Spoilers are meaningful because you can only watch a movie or read a book or whatever for the first time once. You can only be truly surprised once. You can always consume the media again to get spoiler-enhanced version, you can never go the other way without a lobotomy.
At the same time, the argument was made that the reason somebody might only just be watching BSG in 2019 is because there is just more content available than one can enjoy in a lifetime. Which is true!
So...watch something else. You can never erase my Lost spoilers from your brain, but you can watch one of the six thousand other shows out there that I didn’t accidentally spoil for you.
People shouldn’t maliciously spoil shit. And there are reasonable measures that one should consider following to reduce the risk of accidentally spoiling things for others. But at a certain point people should be able to discuss plots and themes of things without having to poll every room or thread or party to ensure every last person has seen it. And if somebody finds out that Vader is his father and has their Star Wars experience diminished because of it, they’ll be fine. They can watch Star Trek instead. It’s bascially the same thing, right?
This assumes media is interchangeable. Which is just not true. On quality if nothing else.
Spoilers are meaningful because you can only watch a movie or read a book or whatever for the first time once. You can only be truly surprised once. You can always consume the media again to get spoiler-enhanced version, you can never go the other way without a lobotomy.
At the same time, the argument was made that the reason somebody might only just be watching BSG in 2019 is because there is just more content available than one can enjoy in a lifetime. Which is true!
So...watch something else. You can never erase my Lost spoilers from your brain, but you can watch one of the six thousand other shows out there that I didn’t accidentally spoil for you.
People shouldn’t maliciously spoil shit. And there are reasonable measures that one should consider following to reduce the risk of accidentally spoiling things for others. But at a certain point people should be able to discuss plots and themes of things without having to poll every room or thread or party to ensure every last person has seen it. And if somebody finds out that Vader is his father and has their Star Wars experience diminished because of it, they’ll be fine. They can watch Star Trek instead. It’s bascially the same thing, right?
This assumes media is interchangeable. Which is just not true. On quality if nothing else.
On quality in particular they’re quite interchangeable. Nothing else is Star Wars, but there are dozens and dozens of movies just as high quality as Star Wars that you haven’t seen. I guarantee this. And they make more every year.
But I would agree that quality alone isn’t the only factor. At a certain point an individual has to take some ownership though, and prioritize what they get around to watching and when. I forget what movie it was, but recently a podcast spoiled a fairly major plot point on a ten or fifteen year old movie. I recall being mildly annoyed for a minute, but then I told myself that...as I’ve been saying...if I really have a shit I’d have already seen it.
And if you truly can’t handle the idea of somebody inadvertently spoiling decade old media, but also don’t want to active seek out the media you care about most or risk something you’re unaware of being spoiled, then maybe stay away from forums and outlets that routinely talk about popular culture and media. Maybe podcasts and Internet forums aren’t your thing. Make choices.
A note: I’m not talking about the PA forums in particular here, though obviously many of our examples will originate here. Mods here are free to set policies as restrictive or lax as hey feel are warranted. I’m speaking of the internet as a whole, and pop culture as a whole (because shows and movies will often spoil other shows and movies).
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AstaerethIn the belly of the beastRegistered Userregular
By comparison, somebody spoiled the end of FFX on this forum in a thread title, intentionally. Screw that person. The result is the same, but it’s the malice that makes them as asshole. That I had both pieces of media spoiled didn’t substantially alter my life, I’m fine. It’s not murder.
Yeah. In a similar vein, when The Force Awakens was new, there was a rash of trolls using social media to spoil an enormous plot point for people. Fuck those guys.
On the other extreme, we had a forumer (who I will not name, out of respect) who got upset when somebody posted a picture of one of the bird-like creatures ("porgs") from The Last Jedi during TLJ's opening week.
There's a middle ground between maliciously spoiling a dramatic plot twist, vs expecting that nobody's going to talk about a mascot that's been plastered across all of a movie's marketing and merchandising.
Regarding the latter, I think there should be general agreement that if something clearly appears in marketing, it isn't a spoiler. Porgs were everywhere for two months around TLJ's release. They were on billboards!
I recognize it can be controversial over what is considered "marketing " in this regard. Some people consider, for example, interviews conducted by creators on YouTube to be "marketing." While that's strictly true, they are, I don't think they count in this context.
The real question is: is there an overwhelming probability that you have encountered this information without seeking it out?
I'm happy to assume that you skip any YouTube video or magazine article about upcoming media until after you've consumed it.
However, if something appears on billboards, in television commercials, on movie posters, or on the book cover, it's not a spoiler.
I'm not saying this movie isn't predictable, but, like, come on!
As I said in the other thread, the purpose of marketing is to get me to watch the thing, not to maximize my enjoyment of the thing. If you tell me the coolest part of the new Vin Diesel movie is the scene where he jumps a motorcycle onto a speeding train while doing a 720 spin, that might very well make me more likely to see the movie, but it'll make me enjoy that stunt less since I know it's coming. There is absolutely a trade-off where the more you tell me about a movie, the less I'm going to be enjoy the experience, even if a detailed description might make me want to have that experience more--and the problem with "if it's in the marketing, it's not a spoiler" is that the people trying to sell you the movie will trade 100% of your enjoyment for a better chance of you giving them money.
I once had a marketing guy come in to talk in one of my classes and he talked about this very issue:
"People come up to me and say, 'I saw the trailer, and then I went and saw the movie, and it turned out that you gave away the entire story in the trailer! What gives?' And my response is, 'What I hear is yadda yadda yadda and then I saw the movie.'"
They just don't care about anything else. It's entirely possible that A Dog's Way Home is a more enjoyable movie if you can muster even the slightest bit of honest suspense over the outcome of the story. But the marketers decided that the target audience for this film is more likely to see it if they can be reassured going in that the outcome is not in doubt. That's their choice because that's how they want to make their money, but it doesn't have to my choice because I'm not a god damned corporation and I can choose to enjoy and discuss entertainment in a manner that runs counter to the profit motive of the people who made it, because I care more about whether myself and the people I'm talking to have a good time at the movies. I would rather have fewer people take my recommendations, but enjoy them more, than the other way around.
By comparison, somebody spoiled the end of FFX on this forum in a thread title, intentionally. Screw that person. The result is the same, but it’s the malice that makes them as asshole. That I had both pieces of media spoiled didn’t substantially alter my life, I’m fine. It’s not murder.
Yeah. In a similar vein, when The Force Awakens was new, there was a rash of trolls using social media to spoil an enormous plot point for people. Fuck those guys.
On the other extreme, we had a forumer (who I will not name, out of respect) who got upset when somebody posted a picture of one of the bird-like creatures ("porgs") from The Last Jedi during TLJ's opening week.
There's a middle ground between maliciously spoiling a dramatic plot twist, vs expecting that nobody's going to talk about a mascot that's been plastered across all of a movie's marketing and merchandising.
Regarding the latter, I think there should be general agreement that if something clearly appears in marketing, it isn't a spoiler. Porgs were everywhere for two months around TLJ's release. They were on billboards!
I recognize it can be controversial over what is considered "marketing " in this regard. Some people consider, for example, interviews conducted by creators on YouTube to be "marketing." While that's strictly true, they are, I don't think they count in this context.
The real question is: is there an overwhelming probability that you have encountered this information without seeking it out?
I'm happy to assume that you skip any YouTube video or magazine article about upcoming media until after you've consumed it.
However, if something appears on billboards, in television commercials, on movie posters, or on the book cover, it's not a spoiler.
I'm not saying this movie isn't predictable, but, like, come on!
As I said in the other thread, the purpose of marketing is to get me to watch the thing, not to maximize my enjoyment of the thing. If you tell me the coolest part of the new Vin Diesel movie is the scene where he jumps a motorcycle onto a speeding train while doing a 720 spin, that might very well make me more likely to see the movie, but it'll make me enjoy that stunt less since I know it's coming. There is absolutely a trade-off where the more you tell me about a movie, the less I'm going to be enjoy the experience, even if a detailed description might make me want to have that experience more--and the problem with "if it's in the marketing, it's not a spoiler" is that the people trying to sell you the movie will trade 100% of your enjoyment for a better chance of you giving them money.[/spoiler]
I'm sorry that marketing diminishes your enjoyment of a film. I don't see how that changes this calculus, though:
The real question is: is there an overwhelming probability that you have encountered this information without seeking it out?
