Why do spoilers upset so many people?

Cafe Society
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Moderator comment: I understand Asbestos Mango’s desire to close this thread, but I’m going to leave it open… with the warning to all and sundry that in this forum, insults and personal attacks are not permitted.

I think the misunderstanding has been cleared up, there wasn’t any salt poured into any wounds, so I’m leaving the thread open, because I think the discussion is back on track and relevant and interesting.

Poster Comment: I agree with spoiling old movies – there’s always a new generation – but I’m not sure where to draw the line. “Hey, the New Testament says Jesus died and was resurrected!” … does that spoil the surprise?

I think there’s a quantitative difference between revealing a plot point that does, in fact, spoil a surprise, and one that’s really pretty much irrelevant. The “Rosebud” example, for instance, is irrelevant – really, in every sense of the word. Knowing what “Rosebud” refers to (we’ll never know what it “means”) doesn’t wreck the plot, since the characters don’t know and never find out, but are pursuing the mystery.

The fact that James Bond is NOT killed by Goldfinger doesn’t wreck the plot on first viewing – no one seriously thinks that he might be.

I think that’s quantitatively different from, say, revealing that Norman Bates in PSYCHO takes on his mother’s identity. That’s a plot twist that could indeed alter (“spoil”) the first viewing. And I echo Alan Smithee’s point – if the movie is a mystery, then people talking or writing about it should be more sensitive to keeping the mystery.

The thing is, people who want to go to a movie with no preconceptions should avoid reading any reviews, criticisms, commentary, trailers, etc. So some of the onus rests on the person themselves.

Here on the SDMBs, we try to “warn” people. The thread title should say “PSYCHO”, and someone who doesn’t want to have anything spoiled should be cautious about opening that thread. OTOH, the posters should be sensitive in putting things in spoiler boxes and in being sure that the thread title says “Spoilers”. If you didn’t put “Spoilers” in the thread title, one of the Moderators will be happy to edit it for you.

Them’s my thoughts.

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Hmm. Much as I hate to disagree with a Mod, the “Rosebud” mystery is relevant - it remains unknown to everyone, including the viewer, until the very end. We (the viewers) find out, but the characters in the movie don’t.

Whenever the subject of spoilers comes up, either here or IRL situations, someone who thinks he’s being clever just has to say, “Oh, and by the way, ‘Rosebud’ was his sled!” and almost everyone knows what it means. But it seems like there’s always one person who hasn’t seen Citizen Kane and doesn’t get it.

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I’ve never seen Citzen Kane, but I’ve been meaning to. Thanks for spoiling it, guys.

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I’ve never seen Citizen Kane either but I’ve known about the “Rosebud” thing for, gosh, as long as I can remember. It’s almost a standard reference in other works of popular culture. Hell, Julie Brown made a reference to it in “The Homecoming Queen’s Got a Gun”.

If blowero is, in fact, not whooshing us, then he is probably one of maybe twelve people on the planet who didn’t know about it, and the other eleven don’t have Internet access. OK, I’m being hyperbolic, but I think you get what I mean.
As I said before, once a work, especially a classic like Citizen Kane has been out in the universe for a certain period of time, it will have been talked about, referred to in other works, etc. to the point that certain plot points become part of general knowledge, even for a great majority of people who have never seen it. “It’s like that part in Citizen Kane where you find out Rosebud was a sled, but we’ll neve know who Johnny was 'cause… she’s dead.”

So, say, talking about the shower scene in Psycho probably wouldn’t constitute spoilage, but the point Dex referred to might be.

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First time I saw CK, back in the 70’s, it was in a film class, and it hadn’t reached the popular mythos/repuation it has now. I didn’t know what Rosebud was and when it was finally revealed, it was such a huge thing for me, on par with or over Usual suspects, SDixth Sense, Fight Club.

The thing is, when writing on a public message board, especially this who has posters in a very wide age range and from many countries, you can never assume what anyone has seen. Here in Sweden, we’re up to S.5 of Buffy and Angel has never been on air.
How would you know what’s been shown in India, Japan or even Smalltown USA? I had 28 days later on DVD before it was realeased for theatre in the US, not to mention Amelie, which seemed to take for ever to open over there. Would it have been fair to post about these movies, complete with spoilage in the thread title?

There’s a reason film makers, authors and the like don’t hand out spoiler information with the release of their work. There’s a reason professional reviewers don’t give away spoilers. And that reason is courtesy.

Spoilers are easy to find if you want them. I just typed ‘spoiler+buffy’ into google and got 58.500 hits. However, in doing so, I make an active, personal choice in seeking out spoilers. If I spent time on the BtVS message boards, I’d expect threat of spoilage. But when I visit CS to participate in an ongoing thread about whatever, and my eye catch something about Shamalamadingdong’s ‘The Village’, I prefer to know beforehand if opening the thread will spoil anything for me.

And I think we should do so, for the same reason we show respect to the only asthmatic non-smoker in a room full of smokers and don’t light up.

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Dude, I am in awe!

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Gaspode, I’m so envious! For me, it was the cartoon The Real Ghostbusters that spoiled it for me. :rolleyes: On the one hand, it’s so cool that a kid’s cartoon had sophisticated cultural references like that. On the other hand, they spoiled that movie for a whole generation of Saturday morning tv watchers. The irony is, I never knew what that episode of the cartoon was about until I saw the movie. As soon as I heard Orson Wells whisper Rosebud, I thought, “So that’s what the cartoon was about!” I also knew the movie was spoiled. And it did affect my enjoyment of it, if only because I thought it was spoiled. I think we should make a concerted effort to re-classify this information so that future generations can see the movie untainted.

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Nope. You didn’t “suggest” that. You asserted it, and added that whoever disagreed with your definition of what could or couldn’t be spoiled belonged to a “shrieking minority” (and other similar niceties) whose wishes you had no intend to respect (“not pandering for the hypersensitives” , etc…).

That’s not your opinions but your attitude which is an issue here. Your clearly stated despise for people who don’t share your ideas, and your lack of interest in respecting their wishes and the board rules.