Spoiler Discussion - (spoiler free)

[andrewducker]

In the last couple of days I've been in discussion with a couple of different people about spoilers. One of them about BSG season 2 (now two years old) and the other about HP:Half Blood Prince (now four years old), with them considering that as they'd experienced them years ago, they couldn't possibly be considered spoilers.

Which is the exact opposite of how I feel about it. Because there are movies I still haven't seen fronm the 1950s, where discussion of the twist in the tale would spoil the movie for me. And I'm very aware that the majority of people who go to see the new HP movie won't have read the book.

To me, spoilers are all about politeness. If you tell someone the end/twist of something they didn't know, and will possibly experience in the future, when they didn't want to know, then you've spoiled that experience for them. I remember the feeling of watching Empire Strikes Back and discovering that Han and Chewied were lovers. The shock and surprise at the moment of reveal was an integral part of the experience for me, and taking it away from people that haven't seen the movie yet is just plain rude.

Now, you can argue that it being years old, the chances that people on your friends list haven't seen Empire Strikes Back is low. Which is true if you're posting friends-only and have nobody under the age of 20 on your friends list. But it's not like the olden days, when a movie would appear, and then vanish again, when TV that had made the rounds was lost. Nowadays I can go out and buy box sets for TV made before I was born, and watch it entirely fresh. There are more hours of TV and movies out there than I have time to watch in my whole life, and the chances are that some will be watched years out of synch with their original release. And I'd really appreciate you not telling me the details before I do!

Obviously I consider all of the following to be spoilers. I'm curious whether you do too. If you don't then I'd love to know why...

[Poll #1430090]

Also: NO SPOILERS IN THE COMMENTS!

Comments

[andrewducker]

Julie hasn't seen Hamlet. I didn't cover it in school, and didn't know the ending until I was in my mid/late twenties, when I finally saw it.

[cdave]

I know. You wouldn't guess it'd end with see him leaving with an army of elephants to conquer Italy.

[marrog.livejournal.com]

*grins*

On Bad Girls one of the ('common' - there's a thing made about it) ex-cons is going to see her son play Macbeth, and her companion (a posher ex-con) is telling her about it and describes it as one of 'Shakespeare's Tragedies' and the 1st ex-con is all "don't spoil the end for me!" The joke being of course that she's a bit thick.

I see where you're coming from. But you've gotta draw a line somewhere or no one would ever get to talk about anything.

[andrewducker]

I have a line. It's an LJ-Cut. And discussing the ends of tihngs goes under it, unless I'm sure everyone reading has seen it.

[marrog.livejournal.com]

And I think that's very, very nice of you. And generally speaking I would do the same (although I can't say that I'd think to do it for, for example, Hamlet or Titanic). But I wouldn't personally dis someone else for spoiling stuff that's beyond a certain age because while, as I said, it's nice to be nice, I think that there are times (something that finished last week) when it really ought to occur to you and times (something that finished over a year ago) when, if it doesn't, I might have cut it myself but you not cutting it won't make me think less of you.

[andrewducker]

Absolutely.

As I've said elsewhere I wasn't trying to be prescriptive - I was just trying to say "I feel bad when X happens." If X happens occasionally then it won't kill me, and I'll generally assume that people aren't doing it to be malicious, they just don't necessarily think of it the same way as I (and some others) do :->