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
A bug with editing comments in Vanilla prevents me from unfucking my BBCode in that post. (I wrote /spoiler where I meant to write /quote. Damn proactive interference.) It was supposed to read like this:
I'm sorry that marketing diminishes your enjoyment of a film. I don't see how that changes this calculus, though:
The real question is: is there an overwhelming probability that you have encountered this information without seeking it out?
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
Yeah. I agree that talking about any current tv series or movies are a chore in these forums.
Someone watching old series like TNG for the first time? We have lovely discussions and people don't spoil the new watcher.
New episode of a tv series has just come out? Everyone walks on eggshells and spoiler tag everything, which make reading/having conversation much harder.
Yeah. I agree that talking about any current tv series or movies are a chore in these forums.
Someone watching old series like TNG for the first time? We have lovely discussions and people don't spoil the new watcher.
New episode of a tv series has just come out? Everyone walks on eggshells and spoiler tag everything, which make reading/having conversation much harder.
I appreciate the heavy tagging. I'd otherwise have to bail out of the Marvel thread altogether, because while I'm responsible for my own consumption to some degree, it's also nice to be able to talk about the last 10 years of Marvel movies without worrying someone's gonna drop a bomb on me from the latest Spiderman trailer or whatever. That said, I should stress that i do think there's a point where it's on me. I managed not to even see an Infinity war image grab, dodged the trailers completely, had no idea what I was going to see going in. That was amazing for me, but I know that's my thing and I noped out of the Marvel thread the day the trailer dropped - too dangerous with some people feeling like spoilers are onerous and "it's been in the comics for years anyway" or similar opinions.
Spoiler care in [chat] was much appreciated though, because it meant I got to hang out rather than abandoning ship altogether. I'm currently on a similar media blackout for Anthem in vidjagaem, and Cpt. Marvel, Avengers: Endgame, and any possible subsequent marvel films that might exist, so I've exited the Marvel thread again until after I see Cpt. Marvel. I hope people continue to spoil the shit out of trailers and other leaks in general conversation areas, because there should be some give and take. It's partly my job to enforce the level of blackout I want, and it's partly everyone's job not to ruin shit for people because of their particular angle on what they should be allowed to say in plaintext without people getting mad.
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VariableMouth CongressStroke Me Lady FameRegistered Userregular
nothing annoys me more than someone telling me 'oh it's not a spoiler' first off, I'll decide what I do and don't wanna hear. more importantly, telling me what is NOT in the movie can be as annoying as telling me what IS in the movie.
for me, a spoiler is anything I couldn't have learned from a trailer. that's not to say a trailer can't spoil things (the two towers...) but that I won't get annoyed if someone reveals a thing because they saw it in a trailer. if you're reading articles that go in depth behind the scenes? keep it away.
Spoilers are meaningful because you can only watch a movie or read a book or whatever for the first time once. You can only be truly surprised once. You can always consume the media again to get spoiler-enhanced version, you can never go the other way without a lobotomy.
At the same time, the argument was made that the reason somebody might only just be watching BSG in 2019 is because there is just more content available than one can enjoy in a lifetime. Which is true!
So...watch something else. You can never erase my Lost spoilers from your brain, but you can watch one of the six thousand other shows out there that I didn’t accidentally spoil for you.
People shouldn’t maliciously spoil shit. And there are reasonable measures that one should consider following to reduce the risk of accidentally spoiling things for others. But at a certain point people should be able to discuss plots and themes of things without having to poll every room or thread or party to ensure every last person has seen it. And if somebody finds out that Vader is his father and has their Star Wars experience diminished because of it, they’ll be fine. They can watch Star Trek instead. It’s bascially the same thing, right?
This assumes media is interchangeable. Which is just not true. On quality if nothing else.
Nope, Star Wars is literally Star Trek.
Literally.
Porg is just an autocorrect error from someone trying to write "Worf" on an iPhone.
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
Marketing for movies and TV is tricky, though. Look at it this way: if your trailer gives too much info, someone might learn about a plot twist, reducing their enjjoyment of the movie by some amount. If your trailer gives too little info, someone might never see the movie at all, reducing their enjoyment of the movie to zero.
How much to reveal in your marketing varies by project, of course. Like, if you're promoting your new high concept scifi flick, you probably need to give away a bit to put butts in seats. If you're promoting Star Wars, your marketing just needs to consist of "this movie exists."
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
Now I'm imagining a service that figures out your taste in media, what it takes to hook you versus what you wouldn't like to have spoiled, and pitches shows/books/games to you in a unique way framed to market it purely to you.
Now I'm imagining a service that figures out your taste in media, what it takes to hook you versus what you wouldn't like to have spoiled, and pitches shows/books/games to you in a unique way framed to market it purely to you.
Sounds like something out of Black Mirror.
In the end, all it recommends is season one of Iron Fist.
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
Marketing for movies and TV is tricky, though. Look at it this way: if your trailer gives too much info, someone might learn about a plot twist, reducing their enjjoyment of the movie by some amount. If your trailer gives too little info, someone might never see the movie at all, reducing their enjoyment of the movie to zero.
How much to reveal in your marketing varies by project, of course. Like, if you're promoting your new high concept scifi flick, you probably need to give away a bit to put butts in seats. If you're promoting Star Wars, your marketing just needs to consist of "this movie exists."
Like that recent movie with a twist no one saw coming
Serenity (2019)
I had no interest in seeing it before I was spiked on that twist
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AstaerethIn the belly of the beastRegistered Userregular
A bug with editing comments in Vanilla prevents me from unfucking my BBCode in that post. (I wrote /spoiler where I meant to write /quote. Damn proactive interference.) It was supposed to read like this:
I'm sorry that marketing diminishes your enjoyment of a film. I don't see how that changes this calculus, though:
The real question is: is there an overwhelming probability that you have encountered this information without seeking it out?
Everybody’s media consumption is different. Maybe you saw trailer X because it played 17 times on TV, but I didn’t see it at all because I don’t have cable. Maybe you live under a billboard whose tag line describes the twist but it’s not visible on my commute. You follow people on Twitter who are super excited for the movie and talking about every new tidbit and rumor, but nobody I follow is doing that. In others you can’t assume what information I’ve encountered (or encountered and blessedly forgotten and now you’re reminding me).
This is especially true in my case because I know I want to remain as unspoiled as possible on everything I know I’m going to watch, so I do my best to actively avoid learning stuff. I have been known on rare occasions (usually new Christopher Nolan movies) to put my hands over my ears and close my eyes in the theater rather than see anything about a movie I know I’m going to watch and know I will enjoy more if I know nothing except Nolan’s name and the title.
Again, it’s like being a vegetarian. It is polite to ask what someone’s food preferences are if you’re feeding them, and not just assume that they eat meat, or that if they don’t eat meat they’ve probably accidentally eaten meat before because there’s a lot of meat out there so one more time won’t hurt.
A bug with editing comments in Vanilla prevents me from unfucking my BBCode in that post. (I wrote /spoiler where I meant to write /quote. Damn proactive interference.) It was supposed to read like this:
I'm sorry that marketing diminishes your enjoyment of a film. I don't see how that changes this calculus, though:
The real question is: is there an overwhelming probability that you have encountered this information without seeking it out?
Everybody’s media consumption is different. Maybe you saw trailer X because it played 17 times on TV, but I didn’t see it at all because I don’t have cable. Maybe you live under a billboard whose tag line describes the twist but it’s not visible on my commute. You follow people on Twitter who are super excited for the movie and talking about every new tidbit and rumor, but nobody I follow is doing that. In others you can’t assume what information I’ve encountered (or encountered and blessedly forgotten and now you’re reminding me).
