Snarf Zagyg
Notorious Liquefactionist
Building on my recent trend of meta-threads, I observed that there was a thread that was a poll about spoilers in order to discuss the events in another thread that may or may not have involved spoilers.
Now, with full apologies to @TheSword for meta-threading his thread, I wanted to ranch out in a slightly different direction. After all, if past is prologue, then understanding the history of "SPOILERS" might be helpful when understanding current issues and debates over spoilers.
PLEASE BE AWARE THAT I WILL REFERENCE BOTH SPECIFIC SPOILERS AND ALLUDE TO THINGS THAT CAN BE SPOILED. THE SPECIFIC ENDINGS THAT I WILL SPOIL WILL BE:
ROMEO & JULIET
PLANET OF THE APES
CITIZEN KANE
STAR TREK II (WRATH OF KHAN)
IF YOU BELIEVE THAT THESE ARE THINGS THAT WILL BE SPOILED FOR YOU, THEN DON'T READ ANY FURTHER. IN ADDITION, I WILL BE REFERRING TO THINGS THAT CAN BE SPOILED BUT NOT PROVIDING THE SPOILERS.
1. National Lampoon and the Prehistory of the Spoiler
As a general rule, it was not a common conception prior the middle of the twentieth century that a piece of media (books, movies, etc.) could be spoiled. It wasn't that media didn't have plots, or twists, or even endings that could shock; it was more that these plot points were not considered so integral to the work that knowledge of the plot points prior to experiencing the work would make the work itself unenjoyable.
A simple example would be one everyone is likely familiar with. In Romeo & Juliet ... the main characters die at the end. Perhaps you think it should be shocking, a twist... yet just in case you either don't remember your mandatory reading, or never read it, this is a little bit from how the play starts -
A pair of star-cross’d lovers take their life; Whose misadventur’d piteous overthrows / Doth with their death bury their parents’ strife.
That's right- Shakespeare "spoils" the ending at the beginning. Because it's a tragedy! The power isn't in any twist or surprise. We know where the train is going; the tragedy is no one can get it off the tracks.
However, with the rise of cinema in the twentieth century, and more importantly, the emphasis placed on thrills, novelty, and shock, the idea of a surprising ending that was best experienced fresh began to have currency. One of the earliest examples of this is from Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho, a movie famous for having several unexpected twists, including a major one at the end. Hitchcock implored, "Please don't give away the ending, it's the only one we have." This is in stark contrast with movies like Citizen Kane, which had major endings that were revelatory, but were never considered spoilers; after all, the point of Citizen Kane should not be lessened in any way from the common knowledge that rosebud is a sled. Arguably, though, Hitchcock's well-publicized messages and restrictions (no one could enter the theater after it began) were as much about marketing the film as they were about spoilers.
And from that pre-history, we get the term spoiler in 1971, with Douglas Kenney and a National Lampoon article. As he put it in while coining the term-
“Spoilers! What are they? Simply the trick ending to every mystery novel and movie you’re ever liable to see. Saves time and money!”
The premise of the article was just to give away the endings of movies (such as Psycho) and books (such as Agatha Christie novels). As a joke, and as a proto-troll, it was perfect. More importantly, it struck a sort of zeitgeist with the type of people who read that book at the time (similar to the type of people who might be reading this forum now) and the use of the term stuck and began to spread.
2. Usenet, Puzzles, ROT13, and the Meow Wars.
After the seminal 1971 article, there were sporadic uses of the term spoilers in the geek community. The term was used in the Science Fiction community, and began to be used in mailing lists by no later than 1979- specifically, with regards to Star Trek, and those who wanted to talk about the latest movie. But the most important date is 1982. Because that's when we get the confluence of three important factors: first, the release of a new Star Trek movie (Wrath of Khan) that had a twist ending. Second, it was a Star Trek movie, which meant it was relevant to a community that was using the term "spoilers" already. Third, and finally, USENET.
Brief aside- usenet was, for all practical purposes, the "internet" and the "www" for most people in the 80s and 90s (until the http protocol really took off). Along with ftp (file transfer protocol), and smtp (email) usenet was most of the internet for most people from its invention in 1980 until mosaic. Think of it like this forum- it allowed for people to talk and communicate, organized by topic. A lot of the terms (flame, spam, trolls) and a lot of the netiquette we still observe today are derived from usenet.
