According to a new study, people are not bothered by knowing how a story ends, even when the story involves a surprising plot twist. In fact, they tend to prefer knowing in advance.
Is it time to retire the spoiler tag?
I don’t know where the good folks at UC San Diego found the morons they used as test subjects, but no, don’t give me any spoilers.
Seriously, why would anyone want to know the twist ending at the beginning? It makes no sense.
I usually feel this way. If reading one sentence or being told one thing is going to completely ruin my enjoyment of watching a whole movie or reading a whole book, then it’s not worth my time anyway. It’s the journey and not the destination, and all that.
As far as the study, maybe people don’t feel like being manipulated? Twist endings are great ways to manipulate an audience, but if the audience knows the twist ahead of time, then they can enjoy it by looking at all the details. That’s my guess.
For most things, knowing spoilers won’t ruin it (with some exceptions - The Usual Suspects)
but even though it won’t ruin it, I would still prefer not to know in advance
The unknown is part of the journey.
That study is far too narrow to arrive at the conclusion stated in the article’s headline. I know from experience that, in most case, knowing the ending drastically reduces my enjoyment of something. Hell, I was just reading Gerald’s Game a few months ago before my roommate asked me if I reached the part where the main character [spoiler] and I lost all interest to continue reading, even with him proclaiming there was more to the story. Just didn’t care.
There is no way Sixth Sense would have been as impactful had the ending been known going in.
I’ve never cared one whit about spoilers and occasionally seek them out.
I almost always read the last page first. Spoil away. Doesn’t ruin anything, for me.
I’ll go one further – sometimes I’ll record a game being played by my favorite college football team if I can’t watch it in real time. I will intentionally find out if they won before I decide if I want to watch the recording.
Yeah, I don’t really care about spoilers. There are a lot of movies and books that, let’s be honest, I’m never going to read. Dr. Zhivago? Pffft. Gone With the Wind? Yeah right. If knowing that Rosebud is the sled means I get a reference in a show, you bet your bippy I’ll get myself spoilered. I often watch movies and tv shows with the wiki synopsis on hand so I can read ahead at critical junctures.
I’m pretty spoiler-averse. It’s not the end of the world when it does happen but I find it much more exciting facing the unknown.
Never ever ever ever want to know spoilers. Ever. I don’t read the last page of a book, I don’t try to figure out what my Christmas presents are, I don’t want to know the result of the Olympic event before I have a chance to watch it.
NO spoilers for me, thanks. Srsly.
One of the reasons we go see films on opening day is so that people cannot spoil it for us. Granted, it is not a mortal sin, but I can think of many films and books that would have been less fun/interesting if I had known the ending in advance.
Often though, for books and films I have no intention of reading/seeing, I will gladly open a thread with spoilers just to see how it ended. In those cases, bring it on!
I do think some threads here keep those spoiler tags on a bit too long. At some point, if a film is already hitting broadcast television, I don’t think it is unfair to mention that the Titanic does in fact sink, without spoiler boxes.
I generally prefer not to be spoiled.
However, once a particular spoiler is out, it is difficult to unlearn it. Sometimes with age the plot points of books may get sufficiently dulled to reread them anew, but usually you start remembering. But even when you know the outcome, you can still enjoy the experience for looking for the more subtle tie ins that foreshadowed or otherwise linked up. So there are ways to enjoy a “spoiled” work.
Twist endings and mystery resolutions can be less pleasing when the audience feels manipulated, like the surprise wasn’t earned. Surprises are good when they fit the story presented, but they feel manipulative when they come out of left field. If you can reread the work and see all the subtle points directing you to the surprise, then it is good. If you reread it knowing the ending and it still comes out of left field, that’s a manipulation.
Particularly considering the explicitly say such within the first 15 minutes of the movie 
I have a lousy memory for entertainment. I reread books, sometimes within the same year and while I’m not surprised by major plot points most of the subtle details it’s more of a reminded of than a remembered feeling.
So while I don’t seek out or enjoy spoilers I’m pretty resistant to harm from them. However the one example I’ve run into in the last year was pretty annoying - for some reason I can’t remember it took me a couple of days to watch the finale of Survivor and for some reason I was watching it on the CTV website. Oh it’s coming back to me - there was a problem with the iTunes download and I couldn’t get it fixed so I gave up and went to the website.
So on their streaming page - not the forums or the articles section but the area people would go to specifically to watch the episode - the subtitle was “Congratulations to “winner”” (who I now can’t remember. SEE, bad memory) I was annoyed.
Exactly. I accidentally spoiled an Amazing Race for a friend and she couldn’t bring herself to even try watching the episode. I’ve also had Survivor spoiled for me and drastically enjoy the show as a result.
Heck, spoilers don’t have to be explicit. I remember when Ken Jennings was on his Jeopardy! streak and A&E announced they were running a biography episode on him the following Wednesday. Instantly, I knew his streak would end on Monday or Tuesday because they wouldn’t run the show at all without being able to announce his final total.
Similarly, I saw a cheesy (but possibly scientifically prescient) TV movie called The Twilight of the Golds in which a woman learns through genetic screening that her fetus is probably - gasp! - gay! And then conflict ensued with her husband, her father, her brother (who was gay as French horn) etc. yadda yadda, abort or not to abort… then Rosie O’Donnell showed up playing some character who relation to the plot I forget and I figured she never would have agreed to be in the film if the gay fetus was aborted, so that took all the tension right out of the story.
Nope. It would bug me, in the cases of many of my favorite mopvies. I was extremely annoyed when Roger Ebert, for example, reveals the twist ending. He’s actually done this, claiming that he had permission from the director. I’ll bet. Critics just ate not being able to comment on everything. There’s also a general feeling that any such plot twists are somehow not serious, and detract from the maturity of a work. I strongly disagree, and I’d be pissed if anyone had revealed the ending of The Sting, or Sleuth, or Charade, or The Last of Sheila, or Body Heat, or The Sixth Sense, or a number of other flicks where it makes a difference.
I also hate it when a story is spoiled. However, I do notice in the last 25 years there seems to be more restraint on the part of film critics in revealing important plot twists in movies. You mentioned Ebert as an exception but I also think he usually only discusses a plot twist after a certain amount of time has gone by. I seem to recall that in the past Ebert did reveal plot twists in reviews if he hated the movie and didn’t want anybody to see it. Some critics still do this and rationalize it by saying, “There, I’ve saved you $10 and two hours of your life!”
I’d rather not be spoiled, but it doesn’t ruin regular entertainment for me. But sports are a whole other thing. If I know the score of a game, I won’t watch the recording. I’ll read the recap & maybe catch a highlight or 2. The whole point of sports to me is you don’t know what will happen and anything could.