This is especially true in my case because I know I want to remain as unspoiled as possible on everything I know I’m going to watch, so I do my best to actively avoid learning stuff. I have been known on rare occasions (usually new Christopher Nolan movies) to put my hands over my ears and close my eyes in the theater rather than see anything about a movie I know I’m going to watch and know I will enjoy more if I know nothing except Nolan’s name and the title.
Here's the thing tho.
I'm trying to propose what I see as reasonable guidelines for having a conversation with other human beings. I'm willing to compromise and err on a more conservative side than I'm really comfortable with.
You're throwing me no bones, giving me nothing to go with, and you're just reiterating the possibility that somebody might be spoiled by literally any information about entertainment at all.
To illustrate how your position is unsustainably extreme, consider that you've already committed a sin in this thread. I had no idea, until I saw the preview image for the YouTube video that you linked, that there's a cougar in A Dog's Way Home.
You can't assume that I knew that there was a cougar in A Dog's Way Home, or that I wasn't really excited by that movie, or that my enjoyment wouldn't be diminished by knowing that there's a cougar.
If you think this example is silly, or if you take umbrage at my characterization of your argument as unsustainable and extreme, then feel free to offer up some of your own guidelines for what you would consider a reasonable amount of information to include in an open conversation about entertainment.
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
There has to be a line somewhere that makes sense. If I can't even hear anything about the premise of a show or movie or novel or whatever, how can I have any idea whether I might like it?
Hiding everything behind spoiler warnings/tags bothers me almost as much as would being told major plot points ahead of time. Because then there's no way for me to get information about the thing without risking like, hearing what the ending is before I even see the movie, for example.
As an addendum, I do want to mention that I don't completely agree with the whole concept of a "spoiler" in the first place. There's this pervasive idea that knowing plot details ahead of time ruins the experiencing of the work--hence the term--but I can't think of any of my most treasured works of fiction which are too much diminished by knowing what's going to happen ahead of time. That might just be a me thing, though, since I'm a frequent rereader/rewatcher of stuff I really enjoy.
Not that I want to dive in and read an entire point-by-point summary of the plot beforehand, but I'm not extremely zealous about avoiding spoilers, either.
My zombie survival life simulator They Don't Sleep is out now on Steam if you want to check it out.
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AstaerethIn the belly of the beastRegistered Userregular
Context matters for behavior. When in doubt, make the person you’re writing or talking to actively choose to receive information they might consider spoilers.
For example I am completely in favor of an article on a website that delves deep into the full plot of a movie. That’s great and necessary. Spoiler warnings at the top are nice but I think if you click on something called “here’s what’s great about the new season of Riverdale” you’ve made your choice. I think in that instance only offer spoiler warnings generally if you’re giving away really huge plot details that are supposed to be surprises after the beginning, big twists, or the ending.
I get annoyed when that article puts a spoiler in the title of the article because that can get shared with me without me actively choosing to read it—scrolling by in a social media feed because somebody linked it, for instance.
In a forum like this one, I appreciate spoiler tags for just about everything unless it’s real generic (“John Wick has great gunplay”), or you’re in a thread for that particular thing. (I actually think people who don’t want to be spoiled on, say, John Wick the TV show have no business reading the John Wick TV show thread, and so tagging some or all spoilers in there is kind of silly, but clearly some people like to dip in and get a sense for whether they should check out a show and I don’t mind accommodating them.)
If let’s say you’re in a politics thread and you have a burning desire to compare Betsy DeVoss to Dolores Umbridge, try to do so in a general way? If you have to get in-depth, tag it. For some reason people seem to like bringing up the end of Watchmen in unrelated conversations and that seems rude to me, particularly given how great a work that is.
I recognize that my particular bar for spoilers is higher than most—if I know I’m going to watch something I don’t want to know who’s in it, what genre it is, I prefer to be as blind as possible. I’ve seen a lot of stuff and surprise and newness are rare and enjoyable and they keep my brain occupied and enaged better. Not everybody feels that way.
But I do think a significant minority prefers not to be told much about a thing when they don’t want to, and it’s really not that onerous to respect their wishes, and it’s rude not to do so. Especially when what you want most of the time is to share something you enjoyed so somebody else can enjoy it too. Don’t dictate to them how they get to enjoy it, or force them to choose between participating in community discussions and giving up their preference.
Since its was my post on Russian Doll that started this derail in the Streaming thread I want to add a little background to it:
I specifically wrote it to minimize the chance of spoilers. It was a absolute bare minimum review to try to engage anybody reading to go an watch it. It was barely two lines long. I didn't want anybody going in with their enjoyment spoiled by me revealing too much about the story beyond basic premise. I didn't reveal where the story was headed. I didn't name any of the actors beyond the lead. My mini-review was shorter then the episode description and way less spoilery then certain review headlines I have seen. This description? Longer then my original review.
Yet I still got called out for potential spoilers. That is actually kind of fucked up.
I was the person who "called you out" for potential spoilers. I don't think that's a fair characterisation of what I actually said, and to call this post below "kind of fucked up" sets the bar for that qualification so low I'm not sure anything can get under it.
Is the premise maybe revealed in the first episode as a surprise? If so, maybe don't blow it for anyone who hasn't seen it yet.
You replied to say no the premise is revealed in the first 15 minutes and "isn't the heart of the story". I awesomed your post to indicate OK fine, no worries. I asked because at least one person in the thread had recommended the series with no information at all, and in fact said don't read anything about it, just watch it, indicating that there was a big twist you might not see coming. I phrased it as a question, and was happy with your answer.
I feel like there's a lot of sensitivity around both being spoiled and being even queried as to whether something is a spoiler. It's literally my role on the forums to try and enforce the rules, one of which is to try and at least bear in mind the fact that spoiling things for other people is something about which you should have some sensitivity. No one was infracted. No one was insulted. I asked if what you wrote was a spoiler. You said no. You were taken at your word. Sometimes, people spoil things and only by me yelling at them do they put something in a spoiler tag, usually after saying they didn't think telling someone the ending of a film is a big deal anyway and why can't you get off my back, man.
The length of your review/recommendation is immaterial. It would be trivial to completely spoil something in fewer words. For example, here's a genuine spoiler summary for Murder On The Orient Express.
Magnificent moustache with a Belgian attached solves a murder on a fancy train. Everybody did it.
Or The Good Place (genuine spoilers for season 1).
Lady dies, gets sent to a kind of Heaven by mistake, but it's actually hell and not a mistake. Sam from Cheers is good then he's bad.
For those people unhappy with the way spoiler tags are used on the site, I dunno. I think it works fine. You can start a thread for a show or a film and that's where you go to talk about stuff with no spoilers, or maybe spoilers for just the latest episode for a couple of days. For general threads like the streaming thread or threads covering a franchise like the MCU or Star Trek the rules are different. In the MCU thread people will be expected to use spoilers for the latest movie for a period after the movie's release. Don't ruin Infinity War the day after release for someone coming in to talk about Ant-Man.
In the streaming thread spoilers for shows are to be respected, because it's more of a hey watch this new great show or hey this old show is now on Hulu rather than an in-depth discussion of said show. Same with the movie thread. It's there to talk about movies and recommend them, but spoiler tags for big twists and the like are mandatory for new and recent films, and maybe even for old films with big twists. No one is going to be yelled at for saying Luke is Darth Maul's son, because everyone knows it. I might yell at you for blowing twists in something like LA Confidential, because those twists haven't become part of general popular culture.
In the [chat] thread it's probably more strict, for obvious reasons.
In a forum like this one, I appreciate spoiler tags for just about everything unless it’s real generic (“John Wick has great gunplay”), or you’re in a thread for that particular thing. (I actually think people who don’t want to be spoiled on, say, John Wick the TV show have no business reading the John Wick TV show thread, and so tagging some or all spoilers in there is kind of silly, but clearly some people like to dip in and get a sense for whether they should check out a show and I don’t mind accommodating them.)
