The issue that I have is what is the point to a Facebook post of “I watched Game of Thrones, and it was sad.” Too often the next post is “yes, I was hoping that [dead character’s name] would make it to the end.” The first post is saying “I want to discuss the last episode” which is followed by a discussion of the last episode, which invariably includes spoilers. If you want to discuss the episode with someone, give them a phone call, or text back and forth. Don’t discuss it in public with tons of people nearby.
Oh, and stay off my lawn.
All these posts that have “and it was sad” just make me hear them in Patton Oswald’s George Lucas voice from his Star Wars prequels bit.
Just as a data point, more than one study shows that spoilers don’t negatively affect enjoyment of media (but may have other negative connotations , like threaten autonomy) I know of at least one studythat disagrees, though. More research is clearly needed.
I’m pretty much the same way. The good guys are going to win, I already know that, so there is little to spoil. It’s not the destination, it’s the journey.
Unless, like Mrs. FtG and myself, you were actually paying attention then the second time will be the same as the first. The movie is definitely enjoyable is you realize the deal right away.
This is not a good argument. The second viewing, knowing what will happen, can still be a good experience. It can even be a better experience. But it is definitely a different experience than going in without knowing what will happen. And if someone tells you what happened, you have lost your chance at that first experience.
I really like that first experience, so I try to protect myself from finding out about movies. I don’t watch trailers. I try to avoid stuff on the internet (which is relatively easy when I just have to not go into specific threads or subreddits, but hard when random info pops up everywhere.
I agree with your general point that very vague information isn’t really a spoiler. On the other hand, I will say that people often are very bad at determining whether what they write or say is sufficiently vague to not impart relevant information.
That said, I also don’t go onto twitter or facebook until I’ve watched the latest GoT episode. Because sometimes something is enough of a cultural touchstone that you can’t escape discussion of it.
Because it’s not my preference. I mean, you can watch movies backwards too if you want, you get all the same information, just presented in a different order. The director of the film intended a certain thing in a certain order. I think the viewing experience is more enjoyable generally if seen without advanced fore knowledge. If that’s not your thing, it’s fine with me.
My general practice is before engaging in conversation about some recent thing, I ask if the person has seen it, or cares if I talk about it. If other people start talking about something I haven’t seen, I let them know I haven’t seen it and can we talk about something else. If so, that’s fine, if not, I’ll leave. Having a blanket practice to simply avoid all discussion makes it easy to avoid spoilers. Because as we can see from this thread, people have different views on what exactly constitutes a spoiler.
Pretty easy. I don’t flip out about it, but I do make an effort because I find that more enjoyable.
Agreed. The pendulum has swung way strangely when it comes to spoilers. It’s to the point where you feel you can’t really discuss the show at all even in the most broad of terms (which should be one of the fun things about social media). It’s where people don’t know when they can talk about things, because someone may not have seen last week’s episode and jumps on you for thinking things are safe.
I dont care for spoilers, but yes, the Op is correct. Perhaps we are bending over backwards. “It’s his sled” is a spoiler. “The ship sinks!” is not.
“I am your father” is a spoiler, “Han was full of snappy wit.” is not.
RealityChuck, even if we grant for the sake of argument that it’s irrational to be bothered by spoilers, so what? People are irrational sometimes. Maybe people shouldn’t be upset, but they are, and doing things just to upset people is a jerk move.
All that said, I can say that I definitely wouldn’t moderate someone for saying thing like “this episode was sad”, or “this movie is dark”. But i haven’t seen much complaint about that sort of thing, either. Doubtless there are some who complain that much, but there don’t seem to be very many.
I am with everyone else saying that being scared of spoilers is really overrated. People don’t read Shakespeare for the surprises, or Harry Potter, or Tolkien, either! You enjoy art for how it tells the story. What elements set the stage and scene.
Ever since reading “The Hero with 1000 Faces”, I have been intrigued more in the storytelling than the story itself. Even with regard to reality TV shows (Unreal’s “behind the scenes” show was wonderful for this), I don’t mind full spoilers as I want to see how the editing controls and releases the story and crafts villains and heroes. So I have 0 patience for anyone who can’t handle spoilers any time after 11.pm Pacific on the first night of a show.
Am I being whooshed? Harry Potter had probably the biggest arguments about spoilers in history before Endgame showed up.
I agree with the basic premise of the OP, but sometimes it doesn’t take a lot to spoil a movie. When the Sixth Sense came out, I saw the review on Siskel and Ebert, and of course they are not going to spoil anything. Except Ebert did. There was already a buzz about the movie and that there was a great twist at the end. Ebert said that it was very effective, and that it wasn’t like “I woke up and it was all a dream.” Didn’t think anything about it at the time, but about 20 minutes into the movie I knew how it would end.
Yeah, see, this I don’t get. It reads like you are blinding yourself to a great number of reasons that go into what makes for enjoyable storytelling just to hang your hat on this particular side of the issue. Not just saying that this or that aspect have never appealed to you, but outright ignoring the existence of whole swathes of the craft of storytelling. For instance, careful crafting using certain techniques to build tension, that rely on the initial ignorance of the viewer or reader for full effect.
