I cannot stress how funny it is to imagine a movie being greenlit with the premise "Josh Hartnett is just, like, this really nice guy who takes his teenage daughter to the Eras Tour, and there are no shenanigans or plot twists whatsoever!" Maybe this is just people taking the received wisdom of "M. Night Shyamalan is the guy whose movies 100% hinge on a third-act plot twist" at face value, though.
Somehow we've gotten to a point where some people are insisting upon watching films with zero prior information, whilst others interact with them via AI voices reading wiki summaries on YouTube.
(I still remember my friend accidentally telling me the twist in The Sixth Sense five minutes into it...)
I think you have to take into account that we’re exposed to stuff much more than we used to be. There are whole movies/tv shows that I kind of feel like I’ve basically seen from screenshots, gifs, etc across social media even though I’ve never watched them. It’s actually incredibly rare to go into a piece of media totally blind these days, with no idea what to expect. And it can be a much more exciting experience. I’m not surprised people are turning against that, even if it’s in weird ways.
I think this has had a huge impact on culture, on paratexts usurping texts and the proliferation of anti-fandom bc of inevitable overexposure (big problem for me). There's some good Dominic Pettman work on the way cultural infrastructure has changed and how we approach it is different.
That said.... I don't think that relates to people who think the media can spoil itself. I wasn't exaggerating when I said I've seen foreshadowing called a spoiler! This seems an extreme overcorrection that is hard to rationalize beyond wanting to just be surprised at every turn.
Hot take, I love spoilers. Usually, it's when someone's telling me about a movie I will definitely not see. It's like they just saved me two hours of my life from having to watch it myself :)
I ended up cutting this quote but I very much agree with the sentiment—"A spoiler is at worst an irritation. At best, it's a liberation." Sometimes you do want to know what happens to know if it’s worth continuing/investing!
This is timely for me because I've been considering potential promotional material for a short story and how much to say about it. I don't fear spoilers much myself, but it's different when debating what to show others in advance, balancing what will interest people vs what I'd prefer people to experience for themselves.
In gaming communities one common complaint, that I have as well, is how some youtube channels will post videos with spoiler thumbnails for a new video game the exact day it comes out.
For example every time a new Mario game comes out there will be a video titled something like "evolution of final bosses in Mario games" with the surprising final form of the newest games final boss shown front and center in the thumbnail. It's been speculated that making people angry is actively part of their strategy, getting views from people complaining about the spoiler in their feed. Even as someone who doesn't usually mind spoilers I find them irritating with their thinly veiled rage bait.
The DanganRonpa series also has an interesting relationship with spoilers, fitting since it's a murder mystery. To avoid revealing the first victim, each game has had a version of a cutscene for use in trailers only that shows all characters going to the murder trial, when in game they're only going there because somebody died.
Then for the third mainline game, fake spoilers leaked ahead of launch, actively misleading people on the events of the game. Which is strangely fitting because lies vs truth is the central theme of that installment, so it has the most actively deceptive promotional material of the series even without the false leaks.
I also believe Metal Gear Solid 2 was somewhat infamous for how promotional material purposefully obscured who the player character was, making it look like you would play as the same character from the prior game when in fact it starred a brand new character.
Also as a final note on included trigger warnings, the game Disney Dreamlight Valley patched in a trigger warning for part of its main quest line. That was my first time seeing an in game trigger warning. I feel like it may have contributed to the narrative build up in some way, signaling the game was about to take its plot much more seriously than just a fetch quest.
"some youtube channels will post videos with spoiler thumbnails for a new video game the exact day it comes out" I've definitely seen this problem, and I wouldn't be surprised it the rage engagement is part of the reason why they do it--also being "first" is a step up they don't want to avoid. The way it's basically impossible to not be blasted by Youtube suggestions no doubt also exacerbates the spoiler rage.
I'm always fascinated with fake spoilers/misdirects in media--in my reading they were doing this with Survivor quite early on! And of course, even the spoiler pages of the early internet would either be completely spot on or entirely wrong. It's a great reminder of the way either how information gets miscommunicated or intentionally muddled for misdirects.