If let’s say you’re in a politics thread and you have a burning desire to compare Betsy DeVoss to Dolores Umbridge, try to do so in a general way? If you have to get in-depth, tag it. For some reason people seem to like bringing up the end of Watchmen in unrelated conversations and that seems rude to me, particularly given how great a work that is.
Okay, so keep it general and try to avoid specifics. That's totally understandable and I think that's a good common ground to start from.
So I have two follow-up questions:
1) How specific is too specific?
Use John Wick as an example and put it in spoiler tags if you like. You said that "John Wick has great gunplay" is fine. What level of detail about John Wick would be crossing a line for you?
What I consider "general" might be something you consider specific.
2) How would you handle the inverse situation?
I'll use a really old well-known example to avoid stepping on anybody's toes. Let's say somebody just saw The Thirteenth Floor and said, in spoiler tags, "I'm unhappy with the way this movie treated virtual reality." I want to recommend The Matrix to them, but to do so I'd have to reveal that The Matrix takes place in virtual reality, which is a huge twist the first time you see it (if you don't know it's coming).
How would you deal with that? Would you simply decide not to recommend The Matrix to that person?
You could spoiler-tag your recommendation but consider the conundrum with that approach: nobody will know what title is hidden behind the spoiler tag, so they won't be able to make a truly informed decision about whether or not to click it. They could decide whether to click it based on their own appetite for risk and their own sensitivity to spoilers, but I don't want to make the assumption that this is a reasonable approach... because obviously, we have different standards for that.
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
I've never really cared much about spoilers. I actually seek them out sometimes. It's more about the journey than the destination for me.
I think it's unreasonable to regard the very premise of a story to be a spoiler. At the very least, some information is required to make good choices.
I would say it depends on the premise. Sometimes going in blind is great. Sometimes it doesn't matter. There's no hard and fast rule. Blowing the premise of The Matrix would be an example of something it would have been impolite to spoil (until it percolated into popular consciousness like Luke being the son of Darth Plagueis). The premise of Groundhog Day (made clear in the trailer): not so much.
Feral, I think in your example I would assume they're aware of the premise of The Matrix, unless they were very young or something, and recommend it. It's a tricky one, but it's also one I don't think comes up very often. The particular angle of their desire for recommendations is the twist upon which The Matrix rests, which I think would be unusual.
Usually when a twist comes it's in keeping with the genre of the movie. The murderer is revealed, but you know you're watching a murder mystery. There's a double-cross, but you know you're watching a spy movie. Someone unexpected is a ghost, but you knew you were watching a ghost story. Only very rarely is the twist in a movie that it's a different movie from the one you thought you were watching.
For those people unhappy with the way spoiler tags are used on the site, I dunno. I think it works fine. You can start a thread for a show or a film and that's where you go to talk about stuff with no spoilers, or maybe spoilers for just the latest episode for a couple of days. For general threads like the streaming thread or threads covering a franchise like the MCU or Star Trek the rules are different. In the MCU thread people will be expected to use spoilers for the latest movie for a period after the movie's release. Don't ruin Infinity War the day after release for someone coming in to talk about Ant-Man.
The way you describe it here sounds totally reasonable.
I think that's the ideal, and it doesn't always work out. Example, the Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse thread never went into open-spoiler mode. Most of page 10 is hidden being spoiler tags (and that's about a month after the movie's release in most markets worldwide, if it matters).
That page is particularly confusing because there are people comparing Into the Spider-Verse to other Spider-Man movies, and while I assume that the spoiler-tagged text is all about Spider-Verse, it might be about the live-action movies.
Personally, when a discussion involves multiple installments in a franchise, I try to make it abundantly clear which installment I'm talking about behind any given spoiler tag. For example, I've talked about Mass Effect in chat like this:
ME1 spoilers:
Tali was my favorite
But (ME3 spoiler):
Liara got pretty cool by ME3
In my ideal world, people would do that more often. Not because I'm worried about accidentally clicking on the wrong tag and spoiling myself on a sequel (I really don't mind), but because it makes conversations easier to follow.
In my ideal world, a movie-specific thread would be an open spoiler zone. If I'm going into the Into the Spider-Verse thread, it's because I've seen it already and I want to talk about it. I don't think that's an unreasonable expectation.
(BTW, I'm totally cool with putting discussion about the most recent installments in a series behind spoiler tags, even in an on-topic thread, mostly because people don't watch TV shows synchronously - between streaming services and global release dates, people are often a few weeks behind the bleeding edge. Somebody in Australia might really want to talk about S2E3 of their favorite show and not trip over spoilers of S2E4 from USers who get it a week early.)
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
A personal bugbear: sometimes, just saying hey I don't want to spoiler [thing] but you'll love the MASSIVE TWIST is a spoiler. The second you know something has a beeg tweest you're looking for it. You settle down in front of the movie and start looking for the character who's actually a ghost, or the casually mentioned irrelevant piece of information that will be important later, obvious because it's the only irrelevant piece of information the film contains. Or you'll look for the guy who usually plays bad guys playing a good guy because ten to one he's actually a bad guy.
Sometimes it's part of the fun. Hitchcock would get movie posters made up that begged audiences to not reveal the ending of a movie because it was too surprising. Of course you'd go in and try and guess the ending the second it started. Every murder mystery uses that beeg tweest as part of its allure. Again, it's not a hard and fast rule and I'm not saying this is an official mod ruling, but it's something to bear in mind.
Feral, I think in your example I would assume they're aware of the premise of The Matrix, unless they were very young or something, and recommend it. It's a tricky one, but it's also one I don't think comes up very often. The particular angle of their desire for recommendations is the twist upon which The Matrix rests, which I think would be unusual.
Usually when a twist comes it's in keeping with the genre of the movie. The murderer is revealed, but you know you're watching a murder mystery. There's a double-cross, but you know you're watching a spy movie. Someone unexpected is a ghost, but you knew you were watching a ghost story. Only very rarely is the twist in a movie that it's a different movie from the one you thought you were watching.
I specifically chose The Matrix because it is old, so we can talk about it intelligently.
But there are two movies that are out right now that deal with similar themes in similar ways:
Black Mirror: Bandersnatch vs Serenity (2019)
I'm using The Matrix and The Thirteenth Floor as stand-ins for those movies.
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
I saw the trailer for Russian Doll. I had the feeling of discovery about 10 minutes early. The recommendation to go in blind was a bit too precious. It's like Alan Grant complaining that his first view of a dinosaur was spoiled by his sunglasses.
Also, is it a spoiler if it's in a trailer? Can trailers spoil movies? (I think they can!)
The Terminator 2 trailer spoils the meticulously crafted first act.
The Sixth Sense has one of the most famous twists in movie history, a twist that doesn't even occur till almost the end of the film and that was very famously spoiled in literally every fucking trailer.
Spoilers are meaningful because you can only watch a movie or read a book or whatever for the first time once. You can only be truly surprised once. You can always consume the media again to get spoiler-enhanced version, you can never go the other way without a lobotomy.
At the same time, the argument was made that the reason somebody might only just be watching BSG in 2019 is because there is just more content available than one can enjoy in a lifetime. Which is true!
So...watch something else. You can never erase my Lost spoilers from your brain, but you can watch one of the six thousand other shows out there that I didn’t accidentally spoil for you.
People shouldn’t maliciously spoil shit. And there are reasonable measures that one should consider following to reduce the risk of accidentally spoiling things for others. But at a certain point people should be able to discuss plots and themes of things without having to poll every room or thread or party to ensure every last person has seen it. And if somebody finds out that Vader is his father and has their Star Wars experience diminished because of it, they’ll be fine. They can watch Star Trek instead. It’s bascially the same thing, right?
whoops i just ran over your dog
it's ok though, there are more dogs out there than you could ever possibly own, you can just get another one
Yeah. I agree that talking about any current tv series or movies are a chore in these forums.
Someone watching old series like TNG for the first time? We have lovely discussions and people don't spoil the new watcher.
New episode of a tv series has just come out? Everyone walks on eggshells and spoiler tag everything, which make reading/having conversation much harder.
