are for when you want to stay in control of your viewing experience, moment by moment.

Some do — and we're grateful for it. Community timecodes and descriptions are genuinely useful, and you'll find them throughout the site.

But a Scene Alert is something different. Each one requires a contributor to watch the title, identify every trigger moment, note exactly what happens in the minutes before the scene so viewers know it's coming, determine a precise skip-to timestamp that lands safely on the other side, and write a description that informs without retraumatizing — no graphic detail, no accidental spoilers. That can take 2.5× as long as the title's original runtime, or longer.

That's skilled, careful work. We pay contributors fairly for it, which means it costs real money to produce. Community Ratings are powered by goodwill. Scene Alerts are powered by your subscription.

We ask one question about each category: does knowing exactly when and how a scene unfolds materially affect someone's safety or trauma response — not just their comfort?

For suicide and self-harm, sexual assault, child abuse, and domestic violence, the answer is yes. People in recovery or therapy are often given specific guidance about media exposure. A Scene Alert for these categories isn't a luxury — it's the kind of precise, carefully written information that can genuinely matter.

For most other categories, a Community Rating is generally sufficient. Knowing a dog dies before you press play is what matters. A Scene Alert for that moment is a comfort upgrade — and a reasonable thing to fund through a subscription.

Subscribers do. There's no internal committee picking favorites — every new free category is chosen by subscriber vote. If you want a specific category unlocked next, the answer is to make the case for it using your share link and rally other subscribers around it.

When you're championing a category, here's the bar that tends to win votes — these are the conditions that have made past free categories an obvious yes:

A category that hits one or more of these is the kind of pitch that resonates. Frame your case that way when you share your subscription link, post about it, or talk to people in your community — and cast your vote for it on the voting page.

Contributor pay. The people who carefully watch films and document trigger moments — writing advance warnings, setting skip timestamps, and crafting non-triggering descriptions — are compensated for their work. In practice, producing a single title's Scene Alerts can take 2.5× the title's runtime, or longer. This is what makes Scene Alerts possible.

Free Scene Alerts. Every subscription directly subsidizes free access to Scene Alerts for our most critical categories — for anyone who needs them, regardless of whether they can pay. They don't even need to login. The information is no longer hidden away in video form, it's now accessible to anyone in the world who needs it.

The platform. Hosting, development, and the infrastructure that serves millions of content warning lookups every month.

When you subscribe, two things happen. First, your subscription funds the contributors who produce Scene Alerts — the people who spend hours watching films so you don't have to be surprised by them. Without subscribers, there are no Scene Alerts.

Second, every 1,000 subscribers unlocks one Scene Alert category as permanently free for all visitors — whether or not they subscribe. No paywall, no account needed. Forever. The categories that are already free — suicide & self-harm, sexual assault, child abuse, and domestic violence — exist because enough people subscribed to make them possible.

Every 1,000 subscribers after that unlocks one more, chosen by subscriber vote. So when you subscribe, you're not just getting access for yourself — you're moving the counter closer to the next unlock for everyone.

The Champion page has a share link for every trigger. Pick the one you'd want unlocked and share its link wherever you already talk to people — a tweet, a Reddit thread, a group chat, a TikTok caption, anywhere. Do you know anyone with a strong social media following who cares about mental health, media representation, or trauma recovery? Sharing your link with them could be the most powerful thing you do to help.

Community Ratings stay free for everyone regardless. And if your share is what brings in the subscriber that crosses the next milestone, your trigger could be the one that becomes permanently free for everyone — no money required.