A Minor Rant

[Bayushi_seikuro]

Like….in theory I get what you’re saying, it just doesn’t…make sense to me. Idk maybe it’s just that none of my favorite movies surprised me or maybe being surprised by a story development just doesn’t have the same impact on me as it does on others.

It’s obvious to you what value surprise has, and to me it’s quite obscure.

I think maybe to put it in gaming terms:

Let's say you're invested in a campaign (whatever system). You've sunk time and energy into the campaign. As a player, you generally like or dislike certain NPCs for various reasons. The day before the session, it gets out there's going to be a massive betrayal of the party when you get back to the session.

Whether you know any context about the who or why of the betrayal, no matter how good a player someone is, you are already going to know what's coming. Yes, you can still have a great session and roleplay accordingly, but for a decent amount of players, knowing there's a betrayal coming that session will color their experience by making them have a different kind of tension, the tension of waiting for the trap to go off.

YMMV

 

[Morrus]

I find it weird that people need to explain why spoilers lessen their enjoyment of something. It’s not something that needs defending: if it lessens your enjoyment, it lessens your enjoyment. It certainly does mine, going all the way back to having The Sixth Sense reveal undercut for me.

 

[Reynard]

When did this happen? I haven't noticed...oh, wait. I'm not on social media and I don't have a cell phone. Well, other than on Youtube, but just avoid anything movie/show related until I want to get informed/spoiled.

Like the Wheel of Time series. I've avoided everything about it. Just binge watched it the other day (23rd/24th). Just like I said I would. Best way for me to enjoy a series. Sometimes I have to wait a year or two though. I'm cool with that.

^_^

Paul L. Ming

Like I opened with: it's annoying that you can't have both, even for a couple days.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Like I opened with: it's annoying that you can't have both, even for a couple days.

This might be helpful context to the rant-

A History of Spoilers and their Relevance to Today

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...

www.enworld.org

 

[Echohawk]

No one in the theater when I saw Hamilton was unaware that Burr eventually shoots Hamilton. It’s given away in the first song, even if an audience member didn’t know it going in.

I have to admit that I was not expecting this thread to end up spoiling a theater production I haven't yet seen!

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Dude, I am explicitly speaking about differences in experience - so clearly, I am not saying it is universal. You are barking up the wrong tree there.

And I am explicitly referring to your last statement, which you later in this post admit was “overstated”. Then, here, you pretend I was referring to your entire post, and seem to use that to accuse me (quite absurdly since I was explicitly trying to figure out why people experience a thing I do not experience) of universalizing.

Well, yes, that's the point. I'm saying that, for some folks, there is a qualitatively different experience in the release of dramatic tension for some moments between when they do, and don't, know what is going to happen. You, by your own admission above, do not experience a difference. I often do.

I was (thankfully) unspoiled for that moment you speak of, and it was different the first and second times I saw it. That first experience cannot be relived in the same film, unless I completely forget that it happens (which is unlikely in the extreme, barring memory loss in old age).

We are not well-situated to describe subjective emotional experiences (indeed, this is part of why we have poets, I think). There was a shock, confusion, and uncertainty to it that is not there in the same way when you know it is coming.

The human mind processes emotions, and you can't stop it from doing so - when you know the result, you've already had time to think about it, have formed opinions, and preprocess the information. For some, unspoiled, they have an experience of feeling the moments before processing, and feeling the process of processing, if you will, which the spoiled cannot..

I've got a friend who finds those moments... distinctly unpleasant - she likens it to an anxiety attack. She almost never goes out to a movie without first reading a complete plot synopsis for that reason. When we discuss afterwards, there is very clearly a difference in the emotional experience of the film.

So, no, I am not universalizing anything.

Fair enough.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I think @Umbran explaining,not stating an immutable truth.

I get that you don't have a negative reaction to spoilers, but surely you can understand why other people might.

Not Beyond a vague “I know it’s a thing that happens because people have very strong reactions to it happening.”

I have to admit that I was not expecting this thread to end up spoiling a theater production I haven't yet seen!

I considered a spoiler thingie for non-Americans who haven’t seen it, but I figured a historical event from 1804 could reasonably just be discussed openly, regardless.

 

[Ryujin]

I have to admit that I was not expecting this thread to end up spoiling a theater production I haven't yet seen!

In this case American history books and the Star Trek original series episode "The Squire of Gothos" did that rather well.

 

[Longspeak]

I am really fed up with the fact that you basically can't both have a presence online -- social media, watching YouTube, visiting Reddit -- and not be able to wait 2 or 3 days to watch a movie or show without being spoiled on the big reveal or whatever. After 6 hours or less, your YouTube feed is filled with videos announcing the thing in the title or on the image. When did this become acceptable? When did the spoiler warning disappear and the waiting period to shout out secrets and endings go away?

It IS possible, with careful curation, to avoid spoilers. I've managed it for a few years.

But it also means I don't participate in entire segments of the online community. I used to frequent another well-known gaming forum, and it had a subforum dedicated to media. It was awful with spoilers so I stopped. I used to be part of the stackexchange for movies and TV, but it's worse, with spoilers in almost every question title. So I stopped.

I was actually so successful that when we got the Disney channel for a month for a promo, I was like "hey look, they made a Black Widow movie finally."

For Youtube, I have consistently told it not to show me entire channels that seem to exist for the sole purpose of ruining movies for you. If you start today, you might avoid spoilers for movies from later this year.

 

[Echohawk]

I considered a spoiler thingie for non-Americans who haven’t seen it, but I figured a historical event from 1804 could reasonably just be discussed openly, regardless.

In this case American history books and the Star Trek original series episode "The Squire of Gothos" did that rather well.

I'll freely admit that my American history is pretty patchy, and although I watched The Squire of Gothos relatively recently, I didn't associate that with Hamilton at all. That said, I didn't really mind the spoiler. Chances are that I'll have forgotten it long before I ever get a chance to see Hamilton in the theater. I just wasn't expecting a spoiler in a thread ranting about spoilers