Anyway, here is the magic post that started a s spoiler revolution:
uicsovax!hamilton Jun 8 00:47:00 1982
[SPOILER ALERT]
regarding Spock's parting gesture to McCoy, it wouldn't surprize me if
that's how they bring him back (if they do); but then, i have a low opinion
of ST's script(s). Spock's farewell to Kirk sounded pretty final to me.
wayne hamilton
(decvax!pur-ee!uiucdcs!uicsovax!hamilton)
BOOM! Mic ... dropped. On the one hand, kudos for starting a revolution! And for providing a spoiler alert given the movie had been released four days earlier. On the other hand ... c'mon, that's not much of a warning, and you can't exactly un-see that.
From there, both "spoilers" and "spoiler alert" became a more accepted part of usenet culture, and from there, internet culture (email lists, etc.). Two primary ways of hiding spoilers came about-
A. The "space" method. You'd indicate that there were spoilers ahead, and then leave a sufficient amount of blank space prior to the reveal. This also was part of the later meme of "wait for it."
B. ROT13. A simple cypher that consists of shifting each letter by 13 postitions. A's became N's, B's became O's, and so on. This was used for spoilers, the punch lines to jokes, or offensive language.
The idea of spoilers was especially widespread in puzzle groups on usenet- obviously, if you want to provide a puzzle for people to solve and a solution, you don't want to "spoil" the answer. But along with that, it was also used to avoid giving away endings that people didn't want to .... spoil.
That said, the issue of spoiling was very much considered voluntary. Other than movies that were currently released with twists, it wasn't considered "a big deal." If you look as late as 1995 Usenet guides, they will have long descriptions of flamewars and trolling, but the only mentions of spoilers will usually be in a quick aside about ROT13. Not about etiquette.
....but then came the great Meow Wars. This is impossible to describe, so very (very, very) briefly- a fight broke out in a Beavis & Butthead usenet group. So people started trolling that group by posting "meow" posts to that group. And then crossposting to other groups. At a sufficiently high level, this was just more trolling (aka, p**pposting). But the amount and the scale of the Meow Wars was unprecedented- in large part, because the internet was now open to a lot more people. The overall issue of these wars is beyond the scope of this post, but you are welcome to look it up - it has interesting antecedents to issues today. But along with all the meows, came a very specific form of trolling- posting spoilers, without warning, not to discuss something but solely in a desire to ruin it for other people.
This activity, born out of the Meow Wars, quickly became an issue given that shows like Babylon 5 were currently airing ... and the later release of Sixth Sense in the summer of 1999, a movie that certainly could be spoiled. So the period from 1996 to 1999 was the beginning of the use of spoiling as a specific, troll-y activity.
3. From the Internet into Popular Culture; the Rise of Spoilers and the Backlash
The early 2000s saw a sea change in the way that spoilers were viewed. While it might seem remarkable to people today, it was common for reviews of media (movies, books, and so on) to provide spoilers in their reviews; while there might be some restraint by some critics for particular cases (such as movies with "twist endings") there was no general idea that discussing the plot of a movie when reviewing it was a bad thing. This began to change in the 2000s, likely influenced by internet culture; in 2005, Roger Ebert wrote an influential article on spoilers in which he discussed why he began including spoiler warnings in his on-line reviews; perhaps as importantly, he specifically called out two people for revealing the ending of a movie (Million Dollar Baby) for the sole reason that they had a political/ideological/moral disagreement with the movie.
Still, up to this time, the issue of spoilers was largely confined to things that had just been released. Critics would debate how long they had to wait before discussing important plot twists in a movie. People on the internet would worry about a movie- is it okay to talk about the movie if it had been out for several months, but still in theaters? How long was sufficient?
But then came the streamers- Netflix most notably. Suddenly, you had two issue pop up at the same time. First, you had the practice of Netflix (and others) releasing an entire season's worth of TV at once; if people are watching a series at different rates, when is it okay to discuss a plot point? Before, when TV had certain prescribed viewing periods, it was pretty simple; now, you had no idea how long people were taking, and it could be frustrating to have to wait to talk about something you loved and binged just for everyone else to catch up. The other issue is that these streaming services would release whole material that had not previously been available; if, for example, Netflix released all of Battlestar Galactica in 2009, are you allowed to talk about the things you saw in 2003?
But this transition carried with it a rise in only people making intemperate demands for spoiler-free spaces, but a backlash to those demands. The first and most notorious case of this was likely the campaign by Andrew Jarecki, who complained that the entry for his movie Catfish on wikipedia ruined the movie because it spoiled the plot. Later, as people began to complain about spoilers in all sorts of contexts, the demand for "SPOILER ALERTS" became an easy target of mockery- there was both a notable Portlandia skit in 2013 and a Key & Peele skit in 2015 that went after the issue of spoiler alerts, and the people who demand them for everything.
