@EverydayMoggie @DeliaChristina thanks. I get how it can feel like asking for a kind of self-editing, but I also see that a certain topic flooding a person's feed, for instance, can be tiring....I guess I see it like, at least most are saying with that, "I like seeing your posts, but I can't engage with [X topic] so frequently". CW actually are the tool in Mastodon to meet that situation. Rather than filtering or obscuring, it is like making engagement with whatever more intentional.
So, I think you're right that folks can just not follow you or block you, but I think CW are trying to avoid that and let people's voices be heard while also giving folks a break from things that might stress them out when they need it. It's not some platonic ideal of how to achieve that, but given the technical difficulty of some other approaches, I think what we've got is a viable local optimum