I cannot stress how funny it is to imagine a movie being greenlit with the premise "Josh Hartnett is just, like, this really nice guy who takes his teenage daughter to the Eras Tour, and there are no shenanigans or plot twists whatsoever!" Maybe this is just people taking the received wisdom of "M. Night Shyamalan is the guy whose movies 100% hinge on a third-act plot twist" at face value, though.
The movie even has a twist, but they can't get over the premise being ruined in advance they miss it.
Somehow we've gotten to a point where some people are insisting upon watching films with zero prior information, whilst others interact with them via AI voices reading wiki summaries on YouTube.
(I still remember my friend accidentally telling me the twist in The Sixth Sense five minutes into it...)
I know mystery movies are a thing places, maybe they can revitalize ticket sales by targeting the blind viewers!
I think you have to take into account that we’re exposed to stuff much more than we used to be. There are whole movies/tv shows that I kind of feel like I’ve basically seen from screenshots, gifs, etc across social media even though I’ve never watched them. It’s actually incredibly rare to go into a piece of media totally blind these days, with no idea what to expect. And it can be a much more exciting experience. I’m not surprised people are turning against that, even if it’s in weird ways.
I think this has had a huge impact on culture, on paratexts usurping texts and the proliferation of anti-fandom bc of inevitable overexposure (big problem for me). There's some good Dominic Pettman work on the way cultural infrastructure has changed and how we approach it is different.
That said.... I don't think that relates to people who think the media can spoil itself. I wasn't exaggerating when I said I've seen foreshadowing called a spoiler! This seems an extreme overcorrection that is hard to rationalize beyond wanting to just be surprised at every turn.
Hot take, I love spoilers. Usually, it's when someone's telling me about a movie I will definitely not see. It's like they just saved me two hours of my life from having to watch it myself :)
I ended up cutting this quote but I very much agree with the sentiment—"A spoiler is at worst an irritation. At best, it's a liberation." Sometimes you do want to know what happens to know if it’s worth continuing/investing!
This is timely for me because I've been considering potential promotional material for a short story and how much to say about it. I don't fear spoilers much myself, but it's different when debating what to show others in advance, balancing what will interest people vs what I'd prefer people to experience for themselves.
In gaming communities one common complaint, that I have as well, is how some youtube channels will post videos with spoiler thumbnails for a new video game the exact day it comes out.
For example every time a new Mario game comes out there will be a video titled something like "evolution of final bosses in Mario games" with the surprising final form of the newest games final boss shown front and center in the thumbnail. It's been speculated that making people angry is actively part of their strategy, getting views from people complaining about the spoiler in their feed. Even as someone who doesn't usually mind spoilers I find them irritating with their thinly veiled rage bait.
The DanganRonpa series also has an interesting relationship with spoilers, fitting since it's a murder mystery. To avoid revealing the first victim, each game has had a version of a cutscene for use in trailers only that shows all characters going to the murder trial, when in game they're only going there because somebody died.
Then for the third mainline game, fake spoilers leaked ahead of launch, actively misleading people on the events of the game. Which is strangely fitting because lies vs truth is the central theme of that installment, so it has the most actively deceptive promotional material of the series even without the false leaks.
I also believe Metal Gear Solid 2 was somewhat infamous for how promotional material purposefully obscured who the player character was, making it look like you would play as the same character from the prior game when in fact it starred a brand new character.
Also as a final note on included trigger warnings, the game Disney Dreamlight Valley patched in a trigger warning for part of its main quest line. That was my first time seeing an in game trigger warning. I feel like it may have contributed to the narrative build up in some way, signaling the game was about to take its plot much more seriously than just a fetch quest.
"some youtube channels will post videos with spoiler thumbnails for a new video game the exact day it comes out" I've definitely seen this problem, and I wouldn't be surprised it the rage engagement is part of the reason why they do it--also being "first" is a step up they don't want to avoid. The way it's basically impossible to not be blasted by Youtube suggestions no doubt also exacerbates the spoiler rage.
I'm always fascinated with fake spoilers/misdirects in media--in my reading they were doing this with Survivor quite early on! And of course, even the spoiler pages of the early internet would either be completely spot on or entirely wrong. It's a great reminder of the way either how information gets miscommunicated or intentionally muddled for misdirects.
Ultimate spoiler is Shakespeare telling you how Romeo and Juliet ends in the first few lines