I appreciate the heavy tagging. I'd otherwise have to bail out of the Marvel thread altogether, because while I'm responsible for my own consumption to some degree, it's also nice to be able to talk about the last 10 years of Marvel movies without worrying someone's gonna drop a bomb on me from the latest Spiderman trailer or whatever. That said, I should stress that i do think there's a point where it's on me. I managed not to even see an Infinity war image grab, dodged the trailers completely, had no idea what I was going to see going in. That was amazing for me, but I know that's my thing and I noped out of the Marvel thread the day the trailer dropped - too dangerous with some people feeling like spoilers are onerous and "it's been in the comics for years anyway" or similar opinions.
Spoiler care in [chat] was much appreciated though, because it meant I got to hang out rather than abandoning ship altogether. I'm currently on a similar media blackout for Anthem in vidjagaem, and Cpt. Marvel, Avengers: Endgame, and any possible subsequent marvel films that might exist, so I've exited the Marvel thread again until after I see Cpt. Marvel. I hope people continue to spoil the shit out of trailers and other leaks in general conversation areas, because there should be some give and take. It's partly my job to enforce the level of blackout I want, and it's partly everyone's job not to ruin shit for people because of their particular angle on what they should be allowed to say in plaintext without people getting mad.
The fact that so many franchises or even just individual movies get shoved into their own threads and discussion of them in other locations is told to go to that thread necessitates a robust spoiler policy. If we're only gonna talk about Marvel movies in the Marvel thread then the Marvel thread needs to accommodate a lot of different kind of posters, including ones that haven't seen all the latest movies and don't want them all spoiled.
Also, is it a spoiler if it's in a trailer? Can trailers spoil movies? (I think they can!)
The Terminator 2 trailer spoils the meticulously crafted first act.
You couldn't advertise the movie at all if you tried to hide the fact Arnold is the good guy in T2. 'The dinosaurs escape their cages and start eating the humans' is not a spoiler for Jurassic Park, it's probably what's written on the back of the VHS box.
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AstaerethIn the belly of the beastRegistered Userregular
In a forum like this one, I appreciate spoiler tags for just about everything unless it’s real generic (“John Wick has great gunplay”), or you’re in a thread for that particular thing. (I actually think people who don’t want to be spoiled on, say, John Wick the TV show have no business reading the John Wick TV show thread, and so tagging some or all spoilers in there is kind of silly, but clearly some people like to dip in and get a sense for whether they should check out a show and I don’t mind accommodating them.)
If let’s say you’re in a politics thread and you have a burning desire to compare Betsy DeVoss to Dolores Umbridge, try to do so in a general way? If you have to get in-depth, tag it. For some reason people seem to like bringing up the end of Watchmen in unrelated conversations and that seems rude to me, particularly given how great a work that is.
Okay, so keep it general and try to avoid specifics. That's totally understandable and I think that's a good common ground to start from.
So I have two follow-up questions:
1) How specific is too specific?
Use John Wick as an example and put it in spoiler tags if you like. You said that "John Wick has great gunplay" is fine. What level of detail about John Wick would be crossing a line for you?
John Wick spoilers:
I’ve actually thought about this example before, because people will often talk about how the premise of the movie is that they kill John Wick’s dog and he goes on a revenge spree. I actually think that’s too much.
There are lots of movies that are not built on surprises at all. Creed is not a movie with a lot of sudden twists and turns; you know it’s gonna be about this guy and Rocky and there will be some boxing. Scene by scene it develops, it deepens the characters, it moves the plot forward, but it’s pretty much a straight line.
But there are other movies whose premise is structured like this:
“Character is going through some difficulties, and then something unexpected happens”
John Wick is like that to me. It’s not a movie where the first scene is John Wick killing some dudes and the second scene is John Wick’s boss giving him the names of more dudes to kill. The opener is John Wick being sad about the death of his wife and he gets this dog and he’s retired and so on, and then something unexpected happens—his dog is killed and that kicks off the plot. A lot of the joy of John Wick is the way it builds in surprising fashion, especially with the world-building, but in the beginning the surprise is how the action movie plot gets kicked off.
If I were recommending John Wick and I didn’t want to spoil someone, I wouldn't go further than, “Keanu Reeves stars, the action is amazing, he’s grieving his wife and then something unexpected happens that draws him back into a criminal underworld.”
And I would try to do the same for other movies with that kind of structure. I actually currently still don’t know what Sorry to Bother You is about, except that the main character works in a call center and then it gets weird.
Even docs work like that sometimes. I hear Tickled goes places you didn’t expect. Dear Zachary is an amazing film because you could not possibly guess the end from the beginning. I would discourage anyone from casually revealing whatever the “and then something unexpected happens” happens to be in these movies.
What I consider "general" might be something you consider specific.
2) How would you handle the inverse situation?
I'll use a really old well-known example to avoid stepping on anybody's toes. Let's say somebody just saw The Thirteenth Floor and said, in spoiler tags, "I'm unhappy with the way this movie treated virtual reality." I want to recommend The Matrix to them, but to do so I'd have to reveal that The Matrix takes place in virtual reality, which is a huge twist the first time you see it (if you don't know it's coming).
How would you deal with that? Would you simply decide not to recommend The Matrix to that person?
You could spoiler-tag your recommendation but consider the conundrum with that approach: nobody will know what title is hidden behind the spoiler tag, so they won't be able to make a truly informed decision about whether or not to click it. They could decide whether to click it based on their own appetite for risk and their own sensitivity to spoilers, but I don't want to make the assumption that this is a reasonable approach... because obviously, we have different standards for that.
That’s a tough case and it’s true that spoiler culture makes it hard to compare movies like that. In the case you suggest, you might ask first (“I can recommend you some better virtual reality films but in some of them that’s the twist, is that okay?”), or just tag that spoiler with “these are VR movies and that is a spoiler for some of them, clicker beware”. You can also be vague (“The Matrix has some similarities to that and you might like it better”). With friends I will sometimes wait until they’ve forgotten the context and then pretend I’m recommending something out of the blue (“By the way, you might really like The Matrix. Hm? Oh, no reason. I just randomly thought of it”). It might be okay to say “The Matrix is a movie about virtual reality” without giving away the specific way in which is it about virtual reality. In the case of The Matrix, there’s also an element of cultural ubiquity that I won’t stand against—like King Kong or The Sixth Sense, that trademark’s gone generic, and so the broadest most salient “even if you live under a rock” stuff is pretty much fair game (unless specifically requested).
Finally it’s also the case that it’s okay if somebody doesn’t receive my recommendation. We’ll both live, and unless it’s obscure they will probably run into it at some point anyway.
Also, is it a spoiler if it's in a trailer? Can trailers spoil movies? (I think they can!)
The Terminator 2 trailer spoils the meticulously crafted first act.
You couldn't advertise the movie at all if you tried to hide the fact Arnold is the good guy in T2. 'The dinosaurs escape their cages and start eating the humans' is not a spoiler for Jurassic Park, it's probably what's written on the back of the VHS box.
Yet the entire first act is built around the audience being unaware that Arnie is the good guy.
If let’s say you’re in a politics thread and you have a burning desire to compare Betsy DeVoss to Dolores Umbridge, try to do so in a general way? If you have to get in-depth, tag it. For some reason people seem to like bringing up the end of Watchmen in unrelated conversations and that seems rude to me, particularly given how great a work that is.
Both these things are old enough now that spoilering should not be expected. This is what I mean by how society uses media. It is a common language. Every time you use a reference to Judas or Brutus when talking about some betrayal that just happens that is actually a spoiler for those stories. New media continues to be added to this lexicon and the older and more ubiquitous something is the more it just becomes something everyone knows.
While racing light mechs, your Urbanmech comes in second place, but only because it ran out of ammo.
If let’s say you’re in a politics thread and you have a burning desire to compare Betsy DeVoss to Dolores Umbridge, try to do so in a general way? If you have to get in-depth, tag it. For some reason people seem to like bringing up the end of Watchmen in unrelated conversations and that seems rude to me, particularly given how great a work that is.
