Not exactly. We hash this one out every time when the finales of The Amazing Race and Survivor air, and a couple of times it’s gotten rather ugly.
Posters on the East Coast want to be able to come to the thread as soon as it airs (or some even as it airs) and post away without spoiler boxes. The West Coasters seem to think this is incredibly rude and want spoiler boxes used till it airs in their time zone.
We always seem to go round and round about what the rules are.
East Coasters want to be able to post without having to box everything, and West Coasters want to still be able to read and speculate without being spoiled.
I would like to reiterate the point made above about foreign countries. Before the rule was established, Buffy threads got quite upsetting to some.
Well, I am a west coaster an di have no problem with folks spoiling TV shows three hours before they air for me. Somehow or other I manage to stay out of those threads for that long. I don’t know ho I do it, I’ve got a strong will, I guess.
I’m in the middle on this one. On one hand, it’s a pretty lame pitting–spoiler boxes are common courtesy unless you’re posting in a thread that is entirely about a certain movie/book/whatever. (In that case, if you don’t want to be spoiled, avoid the freakin’ thread and don’t be a douchebag.) I don’t want to be reading a thread about “the last time you cried really hard” and come innocently upon a major character’s death in the movie I’m going to see this weekend.
On the other hand, I’ve seen people get way too bent out of shape over stuff that isn’t even spoilery but COMMON KNOWLEDGE to anyone who’s seen a trailer. I had a friend in HS, and our conversations would go something like this:
Me: “I saw Brokeback Mountain this weekend, and it was…”
Her: “AHHHHH! SHUT UP! SHUT UP! DON"T say another WORD! You’re SPOILING THE MOVIE!”
Me: “I was going to say ‘really good.’ You should see it when you get a chance.”
Her: “I just don’t want to know anything else. Jay Leno already gave away the part about them being gay! Waaah!”
Me: :rolleyes:
Heh. Before I went to see Brokeback Mountain, I was on AICN, where Harry dropped a big BM spoiler in his review of King Kong. I had only skimmed through his review, so I missed it. But I read the talkback, where the posters were complaining about how Harry had spoiled Brokeback completely without warning. One poster said something like
"Great. Now I know that Ennis and Jack are long lost brothers.
Thanks a lot. I would have loved to have seen that without having it spoiled first. "
And I thought, Oh man! thats how the movie ends? Dammit, why do I read these things? Damn, Damn, Damn!!!
So, when I went to the cinema, I spent the whole movie piecing together clues and signposts to this big “Reveal” at the end… Which of course, you all know, never came… i felt like a maroon. I’d been had.
Yeah, but I don’t understand the ending. Please explain.
Everyone has their own spoiler threshhold. Therefore, it’s common courtesy when posting to a large group of strangers to err on the very, very conservative side (ie., spoiler box nearly everything.) Yes, to some people, say anyone under the age of 40, Citizen Kane has the opportunity of being a “new movie”. Why the hell is it so difficult to spoilerbox? Why is it so excrutiating to highlight to read them?
Granted, it would be easier to spoiler if “Spoiler” was one of the automatic tags, but typing an extra 18 characters isn’t really that hard.
I find that for really well done works I don’t mind spoilers. Anything Whedon, for example, I’ll gladly read spoilers, because for me the exciting thing is finding out HOW he works in what I hear is going to happen. It’s not spoiling anything to know Buffy kills Willow’s mother with a hedgehog, what’s exciting is seeing why and what the ramifications are. With less skilled writing (like Lost), I don’t want to know anything because the surprises themselves are the most exciting thing about the show. That doesn’t mean I don’t like Lost, or think that it’s a well written example of its kind, but frankly the fact that the TCM is Jack’s father is more entertaining than whatever Jack feels about that.
The only time spoilerboxes bug me is when I am weak willed and they present great temptation. But that’s clearly my own damn problem.
Oh, well, see, it turns out that this one guy who we thought was one kind of guy turned out to be a totally different kind of guy and was even rather infamous!
Oops, guess I shoulda spoilered that.
Now that, I think, is getting carried away. I can (reluctantly) see the usefullness of spoilers for current movies/books/whatever. Once they’ve been out for a while - oh well - too bad, too sad. I fell asleep 2/3rds of the way through Fortune Cookie (a 1968 movie) the other night. I don’t see any reason to be outraged if I stumble across someone explaining the ending.
A movie of the age of Citizen Kane, or even Lord of the Rings, generally is not watched because it’s a mystery, but because it’s a piece of the common culture. Hell, I’ve never even seen Citizen Kane, and I know that Rosebud was a fucking sled.
Which is not all that surprising when you realize that
No, I still think you should put spoiler boxes in if the thread is not *originally * about what you are spoiling. If I go into a thread that says “Top 10 funniest endings ever” and then get mad because someone spoiled the ending, then I’m an idiot. But if I’m merrily reading a thread entitled “The Secret Life of Tina Turner” and somebody comes along and says, “Oh! That’s just like in Harry Potter, where Hermoine dies!” (Disclaimer: Hermoine does not die) then I think you should have to put it in a spoiler box, since that was completely unexpected and out of left field.
I do try to avoid threads that give spoilers to things I plan to read/watch whenever possible. Especially read. I like to come up with my own impressions of books, and take away something independently from them, then have my reading be biased by whatever someone else has said. Movies I can deal with unless the spoiler is central to the whole movie.
If a thread says spoilers in the title, or even if it is clearly about a specific piece, then, yes, it’s your own lookout to avoid it.
I just watched Citizen Kane last night for the first time, and found myself wishing I didn’t know that Rosebud was the sled. Still, I managed to deal with my grief. Maybe I’ll start a Pit thread about it…
Do a lot of Simpsons gags suddenly make sense?
It’s not courteous to those of us that hate spoiler boxes. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t, I guess.
Spoiler boxes are way overused. There’s no need to box previews and speculation. If everyone is spoiler-tagging non-spoilers, how are we supposed to know which ones are safe and which ones aren’t? There are so many non-spoiler spoilers in Cafe Society that I end up highlighting everything anyway.
That brief period when spoiler boxes weren’t working made me happy. I’d like to see them completely disabled.
Word.
Well, I was aware of them beforehand, but yeah. In fact, it ruined part of it for me, because when they did the big song and dance number, all I could hear was the Simpsons version of the song. It’s Mr. Burns! Monty Burns!
Speculation I agree with, but previews can vary depending on the show and the situation. 24 is notorious for spoiling major plot points in their “On the next 24…” previews and in their TV and radio commercials. So in the 24 threads we have an informal rule that the info from previews and commercials go in spoiler boxes, because many of us intentionally avoid them. For Survivor, the “Next time on…” previews always misdirect and (almost) never give enough info to spoil the next episode. So in the Survivor threads it’s okay to discuss them without the boxes. Yes, it can get complicated - but first time offenders are treated with kid gloves. If a poster understands the 24 rule but continues to discuss the previews without boxes, that poster is being an asshole (but I’ve yet to see it happen).
Pash