The politics of online spoilers

[matgb]

One of the things that always bugs me online is different peoples reactions to plot 'spoilers' for media things—unpredictable and at times downright weird, as Nick Mamatas demonstrated last month. Now me, I tend to seek them out for shows I like—before the internet I had a subscription to SFX partially for the spoiler zone section, I loved reading about shows way in advance and knowing what would happen. But then I tend to rewatch stuff I like a lot anyway. So, inspired by this old poll at nmg's, I thought I'd update it a bit.

Warning though, below the fold are some minor spoilers for recent films such as Iron Man, Harry Potter 5 and Spiderman, and also endings/character reveals for Hamlet, Sixth Sense, Citizen Kane, the Star Wars trilogy, Soylent Green and Fight Club. Nothing is revealed that isn't on this classic t-shirt but if you really are that averse, just scroll to the last question...

[Poll #1199471]

Obviously some things, like the end of a genuine mystery, are worth hiding if that's how it's written—knowing who did it never seemed to hurt my enjoyment of Columbo though, and a chunk of my reading is always history books where, y'know, I normally know the ending. It's not what happens that matters to me, it's how—I'm there for the ride, not the big splash at the bottom. You?

Comments

[cosmolinguist]

I'm glad to see The Sixth Sense blowing away the competition on that last question because M. Night Shamalamadingdong is such an appalling storyteller that it does actually ruin his stories to know the "twist" ending. They're just little puzzles to solve, and once you know the answer they're impossible to sit through again.

I'd twigged that he was dead a few minutes into the film (it reminded me a lot of an old one called Jacob's Ladder, which helped), and it was honestly so obvious to me that Bruce Willis was dead that I was expecting the plot to build on that. I thought that was the jumping-off point, not the big reveal at the end. So I found it watchable the first time only because I was expecting more.

I came out of the theater as surprised as anyone else, but for an entirely different reason: I was dismayed, I felt cheated.

Psycho, Citizen Kane, all that...those I can watch endlessly because the execution of the story is so good that it's enjoyable even if you know or guess the "spoiler." Knowing stuff like that never actually spoils anything for me; like you, I'm there for the ride.