Both these things are old enough now that spoilering should not be expected. This is what I mean by how society uses media. It is a common language. Every time you use a reference to Judas or Brutus when talking about some betrayal that just happens that is actually a spoiler for those stories. New media continues to be added to this lexicon and the older and more ubiquitous something is the more it just becomes something everyone knows.
Eliminating cultural references for politeness is an incredibly radical change from how human society generally operates.
If let’s say you’re in a politics thread and you have a burning desire to compare Betsy DeVoss to Dolores Umbridge, try to do so in a general way? If you have to get in-depth, tag it. For some reason people seem to like bringing up the end of Watchmen in unrelated conversations and that seems rude to me, particularly given how great a work that is.
Both these things are old enough now that spoilering should not be expected. This is what I mean by how society uses media. It is a common language. Every time you use a reference to Judas or Brutus when talking about some betrayal that just happens that is actually a spoiler for those stories. New media continues to be added to this lexicon and the older and more ubiquitous something is the more it just becomes something everyone knows.
Not necessarily. Some media become cultural touchstones. Most never do though.
Spoiler tagging all the things gets really difficult if you want to compare movies.
For example, say I want to compare the theme of 'masculinity in a capitalist society' in Fight Club vs American Beauty.
Well, I just spoiled that this is a theme in both movies. If you didn't know that American Beauty was about masculinity in capitalism, and then this knowledge has screwed up your hypothetical eventual enjoyment of American Beauty, then I just have to shrug and give a half-hearted "sorry, I guess"
Hell, there is an exact conversation I wanted to have recently that I literally could not productively have because it would have required comparing two movies' treatments of a particular plot trope. I can't even tell you what the movies were without spoiling one of them.
It's easy to spoiler tag a single movie's plot twist and I'm happy to do it as a courtesy.
It's literally impossible to spoiler tag a comparison of two movies in a productive way without revealing something about either one of them.
If you're having a conversation with someone, you could start out asking "Have you seen American Beauty and Fight Club?"
If you're posting in a thread about movies, it's a reasonable assumption that the cinefiles have also seen these movies. It's also reasonable to expect the OP to have set some guidelines regarding spoilers.
For example, I haven't seen the Godfather movies. But if I'm in the movie thread, and someone starts comparing themes in The Godfather to themes in Lord of the Rings, I shouldn't be surprised. On the flip side, the wife and I recently saw Season 1 of The Orville. We don't have cable, so we wait until the show is out on Blu-Ray. So I don't participate in The Orville thread because it's silly NOT to expect spoilers to happen.
To me, the spoilers I want to avoid are those that will negatively impact my viewing of the media in question. MNS has been brought up as an example, where knowing the twist (or, initially even knowing that there was going to be a twist) would have greatly decreased my enjoyment. But I also feel that movies with a big twist like this are the exception, because you are intended to watch them at least twice, once pre-twist for the experience, once post-twist to find all the clues you missed.
On the other hand, if I have only seen Fight Club, then reading a good article comparing and contrasting the usage of male toxicity in a masculine culture could get me to watch the American Beauty. Especially if the article is written in such a way as to avoid any major spoilers.
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This assumes media is interchangeable. Which is just not true. On quality if nothing else.
On quality in particular they’re quite interchangeable. Nothing else is Star Wars, but there are dozens and dozens of movies just as high quality as Star Wars that you haven’t seen. I guarantee this. And they make more every year.
But I would agree that quality alone isn’t the only factor. At a certain point an individual has to take some ownership though, and prioritize what they get around to watching and when. I forget what movie it was, but recently a podcast spoiled a fairly major plot point on a ten or fifteen year old movie. I recall being mildly annoyed for a minute, but then I told myself that...as I’ve been saying...if I really have a shit I’d have already seen it.
And if you truly can’t handle the idea of somebody inadvertently spoiling decade old media, but also don’t want to active seek out the media you care about most or risk something you’re unaware of being spoiled, then maybe stay away from forums and outlets that routinely talk about popular culture and media. Maybe podcasts and Internet forums aren’t your thing. Make choices.
A note: I’m not talking about the PA forums in particular here, though obviously many of our examples will originate here. Mods here are free to set policies as restrictive or lax as hey feel are warranted. I’m speaking of the internet as a whole, and pop culture as a whole (because shows and movies will often spoil other shows and movies).
I'm not saying this movie isn't predictable, but, like, come on!
As I said in the other thread, the purpose of marketing is to get me to watch the thing, not to maximize my enjoyment of the thing. If you tell me the coolest part of the new Vin Diesel movie is the scene where he jumps a motorcycle onto a speeding train while doing a 720 spin, that might very well make me more likely to see the movie, but it'll make me enjoy that stunt less since I know it's coming. There is absolutely a trade-off where the more you tell me about a movie, the less I'm going to be enjoy the experience, even if a detailed description might make me want to have that experience more--and the problem with "if it's in the marketing, it's not a spoiler" is that the people trying to sell you the movie will trade 100% of your enjoyment for a better chance of you giving them money.
I once had a marketing guy come in to talk in one of my classes and he talked about this very issue:
"People come up to me and say, 'I saw the trailer, and then I went and saw the movie, and it turned out that you gave away the entire story in the trailer! What gives?' And my response is, 'What I hear is yadda yadda yadda and then I saw the movie.'"
They just don't care about anything else. It's entirely possible that A Dog's Way Home is a more enjoyable movie if you can muster even the slightest bit of honest suspense over the outcome of the story. But the marketers decided that the target audience for this film is more likely to see it if they can be reassured going in that the outcome is not in doubt. That's their choice because that's how they want to make their money, but it doesn't have to my choice because I'm not a god damned corporation and I can choose to enjoy and discuss entertainment in a manner that runs counter to the profit motive of the people who made it, because I care more about whether myself and the people I'm talking to have a good time at the movies. I would rather have fewer people take my recommendations, but enjoy them more, than the other way around.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Someone watching old series like TNG for the first time? We have lovely discussions and people don't spoil the new watcher.
New episode of a tv series has just come out? Everyone walks on eggshells and spoiler tag everything, which make reading/having conversation much harder.
I appreciate the heavy tagging. I'd otherwise have to bail out of the Marvel thread altogether, because while I'm responsible for my own consumption to some degree, it's also nice to be able to talk about the last 10 years of Marvel movies without worrying someone's gonna drop a bomb on me from the latest Spiderman trailer or whatever. That said, I should stress that i do think there's a point where it's on me. I managed not to even see an Infinity war image grab, dodged the trailers completely, had no idea what I was going to see going in. That was amazing for me, but I know that's my thing and I noped out of the Marvel thread the day the trailer dropped - too dangerous with some people feeling like spoilers are onerous and "it's been in the comics for years anyway" or similar opinions.
Spoiler care in [chat] was much appreciated though, because it meant I got to hang out rather than abandoning ship altogether. I'm currently on a similar media blackout for Anthem in vidjagaem, and Cpt. Marvel, Avengers: Endgame, and any possible subsequent marvel films that might exist, so I've exited the Marvel thread again until after I see Cpt. Marvel. I hope people continue to spoil the shit out of trailers and other leaks in general conversation areas, because there should be some give and take. It's partly my job to enforce the level of blackout I want, and it's partly everyone's job not to ruin shit for people because of their particular angle on what they should be allowed to say in plaintext without people getting mad.
for me, a spoiler is anything I couldn't have learned from a trailer. that's not to say a trailer can't spoil things (the two towers...) but that I won't get annoyed if someone reveals a thing because they saw it in a trailer. if you're reading articles that go in depth behind the scenes? keep it away.
Nope, Star Wars is literally Star Trek.
Literally.
Porg is just an autocorrect error from someone trying to write "Worf" on an iPhone.
How much to reveal in your marketing varies by project, of course. Like, if you're promoting your new high concept scifi flick, you probably need to give away a bit to put butts in seats. If you're promoting Star Wars, your marketing just needs to consist of "this movie exists."
Sounds like something out of Black Mirror.
In the end, all it recommends is season one of Iron Fist.