And that, as far as I know, is where we are at.
4. Conclusion- Spoilers are a matter of etiquette.
I keep coming back to the 2005 article by Ebert, simply because he diagnosed the same problem that arose during the Meow Wars; the issue is never spoilers per se, it's jerks. Jerks can weaponize anything. A person who deliberately spoils things solely for the reasons of reducing the enjoyment of other people is a jerk. There is a term for a person who delights in watching something before you in order to tell you what happens and reduce your own enjoyment; that term is "older sibling." If the person doing that isn't your older familiar relation, though, they are just a jerk. You continue to see this today- people who disagree with a work of art, or just like to see the world burn, and deliberately try to spoil it for everyone else.
This is wrong. Not because of the spoilers, but because of the intent of trolling.
On the other hand, "spoilers" shouldn't be a catch-all attempt to silence the conversations of others. Jarecki might wish that wikipedia didn't "spoil" his film, but the purpose of wikipedia is to have facts, not to avoid spoilers. I wrote at the top that I'd spoil Planet of the Apes; it is nearly impossible to not know the big reveal at the end of the movie, simply because it gets referenced, repeatedly, over and over again in culture. Just look at the picture at this TVTROPES page and go from there.
And because spoilers, and spoiler alerts, are fundamentally an issue of etiquette for both the speaker and the audience, there is no obviously correct answer in terms of what is, and isn't, appropriate. I personally believe that in general discussions, spoilers are only reserved for things that have been recently released. On the other hand, I recently put out two separate "binge" guides for September here on enworld, and I deliberately left out information (was vague) on the things I was recommending because I worked under the assumption that if someone was taking the recommendation, they likely hadn't seen it yet, and would find out for themselves. But the courtesy also works from the P.O.V. of the audience; insisting that your own view of spoilers must take precedence, even when the material is years or decades old, seems inconsiderate of others as well.
Finally, I would put out the following as an interesting example to think about. When Avengers Infinity Wars and Endgame came out, the House of Mouse was insistent that no one provide spoilers. It's now been more than two years. Everyone who has wanted to has either seen it in theaters, bought it on DVD, or seen it on streaming. In addition, you can't really understand anything going on in. the MCU today ... or, for that matter, a good majority of memes and T-Shirts ... without understanding what happened. So, do you think the events are still covered by spoilers? Why or why not?
Now, with full apologies to @TheSword for meta-threading his thread, I wanted to ranch out in a slightly different direction. After all, if past is prologue, then understanding the history of "SPOILERS" might be helpful when understanding current issues and debates over spoilers.
PLEASE BE AWARE THAT I WILL REFERENCE BOTH SPECIFIC SPOILERS AND ALLUDE TO THINGS THAT CAN BE SPOILED. THE SPECIFIC ENDINGS THAT I WILL SPOIL WILL BE:
ROMEO & JULIET
PLANET OF THE APES
CITIZEN KANE
STAR TREK II (WRATH OF KHAN)
IF YOU BELIEVE THAT THESE ARE THINGS THAT WILL BE SPOILED FOR YOU, THEN DON'T READ ANY FURTHER. IN ADDITION, I WILL BE REFERRING TO THINGS THAT CAN BE SPOILED BUT NOT PROVIDING THE SPOILERS.
1. National Lampoon and the Prehistory of the Spoiler
As a general rule, it was not a common conception prior the middle of the twentieth century that a piece of media (books, movies, etc.) could be spoiled. It wasn't that media didn't have plots, or twists, or even endings that could shock; it was more that these plot points were not considered so integral to the work that knowledge of the plot points prior to experiencing the work would make the work itself unenjoyable.
A simple example would be one everyone is likely familiar with. In Romeo & Juliet ... the main characters die at the end. Perhaps you think it should be shocking, a twist... yet just in case you either don't remember your mandatory reading, or never read it, this is a little bit from how the play starts -
A pair of star-cross’d lovers take their life; Whose misadventur’d piteous overthrows / Doth with their death bury their parents’ strife.
That's right- Shakespeare "spoils" the ending at the beginning. Because it's a tragedy! The power isn't in any twist or surprise. We know where the train is going; the tragedy is no one can get it off the tracks.
