A Rant About Spoilers

[Littaly]

To me, it's not okay to spoil anything. Ever.

Never? Did you see my Dracula example above?

Seriously, what about when stuff passes into our social consciousness as a whole? Dracula being synonymous with vampires would be one example, but there are more recent ones: "Luke, I am your father" is a classic line that's formed the basis for countless jokes/references and is pretty much a general shorthand for Star Wars as a whole. The common joke about how Sean Bean always dies, that's a whole bunch of spoilers rolled into one. In fact, a whole lot of comedy, and even the media in general, relies on a shared knowledge of certain pieces of entertainment media. Any number of literary references that occur in everyday speech, not to mention in other literature, could technically count as spoilers. Pretty much any discussion of comic book continuity is going to be unavoidably riddled with spoilers, even on such a basic level as revealing the names of major characters. (Side note: in my experience people are way less bothered about spoilers for comics than for other media. Can anyone offer an explanation?)

A genuinely spoiler-free world would be significantly poorer in my opinion, if it wasn't basically impossible.

Well... no. Never ever is a clumsy slightly hyperbolic way of putting it.

Certain things are unavoidable at this point. The Empire Strikes Back is a good example, classic literature too. There's really nothing you can do about things like that and trying to enforce otherwise would be silly. And yeah, the other extreme where you're not allowed to talk openly about any major plot point in a work of art or entertainment isn't good either.

But even though the line of what has and what hasn't entered our social consciousness is somewhat blurry, a lot of things being spoiled clearly are not.

I'm more bothered by the attitude than anything else really. This idea that unless you watch something right after it comes out you're not really interested in it, and therefore it's OK if you're spoiled. I mean, I don't consider myself having much of a life, but even I don't camp outside my local store for the release of every major game, movie or book I'm interested in. And I'm not spending my nights going through a backlog of everything I'm remotely interested in that was released before I learned how to speak. Is it really that absurd of a thought that there are plenty of things out there that you want to get around to watching at one point or another but don't have time for right now?

And again, why start a yelling contest with people who take offense at being spoiled when it's so easy just to give people a heads up before you reveal major plot points? Sure, you can't think of everything and things slip, but most of the time it seems like it's being done just to spite people :-/

 

[pilouuuu]

Spoiler: Darth Vader is Luke's father. Feel free to hate me forever.

OT: If a person wants to avoid spoilers, there is a reasonable amount of care the person needs to take. Primarily, avoid facebook until you've seen the episode when it comes to GoT, TWD, or Dr. Who. People *will* talk about it. Sounds like the friend has an entitlement complex...meaning everyone has to take full responsibility for not spoiling him/her, whereas he/she does not have to take any precautions.

And saying that someone died on Game of Thrones is like saying "I ate food today." Saying there was a death there is not a spoiler...no matter what anyone says. Giving the name of the dead character, however, is a spoiler.

This is acceptable for the sole reason that Vader's identity and Luke's "noooo" reply are part of our culture already.
I don't think anyone should spoil anything, even if it has been released a long time ago.

Let's say I never got to see Sixth Sense. I decided to do so next week, after watching other movies on my to-see list. And then an idiotic prick says: "oh, at the end of the movie...". What's the reason to make that comment besides being an ass-hole?

No, spoiling things is disrespectul and wrong, no matter how old the spoiler may be.

By the way, Romeo and Juliet die at the end!

 

[DrOswald]

I have a guideline for when it is ok to talk about spoilers.

First of all, if you specifically know the person you are talking directly to has not seen the piece in question and intends to then it is never ok to talk major spoilers unless they specifically state they do not care. Even if it is something like Empire Strikes Back.

Second, I don't talk about major spoilers in a public setting without some sort of spoiler tag like "spoilers: Captain America 2" until after a set amount of time. Generally, 1 year for video games, 6 months from DVD release date, or 6 months from first air date. After this period I will avoid spoilers if there is not good reason not to. Of course, context matters. If you come into a Game of Thrones discussion thread and complain about spoilers you are a moron and deserve to have the plot spoiled. In addition, how well known the piece is plays into the calculation. Less well know will mean I will wait longer for spoilers to give people a chance to find it and watch it.

Minor spoilers are always fair game, but I generally try to avoid them if it isn't any trouble.

Once 5 years have past since the release I assume everyone who cares has seen it and will no longer attempt to avoid spoilers in any real sense.

 

[ninjaRiv]

I don't want to have to avoid the internet for ages, just because I don't have the right channel to watch GoT (I have to wait a full year for the DVD boxset. Man, I could rant about HBO's shitty shit for ages).

Of course, you could always read the books in the meantime. Then you'd hold all the spoiler cards

Actually, I've been trying to read the books for ages. I was ahead of the series until the end of season three. I'm a very slow reader, thanks to a tiny attention span.

Funny story! I spoiled the end of season three (The Red Wedding) on my own, after avoiding spoilers like the lague. I finished Book three and all I had heard is that people refused to watch the show ever again after the wedding. People went fucking crazy after that. I had no idea why. I decided to look it up. Little did I know, the third book is split in two in Europe, so when I thought I'd finished book three, I was actually only half way through. Ok, maybe that's not funny.

 

[Olas]

6 months. That is the longest I am giving you to get acclimatized to spoilers. That is me being generous. If you haven't seen a show or something within 6 months of it coming out, then you have no right to complain about spoilers. We cant't be expected to walk on eggshells forever to accommodate your lack of initiative in catching up. There are some exceptions, such as when dealing with adapted works, such as comic book movies or something like Game of Thrones. And I would like to point out that people who go out of their way to spoil stories for people before they even have a chance to experience them are just... the worst.

I never got this. Why is the amount of time after a certain thing has aired relevant at all? There are some people who haven't watched Citizen Kane or The Empire Strikes back and I wouldn't want to spoil the ending for them any more than for something that came out yesterday. There are so many shows and movies and books out there it's ridiculous to expect everyone to keep up to date on all of them. I bet a lot of people who watch Game of Thrones and think they should have the right to spoil season 1 wouldn't enjoy having books 4 and 5 spoiled to them. But it's their fault for not keeping up right?

But don't worry about spoiling A Song of Ice and Fire for me, I've only read the first book but I already know basically everything that happens.