Like that recent movie with a twist no one saw coming
I had no interest in seeing it before I was spiked on that twist
Everybody’s media consumption is different. Maybe you saw trailer X because it played 17 times on TV, but I didn’t see it at all because I don’t have cable. Maybe you live under a billboard whose tag line describes the twist but it’s not visible on my commute. You follow people on Twitter who are super excited for the movie and talking about every new tidbit and rumor, but nobody I follow is doing that. In others you can’t assume what information I’ve encountered (or encountered and blessedly forgotten and now you’re reminding me).
This is especially true in my case because I know I want to remain as unspoiled as possible on everything I know I’m going to watch, so I do my best to actively avoid learning stuff. I have been known on rare occasions (usually new Christopher Nolan movies) to put my hands over my ears and close my eyes in the theater rather than see anything about a movie I know I’m going to watch and know I will enjoy more if I know nothing except Nolan’s name and the title.
Again, it’s like being a vegetarian. It is polite to ask what someone’s food preferences are if you’re feeding them, and not just assume that they eat meat, or that if they don’t eat meat they’ve probably accidentally eaten meat before because there’s a lot of meat out there so one more time won’t hurt.
Here's the thing tho.
I'm trying to propose what I see as reasonable guidelines for having a conversation with other human beings. I'm willing to compromise and err on a more conservative side than I'm really comfortable with.
You're throwing me no bones, giving me nothing to go with, and you're just reiterating the possibility that somebody might be spoiled by literally any information about entertainment at all.
To illustrate how your position is unsustainably extreme, consider that you've already committed a sin in this thread. I had no idea, until I saw the preview image for the YouTube video that you linked, that there's a cougar in A Dog's Way Home.
You can't assume that I knew that there was a cougar in A Dog's Way Home, or that I wasn't really excited by that movie, or that my enjoyment wouldn't be diminished by knowing that there's a cougar.
If you think this example is silly, or if you take umbrage at my characterization of your argument as unsustainable and extreme, then feel free to offer up some of your own guidelines for what you would consider a reasonable amount of information to include in an open conversation about entertainment.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Hiding everything behind spoiler warnings/tags bothers me almost as much as would being told major plot points ahead of time. Because then there's no way for me to get information about the thing without risking like, hearing what the ending is before I even see the movie, for example.
As an addendum, I do want to mention that I don't completely agree with the whole concept of a "spoiler" in the first place. There's this pervasive idea that knowing plot details ahead of time ruins the experiencing of the work--hence the term--but I can't think of any of my most treasured works of fiction which are too much diminished by knowing what's going to happen ahead of time. That might just be a me thing, though, since I'm a frequent rereader/rewatcher of stuff I really enjoy.
Not that I want to dive in and read an entire point-by-point summary of the plot beforehand, but I'm not extremely zealous about avoiding spoilers, either.
For example I am completely in favor of an article on a website that delves deep into the full plot of a movie. That’s great and necessary. Spoiler warnings at the top are nice but I think if you click on something called “here’s what’s great about the new season of Riverdale” you’ve made your choice. I think in that instance only offer spoiler warnings generally if you’re giving away really huge plot details that are supposed to be surprises after the beginning, big twists, or the ending.
I get annoyed when that article puts a spoiler in the title of the article because that can get shared with me without me actively choosing to read it—scrolling by in a social media feed because somebody linked it, for instance.
In a forum like this one, I appreciate spoiler tags for just about everything unless it’s real generic (“John Wick has great gunplay”), or you’re in a thread for that particular thing. (I actually think people who don’t want to be spoiled on, say, John Wick the TV show have no business reading the John Wick TV show thread, and so tagging some or all spoilers in there is kind of silly, but clearly some people like to dip in and get a sense for whether they should check out a show and I don’t mind accommodating them.)
If let’s say you’re in a politics thread and you have a burning desire to compare Betsy DeVoss to Dolores Umbridge, try to do so in a general way? If you have to get in-depth, tag it. For some reason people seem to like bringing up the end of Watchmen in unrelated conversations and that seems rude to me, particularly given how great a work that is.
I recognize that my particular bar for spoilers is higher than most—if I know I’m going to watch something I don’t want to know who’s in it, what genre it is, I prefer to be as blind as possible. I’ve seen a lot of stuff and surprise and newness are rare and enjoyable and they keep my brain occupied and enaged better. Not everybody feels that way.
But I do think a significant minority prefers not to be told much about a thing when they don’t want to, and it’s really not that onerous to respect their wishes, and it’s rude not to do so. Especially when what you want most of the time is to share something you enjoyed so somebody else can enjoy it too. Don’t dictate to them how they get to enjoy it, or force them to choose between participating in community discussions and giving up their preference.
I was the person who "called you out" for potential spoilers. I don't think that's a fair characterisation of what I actually said, and to call this post below "kind of fucked up" sets the bar for that qualification so low I'm not sure anything can get under it.
You replied to say no the premise is revealed in the first 15 minutes and "isn't the heart of the story". I awesomed your post to indicate OK fine, no worries. I asked because at least one person in the thread had recommended the series with no information at all, and in fact said don't read anything about it, just watch it, indicating that there was a big twist you might not see coming. I phrased it as a question, and was happy with your answer.
I feel like there's a lot of sensitivity around both being spoiled and being even queried as to whether something is a spoiler. It's literally my role on the forums to try and enforce the rules, one of which is to try and at least bear in mind the fact that spoiling things for other people is something about which you should have some sensitivity. No one was infracted. No one was insulted. I asked if what you wrote was a spoiler. You said no. You were taken at your word. Sometimes, people spoil things and only by me yelling at them do they put something in a spoiler tag, usually after saying they didn't think telling someone the ending of a film is a big deal anyway and why can't you get off my back, man.
The length of your review/recommendation is immaterial. It would be trivial to completely spoil something in fewer words. For example, here's a genuine spoiler summary for Murder On The Orient Express.
Or The Good Place (genuine spoilers for season 1).
It's easy.
Choose Your Own Chat 1 Choose Your Own Chat 2 Choose Your Own Chat 3
In the streaming thread spoilers for shows are to be respected, because it's more of a hey watch this new great show or hey this old show is now on Hulu rather than an in-depth discussion of said show. Same with the movie thread. It's there to talk about movies and recommend them, but spoiler tags for big twists and the like are mandatory for new and recent films, and maybe even for old films with big twists. No one is going to be yelled at for saying Luke is Darth Maul's son, because everyone knows it. I might yell at you for blowing twists in something like LA Confidential, because those twists haven't become part of general popular culture.
In the [chat] thread it's probably more strict, for obvious reasons.
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I think it's unreasonable to regard the very premise of a story to be a spoiler. At the very least, some information is required to make good choices.
Okay, so keep it general and try to avoid specifics. That's totally understandable and I think that's a good common ground to start from.
So I have two follow-up questions:
1) How specific is too specific?
Use John Wick as an example and put it in spoiler tags if you like. You said that "John Wick has great gunplay" is fine. What level of detail about John Wick would be crossing a line for you?
What I consider "general" might be something you consider specific.
2) How would you handle the inverse situation?
I'll use a really old well-known example to avoid stepping on anybody's toes. Let's say somebody just saw The Thirteenth Floor and said, in spoiler tags, "I'm unhappy with the way this movie treated virtual reality." I want to recommend The Matrix to them, but to do so I'd have to reveal that The Matrix takes place in virtual reality, which is a huge twist the first time you see it (if you don't know it's coming).
How would you deal with that? Would you simply decide not to recommend The Matrix to that person?
You could spoiler-tag your recommendation but consider the conundrum with that approach: nobody will know what title is hidden behind the spoiler tag, so they won't be able to make a truly informed decision about whether or not to click it. They could decide whether to click it based on their own appetite for risk and their own sensitivity to spoilers, but I don't want to make the assumption that this is a reasonable approach... because obviously, we have different standards for that.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
I would say it depends on the premise. Sometimes going in blind is great. Sometimes it doesn't matter. There's no hard and fast rule. Blowing the premise of The Matrix would be an example of something it would have been impolite to spoil (until it percolated into popular consciousness like Luke being the son of Darth Plagueis). The premise of Groundhog Day (made clear in the trailer): not so much.