However, with the rise of cinema in the twentieth century, and more importantly, the emphasis placed on thrills, novelty, and shock, the idea of a surprising ending that was best experienced fresh began to have currency. One of the earliest examples of this is from Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho, a movie famous for having several unexpected twists, including a major one at the end. Hitchcock implored, "Please don't give away the ending, it's the only one we have." This is in stark contrast with movies like Citizen Kane, which had major endings that were revelatory, but were never considered spoilers; after all, the point of Citizen Kane should not be lessened in any way from the common knowledge that rosebud is a sled. Arguably, though, Hitchcock's well-publicized messages and restrictions (no one could enter the theater after it began) were as much about marketing the film as they were about spoilers.
And from that pre-history, we get the term spoiler in 1971, with Douglas Kenney and a National Lampoon article. As he put it in while coining the term-
“Spoilers! What are they? Simply the trick ending to every mystery novel and movie you’re ever liable to see. Saves time and money!”
The premise of the article was just to give away the endings of movies (such as Psycho) and books (such as Agatha Christie novels). As a joke, and as a proto-troll, it was perfect. More importantly, it struck a sort of zeitgeist with the type of people who read that book at the time (similar to the type of people who might be reading this forum now) and the use of the term stuck and began to spread.
2. Usenet, Puzzles, ROT13, and the Meow Wars.
After the seminal 1971 article, there were sporadic uses of the term spoilers in the geek community. The term was used in the Science Fiction community, and began to be used in mailing lists by no later than 1979- specifically, with regards to Star Trek, and those who wanted to talk about the latest movie. But the most important date is 1982. Because that's when we get the confluence of three important factors: first, the release of a new Star Trek movie (Wrath of Khan) that had a twist ending. Second, it was a Star Trek movie, which meant it was relevant to a community that was using the term "spoilers" already. Third, and finally, USENET.
Brief aside- usenet was, for all practical purposes, the "internet" and the "www" for most people in the 80s and 90s (until the http protocol really took off). Along with ftp (file transfer protocol), and smtp (email) usenet was most of the internet for most people from its invention in 1980 until mosaic. Think of it like this forum- it allowed for people to talk and communicate, organized by topic. A lot of the terms (flame, spam, trolls) and a lot of the netiquette we still observe today are derived from usenet.
Anyway, here is the magic post that started a s spoiler revolution:
uicsovax!hamilton Jun 8 00:47:00 1982
[SPOILER ALERT]
regarding Spock's parting gesture to McCoy, it wouldn't surprize me if
that's how they bring him back (if they do); but then, i have a low opinion
of ST's script(s). Spock's farewell to Kirk sounded pretty final to me.
wayne hamilton
(decvax!pur-ee!uiucdcs!uicsovax!hamilton)
BOOM! Mic ... dropped. On the one hand, kudos for starting a revolution! And for providing a spoiler alert given the movie had been released four days earlier. On the other hand ... c'mon, that's not much of a warning, and you can't exactly un-see that.
From there, both "spoilers" and "spoiler alert" became a more accepted part of usenet culture, and from there, internet culture (email lists, etc.). Two primary ways of hiding spoilers came about-
A. The "space" method. You'd indicate that there were spoilers ahead, and then leave a sufficient amount of blank space prior to the reveal. This also was part of the later meme of "wait for it."
B. ROT13. A simple cypher that consists of shifting each letter by 13 postitions. A's became N's, B's became O's, and so on. This was used for spoilers, the punch lines to jokes, or offensive language.
The idea of spoilers was especially widespread in puzzle groups on usenet- obviously, if you want to provide a puzzle for people to solve and a solution, you don't want to "spoil" the answer. But along with that, it was also used to avoid giving away endings that people didn't want to .... spoil.
That said, the issue of spoiling was very much considered voluntary. Other than movies that were currently released with twists, it wasn't considered "a big deal." If you look as late as 1995 Usenet guides, they will have long descriptions of flamewars and trolling, but the only mentions of spoilers will usually be in a quick aside about ROT13. Not about etiquette.
....but then came the great Meow Wars. This is impossible to describe, so very (very, very) briefly- a fight broke out in a Beavis & Butthead usenet group. So people started trolling that group by posting "meow" posts to that group. And then crossposting to other groups. At a sufficiently high level, this was just more trolling (aka, p**pposting). But the amount and the scale of the Meow Wars was unprecedented- in large part, because the internet was now open to a lot more people. The overall issue of these wars is beyond the scope of this post, but you are welcome to look it up - it has interesting antecedents to issues today. But along with all the meows, came a very specific form of trolling- posting spoilers, without warning, not to discuss something but solely in a desire to ruin it for other people.
This activity, born out of the Meow Wars, quickly became an issue given that shows like Babylon 5 were currently airing ... and the later release of Sixth Sense in the summer of 1999, a movie that certainly could be spoiled. So the period from 1996 to 1999 was the beginning of the use of spoiling as a specific, troll-y activity.