Sure, plenty of art is quite enjoyable and just as meaningful, or more so, if you have knowledge prior to your direct experience of it, but there is plenty of art for which the experienced is damaged by prior knowledge. Examples abound, and I am dumbfounded by responses like this.
I mean, if you (general case) were to gleefully call yourself a dick and say that you don’t care what anyone else wants, we could all just call you a dick for kicking sandcastles and make a point of ignoring you in the future. But some of the posts in this thread have evinced such a paucity of imagination as to the vast richness of storytelling and the oft times delicate teasing and foreplay that are integral to the experience of enjoying a story that it boggles my mind.
It’s about timing. If the ending of Jaws is ruined at the water cooler, well, too bad. A trailer spoiling important parts of a movie that is just about to be released in the theaters. That sucks.
I’m not sure that my response justified being called a dick- I simply said that people are overreacting to being spoiled; not that I intentional set out to spoil things. If it is so critical to a person to not want to have something spoiled there are two solutions: 1. Be first in line
2. Avoid spoilers- don’t go online, don’t read reviews, don’t talk to people about your dear subject.
See how easy that is- no name calling required! You can control your own destiny.
With regard to Harry Potter (and Star Wars), no borschevsky you aren’t being whooshed. Readership hasn’t gone down (much). Harry Potter land isn’t less popular. The plot points are well known and the books/movies are still just as loved and enjoyed today. I have similarly no concern that if I watched the Red Wedding, I could still enjoy it.
[Moderating]
A reminder, since it seems to be necessary, that unmarked spoilers are in fact considered jerkish here, and will be moderated as such, even if the person doing the spoiling doesn’t see a problem with it. Even if spoilers don’t diminish your enjoyment, they do for other people.
Sorry about that; it wasn’t my intent to call you a dick. I came back tonight because I realized that my pivot from responding to you vs. a general venting was so quick and poorly telegraphed that it probably looked like I was meaning to insult you. I apologize.
This “fear of not having everyone else’s experience” argument is super weird, and I’m really struggling to see how you got to that conclusion.
I’m not super aggro about spoilers, but I do tend to prefer going into something new with no preconceptions. Or at least, as few as possible. I can still enjoy something I’ve been spoiled about. I got spoiled for The Force Awakens pretty hard. And fuck it, I’m putting this in spoiler tags, even though it’s well outside the statute of limitations.
Going into the film knowing Han dies colored how I experienced it. For the first half or so of the movie, the nostalgia I felt over seeing one of my childhood heroes again was definitely shaded by knowing this was that character’s exit. And when the scene finally came around, the tension of, “Are they actually going to do this?!” was completely robbed. I knew they were going to do it. It was still an effective scene, but it was absolutely a different scene than it would have been if I’d gone in blind.
The experience of being surprised by a work of fiction, and the experience of consuming it while knowing what’s going to happen next are very different. For the most part, I actually prefer the second experience. I like analyzing stuff, and thinking about how it fits together, and all of that. But if you do that first, you can’t ever go back and have that first experience. Because of that spoiler I read, I could never have that experience with TFA - at least, not for the biggest surprise in the movie. I can still have the second experience, and still enjoy that… but I could have had both.
For context, I don’t much care about being spoilered, but I take basic, obvious precautions to avoid them. Mainly, I don’t open threads on shows or movies I haven’t seen yet if I don’t want to be spoiled. And sometimes I do read ahead because I don’t care about spoilers for that particular project. (Like most comic book movies.)
All that to say I understand people who don’t like spoilers, and I do NOT understand the perspective of guys like RealityChuck who seem to not actually understand something so self-evident. But for me personally, I don’t really care about spoilers all that much.
If spoilers were a Kinsey scale, where 0 meant you were a spoiler fascist like most of the SDMB (it feels like, sometimes), and 6 means you’re in bizarro RealityChuck world, I’d probably be around a 3 or 4.
But, the only reason I’m responding at all is because I couldn’t let this pass:
Please, explain to me again how and why I enjoy art.
Timing and specificity. I’m still not convinced that commenting that a recent GoT episode was ‘sad’ is really a spoiler. That’s exactly on par with saying that the recent episode was violent, or there were some boobs shown, or one of the characters looks like they need a bath. It doesn’t give anything away about a series that’s pretty grim overall.
Now if they’d have said that the upcoming episode was uplifting, or funny or something that is out of the ordinary, then maybe there might be a point to that, but even there, it’s still extremely vague. For all you know, the person saying that might be some sort of Barney Stinson-esque character and be rooting for Euron Greyjoy and the Night King instead of the more classic characters.
But if they said “Euron gets killed by Jon Snow in the next episode”, that’s both timely and specific and would be a spoiler.
(disclosure- I haven’t seen a GoT episode since the second episode of the fifth season, so beyond what’s been spoiled for me already, I don’t have any idea what’s actually going on.)