The Last Potato Salad at the Outdoor BBQ- Thoughts on Spoilers

MarkB

Legend
The one I remember from back in my Usenet days was about the Firefly movie, Serenity, and it was by a regular member of the group who really didn't believe he'd spoiled anything.
He posted that the first main-cast death in the movie was tragic, but the second was shocking and came out of nowhere. He didn't consider this a spoiler, as he hadn't said who died or when.

And I've seen a few examples of the more deliberately trollish ones in Youtube comments. One in particular stands out - about a day after Star Wars The Force Awakens came out, someone posted a comment on a sci-fi related video that
it made him feel the same way he did when Han Solo was killed by his son Ben.
Carefully hand-crafted, I must admit.
 

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Milieu

Explorer
In addition, there is some research that suggests that while people believe that spoilers are bad, enjoyment is actually increased when you know what is coming (because of cognitive dissonance, or something science-y like that).
Single studies certainly should be taken with a grain of salt, but a related anecdote: my grandmother used to read books by reading the first few chapters, then skipping ahead to see how it ends. If she liked the ending, she would go back and read the middle.

Note to self- apparently, I am the only person with an abiding interest in the Great Meow Wars.
There are dozens of us! Dozens!

Just to give a little more explanation of meow posts: one of the Harvard students in the group that started the attack on the Beavis and Butthead group had initials CAT, so he would sometimes make posts randomly replacing words with "meow" like Henrietta Pussycat from Mister Rogers' Neighborhood. The Beavis and Butthead fans retaliated by spamming similar messages to make fun of him. Other people joined the bandwagon and it became a meme (although we didn't really call them that back then). Whereas nowadays most memes become dated after a week or two, memes back then had a longer shelf life. This one lasted around 2 years before finally dieing down.
 


DrunkonDuty

he/him
I hate that tv shows show me what's coming next week, or even after the break. Surprise is important to my enjoyment...

I used to cut teasers for a soap opera. And there's an art to doing it well. Knowing to cut before the spoil is pretty much key (Obvious, I know.) Ideally you want to build up a sense of "will it or won't it?" as you build the teaser.

Spoilers more broadly... I'm conflicted. Well, not conflicted. It's big case of it depends. Sometimes the drama depends on knowing what's coming. Sometimes by not knowing.

And then there's the re-watch, which I'll opine is different again. I think a test for being too reliant on twists is the level of re-watchability. Citizen Kane, very re-watchable. Sixth Sense, less so.

But I've side trackmyself. What I actually wanted to say about re-watching is that knowing what's coming can be a very different kind of fun.

Frank'n'Furter: Wait! I can explain.
Audience: It'd better be good, Frank. You got shot last time.
 

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