3. From the Internet into Popular Culture; the Rise of Spoilers and the Backlash
The early 2000s saw a sea change in the way that spoilers were viewed. While it might seem remarkable to people today, it was common for reviews of media (movies, books, and so on) to provide spoilers in their reviews; while there might be some restraint by some critics for particular cases (such as movies with "twist endings") there was no general idea that discussing the plot of a movie when reviewing it was a bad thing. This began to change in the 2000s, likely influenced by internet culture; in 2005, Roger Ebert wrote an influential article on spoilers in which he discussed why he began including spoiler warnings in his on-line reviews; perhaps as importantly, he specifically called out two people for revealing the ending of a movie (Million Dollar Baby) for the sole reason that they had a political/ideological/moral disagreement with the movie.
Still, up to this time, the issue of spoilers was largely confined to things that had just been released. Critics would debate how long they had to wait before discussing important plot twists in a movie. People on the internet would worry about a movie- is it okay to talk about the movie if it had been out for several months, but still in theaters? How long was sufficient?
But then came the streamers- Netflix most notably. Suddenly, you had two issue pop up at the same time. First, you had the practice of Netflix (and others) releasing an entire season's worth of TV at once; if people are watching a series at different rates, when is it okay to discuss a plot point? Before, when TV had certain prescribed viewing periods, it was pretty simple; now, you had no idea how long people were taking, and it could be frustrating to have to wait to talk about something you loved and binged just for everyone else to catch up. The other issue is that these streaming services would release whole material that had not previously been available; if, for example, Netflix released all of Battlestar Galactica in 2009, are you allowed to talk about the things you saw in 2003?
But this transition carried with it a rise in only people making intemperate demands for spoiler-free spaces, but a backlash to those demands. The first and most notorious case of this was likely the campaign by Andrew Jarecki, who complained that the entry for his movie Catfish on wikipedia ruined the movie because it spoiled the plot. Later, as people began to complain about spoilers in all sorts of contexts, the demand for "SPOILER ALERTS" became an easy target of mockery- there was both a notable Portlandia skit in 2013 and a Key & Peele skit in 2015 that went after the issue of spoiler alerts, and the people who demand them for everything.
And that, as far as I know, is where we are at.
4. Conclusion- Spoilers are a matter of etiquette.
I keep coming back to the 2005 article by Ebert, simply because he diagnosed the same problem that arose during the Meow Wars; the issue is never spoilers per se, it's jerks. Jerks can weaponize anything. A person who deliberately spoils things solely for the reasons of reducing the enjoyment of other people is a jerk. There is a term for a person who delights in watching something before you in order to tell you what happens and reduce your own enjoyment; that term is "older sibling." If the person doing that isn't your older familiar relation, though, they are just a jerk. You continue to see this today- people who disagree with a work of art, or just like to see the world burn, and deliberately try to spoil it for everyone else.
This is wrong. Not because of the spoilers, but because of the intent of trolling.
On the other hand, "spoilers" shouldn't be a catch-all attempt to silence the conversations of others. Jarecki might wish that wikipedia didn't "spoil" his film, but the purpose of wikipedia is to have facts, not to avoid spoilers. I wrote at the top that I'd spoil Planet of the Apes; it is nearly impossible to not know the big reveal at the end of the movie, simply because it gets referenced, repeatedly, over and over again in culture. Just look at the picture at this TVTROPES page and go from there.
And because spoilers, and spoiler alerts, are fundamentally an issue of etiquette for both the speaker and the audience, there is no obviously correct answer in terms of what is, and isn't, appropriate. I personally believe that in general discussions, spoilers are only reserved for things that have been recently released. On the other hand, I recently put out two separate "binge" guides for September here on enworld, and I deliberately left out information (was vague) on the things I was recommending because I worked under the assumption that if someone was taking the recommendation, they likely hadn't seen it yet, and would find out for themselves. But the courtesy also works from the P.O.V. of the audience; insisting that your own view of spoilers must take precedence, even when the material is years or decades old, seems inconsiderate of others as well.
Finally, I would put out the following as an interesting example to think about. When Avengers Infinity Wars and Endgame came out, the House of Mouse was insistent that no one provide spoilers. It's now been more than two years. Everyone who has wanted to has either seen it in theaters, bought it on DVD, or seen it on streaming. In addition, you can't really understand anything going on in. the MCU today ... or, for that matter, a good majority of memes and T-Shirts ... without understanding what happened. So, do you think the events are still covered by spoilers? Why or why not?
