Keoul said:
Yeah I see it as your own responsibility, even more so with tv shows and such that weren't adapted from a book. If a new episode came out then avoid any part of the internet with people talking like the plague until you've seen the episode
Wanna go on youtube? that's fine, just never scroll down to the comments, Wanna check out the escapist forums? that's fine, just avoid all threads with any mention of the show.
People shouldn't have an obligation to make sure you're caught up to whatever it is before talking about it since that is both unreasonable and would be impossible. Imagine being in a bar and wanting to talk about the latest Game of Thrones episode with a buddy, you'd have to ask everyone in the bar to check if they've watched it as well or else you'd risk spoiling it for someone and get told off.
AnarchistFish said:
I want to see these studies because I have never experienced this.
Here you go
http://static.squarespace.com/static/5033029a84ae7fae2e6a0a98/t/50d4c905e4b0e383f5b0aae6/1356122373363/Story%20Spoilers%20Don%E2%80%99t%20Spoil%20Stories.pdf
I have a couple of problems with this study and the conclusion they make.
Firstly, short stories aren't the same thing as novels or TV shows. They haven't controlled for this.
My suspicion would be that because novels and TV shows are longer, you're more likely to become deeply connected with the character's journey and the mystery of wondering where it will take them. Short stories are more likely to be based around a message or a philosophical idea intended to make you think and you're much less likely to get bored knowing the ending because they're shorter.
Either way, they'd need to do more research.
Secondly, and this is strongly related, not all spoilers and their respective stories are the same. These kinds of spoilers
(e.g., that the
condemned man?s daring escape is just a fantasy as the rope
snaps taut around his neck) or solved the crime (e.g., Poirot
discovers that the apparent target of attempted murder was in
fact the perpetrator)
frisky adolescents watching a couple
struggle with a baby are revealed to be previewing their own
futures, and the couple glimpsing their own pasts
are not the same as saying "xxx dies" or "xxx lives".
In the study's examples you can then try to predict how the character will develop in relation to your knowledge of what that character realises in the end and then witness it in action. Authors often give the reader that kind of omniscience for that very purpose.
But if all you're told is "xxx dies", all that tells you is that this character will die. It might not even be part of the story's ending (i.e. Harry Potter novels..). There's no character development to think about. All it does is destroy the mystery.
With Breaking Bad, much of the tension lies in "will he become a kingpin?, will he give it all up?, or will it all destroy him?". Spoilers like the one on the first page destroy that tension.
Think about The Sixth Sense. So much of its premise and how it fucks with your head is based around you
not knowing the ending whilst you're watching it. Because it's a psychological thriller, not a mystery or a literary story.
tldr; not all stories are the same and not all spoilers are the same and they'd need to do much much more research into this to conclude absolutely that "spoilers don't spoil" than this single fairly narrow albeit interesting study.