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Like if you've got a movie where the trailer plays like a romance comedy, but the movie is actually about a serial killer.
In which case... I mean you'd still kind of want to know.
Usually when a twist comes it's in keeping with the genre of the movie. The murderer is revealed, but you know you're watching a murder mystery. There's a double-cross, but you know you're watching a spy movie. Someone unexpected is a ghost, but you knew you were watching a ghost story. Only very rarely is the twist in a movie that it's a different movie from the one you thought you were watching.
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The way you describe it here sounds totally reasonable.
I think that's the ideal, and it doesn't always work out. Example, the Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse thread never went into open-spoiler mode. Most of page 10 is hidden being spoiler tags (and that's about a month after the movie's release in most markets worldwide, if it matters).
That page is particularly confusing because there are people comparing Into the Spider-Verse to other Spider-Man movies, and while I assume that the spoiler-tagged text is all about Spider-Verse, it might be about the live-action movies.
Personally, when a discussion involves multiple installments in a franchise, I try to make it abundantly clear which installment I'm talking about behind any given spoiler tag. For example, I've talked about Mass Effect in chat like this:
In my ideal world, people would do that more often. Not because I'm worried about accidentally clicking on the wrong tag and spoiling myself on a sequel (I really don't mind), but because it makes conversations easier to follow.
In my ideal world, a movie-specific thread would be an open spoiler zone. If I'm going into the Into the Spider-Verse thread, it's because I've seen it already and I want to talk about it. I don't think that's an unreasonable expectation.
(BTW, I'm totally cool with putting discussion about the most recent installments in a series behind spoiler tags, even in an on-topic thread, mostly because people don't watch TV shows synchronously - between streaming services and global release dates, people are often a few weeks behind the bleeding edge. Somebody in Australia might really want to talk about S2E3 of their favorite show and not trip over spoilers of S2E4 from USers who get it a week early.)
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Sometimes it's part of the fun. Hitchcock would get movie posters made up that begged audiences to not reveal the ending of a movie because it was too surprising. Of course you'd go in and try and guess the ending the second it started. Every murder mystery uses that beeg tweest as part of its allure. Again, it's not a hard and fast rule and I'm not saying this is an official mod ruling, but it's something to bear in mind.
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I specifically chose The Matrix because it is old, so we can talk about it intelligently.
But there are two movies that are out right now that deal with similar themes in similar ways:
I'm using The Matrix and The Thirteenth Floor as stand-ins for those movies.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
The Terminator 2 trailer spoils the meticulously crafted first act.
I made a game, it has penguins in it. It's pay what you like on Gumroad.
Currently Ebaying Nothing at all but I might do in the future.
The Sixth Sense has one of the most famous twists in movie history, a twist that doesn't even occur till almost the end of the film and that was very famously spoiled in literally every fucking trailer.
whoops i just ran over your dog
it's ok though, there are more dogs out there than you could ever possibly own, you can just get another one
The fact that so many franchises or even just individual movies get shoved into their own threads and discussion of them in other locations is told to go to that thread necessitates a robust spoiler policy. If we're only gonna talk about Marvel movies in the Marvel thread then the Marvel thread needs to accommodate a lot of different kind of posters, including ones that haven't seen all the latest movies and don't want them all spoiled.
You couldn't advertise the movie at all if you tried to hide the fact Arnold is the good guy in T2. 'The dinosaurs escape their cages and start eating the humans' is not a spoiler for Jurassic Park, it's probably what's written on the back of the VHS box.
John Wick spoilers:
There are lots of movies that are not built on surprises at all. Creed is not a movie with a lot of sudden twists and turns; you know it’s gonna be about this guy and Rocky and there will be some boxing. Scene by scene it develops, it deepens the characters, it moves the plot forward, but it’s pretty much a straight line.
But there are other movies whose premise is structured like this:
“Character is going through some difficulties, and then something unexpected happens”
John Wick is like that to me. It’s not a movie where the first scene is John Wick killing some dudes and the second scene is John Wick’s boss giving him the names of more dudes to kill. The opener is John Wick being sad about the death of his wife and he gets this dog and he’s retired and so on, and then something unexpected happens—his dog is killed and that kicks off the plot. A lot of the joy of John Wick is the way it builds in surprising fashion, especially with the world-building, but in the beginning the surprise is how the action movie plot gets kicked off.
If I were recommending John Wick and I didn’t want to spoil someone, I wouldn't go further than, “Keanu Reeves stars, the action is amazing, he’s grieving his wife and then something unexpected happens that draws him back into a criminal underworld.”
And I would try to do the same for other movies with that kind of structure. I actually currently still don’t know what Sorry to Bother You is about, except that the main character works in a call center and then it gets weird.
Even docs work like that sometimes. I hear Tickled goes places you didn’t expect. Dear Zachary is an amazing film because you could not possibly guess the end from the beginning. I would discourage anyone from casually revealing whatever the “and then something unexpected happens” happens to be in these movies.
That’s a tough case and it’s true that spoiler culture makes it hard to compare movies like that. In the case you suggest, you might ask first (“I can recommend you some better virtual reality films but in some of them that’s the twist, is that okay?”), or just tag that spoiler with “these are VR movies and that is a spoiler for some of them, clicker beware”. You can also be vague (“The Matrix has some similarities to that and you might like it better”). With friends I will sometimes wait until they’ve forgotten the context and then pretend I’m recommending something out of the blue (“By the way, you might really like The Matrix. Hm? Oh, no reason. I just randomly thought of it”). It might be okay to say “The Matrix is a movie about virtual reality” without giving away the specific way in which is it about virtual reality. In the case of The Matrix, there’s also an element of cultural ubiquity that I won’t stand against—like King Kong or The Sixth Sense, that trademark’s gone generic, and so the broadest most salient “even if you live under a rock” stuff is pretty much fair game (unless specifically requested).
Finally it’s also the case that it’s okay if somebody doesn’t receive my recommendation. We’ll both live, and unless it’s obscure they will probably run into it at some point anyway.
Yet the entire first act is built around the audience being unaware that Arnie is the good guy.
I made a game, it has penguins in it. It's pay what you like on Gumroad.
Currently Ebaying Nothing at all but I might do in the future.
Both these things are old enough now that spoilering should not be expected. This is what I mean by how society uses media. It is a common language. Every time you use a reference to Judas or Brutus when talking about some betrayal that just happens that is actually a spoiler for those stories. New media continues to be added to this lexicon and the older and more ubiquitous something is the more it just becomes something everyone knows.
Eliminating cultural references for politeness is an incredibly radical change from how human society generally operates.
Not necessarily. Some media become cultural touchstones. Most never do though.
If you're having a conversation with someone, you could start out asking "Have you seen American Beauty and Fight Club?"
If you're posting in a thread about movies, it's a reasonable assumption that the cinefiles have also seen these movies. It's also reasonable to expect the OP to have set some guidelines regarding spoilers.
For example, I haven't seen the Godfather movies. But if I'm in the movie thread, and someone starts comparing themes in The Godfather to themes in Lord of the Rings, I shouldn't be surprised. On the flip side, the wife and I recently saw Season 1 of The Orville. We don't have cable, so we wait until the show is out on Blu-Ray. So I don't participate in The Orville thread because it's silly NOT to expect spoilers to happen.
To me, the spoilers I want to avoid are those that will negatively impact my viewing of the media in question. MNS has been brought up as an example, where knowing the twist (or, initially even knowing that there was going to be a twist) would have greatly decreased my enjoyment. But I also feel that movies with a big twist like this are the exception, because you are intended to watch them at least twice, once pre-twist for the experience, once post-twist to find all the clues you missed.
On the other hand, if I have only seen Fight Club, then reading a good article comparing and contrasting the usage of male toxicity in a masculine culture could get me to watch the American Beauty. Especially if the article is written in such a way as to avoid any major spoilers.