Probably just me, but i never minded spoilers. Knowing the plot ahead of time, even knowing plot twists, is no big deal. Sometimes i might prefer to be shocked but normally no. I prefer it because i enjoy paying attention to the details of a film or a novel, the dialog or the acting, for example. I wish my college courses had spoiled the plots for me more so i could have concentrated better on the details.
That’s what the second read/watch is for, IMO.
If I’m planning on watching a show in the immediate future, I will make a mild effort to avoid spoilers (why not?). Otherwise, I have no problem with reading spoilers; an article discussing a show in detail is more interesting to me than an article that is frustratingly vague, and I’ll probably forget most of the details by the time I get around to watching the thing anyways. I’m also of the opinion that a show that is “ruined” by knowing spoilers probably wasn’t a very good show to begin with.
Completely disagree. For example, in the show “The Good Place” knowing the big end of season surprise changes the whole experience of seeing the show. It’s a great show, but the experience would be diminished by knowing the spoiler beforehand.
I’m the opposite to the OP. I like to know as little as possible about any media I’m going to consume. A rough idea of genre and subject, perhaps who is in it, how long it is, stuff like that.
All that is fine but anything more risks spoiling my enjoyment. I certainly don’t want to know what the spoiler is, ideally I don’t even want to know that there is a spoiler at all. If I know I’ll spend time second-guessing where it is going rather than being absorbed and misdirected.
I knew there was a spoiler in “the sixth sense” and I looked for it and spotted it pretty quickly. Not a fault of the film or any skill on my part but my enjoyment was lessened because of it.
Yeah, that’s what I was going to say.
The effect of spoilers will vary depending on what book/movie/show you’re talking about, and on who’s reading/watching. Some works even assume the audience goes in already knowing the basic plot. But for some, the surprises and reveals and twists provide some of life’s great pleasures, and people who go in knowing what they are ahead of time are missing out.
Still, I’m not going to argue with someone who has an attitude like the OP’s (you do you) as long as they don’t spoil things for those who do mind spoilers.
I think “ruined“ is a bit of a straw man here. I had a major event in The Wire spoiled despite there only being a one day delay in my seeing the episode, and it really sucked a lot of the value and emotional impact out of that episode. Did it ruin the show? No. Did it make me very unhappy that I didn’t get to come upon that event on my own? Absolutely.
I have to walk out of the room when my son talks about something he has watch that Mrs Cad and I haven’t because he loves telling spoilers and she doesn’t mind but I do. However, I learned years ago that when watching an opera, the assumption is that you already know the story - I guess because of the language issues. So when I go to the opera I read the story beforehand.
I’m so glad that I hadn’t heard there was a plot twist. I just loved being surprised by it, and thinking back “So, wait, when he went through that doorway, and later…”
Also glad everyone followed the first rule of Fight Club. As someone later said “It’s really two movies. One, the first time you watch it, then, every other time.”
I try so hard to avoid knowing much about a movie beforehand, especially if there’s a plot point that takes all the suspense out of the first half. So there are films I have to see right away, before some Morning Show Asshole blurts it out.
So I really appreciate people here who’ll start a thread with “No spoilers in OP”.
I HATE SPOILERS!
Yeah, I do that with Shakespeare. Better than leaving the theater thinking "What happened? Who was that character? Did she really spoiler that spoiler in the spoiler ?
To spoiler or not to spoiler, that is the question?
It is a big deal to me. I was fortunate not to get spoiled for Fight Club or Sixth Sense, but I had a major GOT character’s death spoiled for me just by the title of a youtube video, and just recently had a Better Call Saul character’s death spoiled by the title and thumbnail of another youtube video.
I was spoiled for The Usual Suspects, and that really did ruin the movie for me. The movie was still watchable, but the overall impact of it was more of a “meh” than anything else.
So yeah, I am very firmly on the I HATE SPOILERS side of the line.
Wow. I thought I enjoyed Season 1 of The Good Place, but I guess I hated it instead.
To be fair, I would avoid spoilers for a show I’m going to watch the very next day.
I watched a couple of episodes of The Good Place, but I wasn’t really getting into it. Then I heard the major spoiler, and knowing that in advance completely ruined the show for me. I don’t know if I would have ever picked up watching the show again anyway, but after knowing the spoiler I had absolutely no desire to ever watch even a single episode ever again. Completely ruined it for me.
I’m seeing a lot of False Dichotomy in this thread, as though there’s no middle ground between spoilers Completely Ruining something and not diminishing one’s enjoyment in any way.
To be fair, I tried, but someone who knew I watched the show didn’t realize I hadn’t watched that episode yet.
Like I said, I had a major GOT character’s death spoiled, and while that did negatively affect the impact of that particular moment in the show for me, it did not ruin the entire series for me. Same with Better Call Saul. Knowing that a particular character is going to die isn’t going to prevent me from watching the rest of the series. On the other hand, the Usual Suspects and The Good Place were both completely ruined for me.
I can’t remember any spoiler that had no impact at all on the enjoyment of a show for me. But I don’t think that’s a false dichotomy just because I believe that there is no such thing as a good spoiler. Some are major, some are minor, but they are all bad. It’s varying degrees of bad, not a dichotomy.
“Completely ruined” to me implies that you were rendered unable to enjoy the show. But how would you know if you didn’t try to watch the show?
FWIW, the show continues to be excellent going into the second season and is my all-time favorite sitcom. I’ve watched the entire run twice, and I’ve never been as emotionally affected by a TV show as I was–both times–by this one. If you can stomach giving it a second chance, even skipping the first season, it’s worth it.
As for spoilers, I think about the e.e. cummings sonnet that begins
and that’s one of the great pleasures of fiction for me: you start from a position of ignorance, and you enjoy the toboggan ride into knowing what’s going on. The way the creator reveals the journey is at the center of the craft. If someone tells me what the story is about, they won’t tell me as artfully as the creator would, so the journey is much less fun for me.
I appreciate that that toboggan ride isn’t the joy for everyone that it is for me, and that not everyone minds spoilers; but I really hate them.
To be fair, that particular show is a bit of an odd case for me. I stopped watching it because I thought it was a pretty mediocre show. If I had watched the rest of it, I know that I really would have thought it was all worthwhile once I hit that twist. But having the twist spoiled for me completely ruined my desire to see all of the episodes leading up to it.
Maybe I’ll give it another chance. We’ll see.