Spoiler Culture

My internet has been really spotty lately, sometimes working almost normally and sometimes dying completely at seemingly random times. Additionally, even when it's working(well enough to even play multiplayer games with no lag while watching a livestream), it absolutely refuses to let me upload anything longer than 20 seconds.
So to fulfill my need to be creative and rant about stuff, I've decided to spend a little more time working on my blog, and that starts with this post.

Ok technically it started with the last post i made, but whatever it's the thought that counts

So today i want to talk about spoilers. If you don't know what that word means, it's basically when someone tells you the ending/some important feature of a book, game, movie, tv show, or other form of(usually fictional) media before you have a chance to encounter it yourself. For example, telling you the ending of Harry Potter before you've finished the books.
Spoilers are bad because they, well, spoil the excitement of naturally finding out how a story ends(again, this can apply to more than just books or movies but for simplicity we'll just use books as the default). If you know the shocking twist ending before you get to finish, or even start a book, it takes all the fun and excitement out of it. In some cases, it can even completely ruin the entire experience, like for books whose entire point relies on a mystery.

Because of this, there's a bit of an 'etiquette' around discussing fictional media on the internet, or elsewhere. It generally goes like this:

Give warning for spoilers so people have a chance to avoid them
Wait at least X days/weeks/months to openly discuss major plot events(time differs for individual circumstances)

Unfortunately, people often disregard these rules, resulting in what i call "spoiler culture".

Let's start with spoiler warnings. When discussing some fictional story, it's customary to say "spoiler warning" before revealing major plot points. However, people usually follow the letter of the law rather than the spirit here, often saying something along the lines of "spoiler warning the main character dies". There are several problems with this approach.

First, they don't give people watching/listening/reading enough time to click away(or if in person, verbally stop the speaker) before unleashing the spoiler. Second, they don't even say what story the spoiler was actually for, giving viewers no clue as to whether or not it would be safe to proceed. At this point, saying "spoiler warning" is mostly used as a meme for things that are so commonly spoiled or obvious that there's no need for a spoiler warning as the information doesn't even count as a spoiler anymore.

Another thing people do is to wait until on average 0.000023 seconds have passed since the story was released and then just completely forgo spoilers because "you've had time". This is probably the worst spoiler infraction, first, because they don't give any sort of warnings, and second, because no, not everyone has had time. People often defend spoiling The Lord of the Rings because the book was written in the 1950s. The problem with that is, not everyone was alive at the time. If someone is, say, fifteen years old, they would only have had fifteen years to read it, no matter how long ago it came out(realistically, they likely would have only had about 10 or less years unless they were literate from birth, which I'm told very few people are). Additionally, they might not have even heard about it or realized it would be something they would be interested in.

A lot of people spoiled the popular movies Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame very soon after they came out, with the excuse that "you've had enough time to watch it". But there are several reasons someone might not have had enough time. Maybe they were on vacation. Maybe they've been working, and they haven't had a day off yet. Maybe they can't afford to watch it. And in some cases, maybe they don't even know it exists.

The Mistborn trilogy came out in 2008, but i didn't even know they existed until around 2018, when a friend recommended them to me and i started reading them. If someone had spoiled the ending before then, i wouldn't have even had a chance to learn of the books' existence before then, but hey, "I've had time" right?

What spoiler-happy people need to learn is that not everyone consumes every single form of media mere seconds after its initial release. In 2010, 328,259 books were published(data not 100% accurate as it took me like 10 seconds to look up, it's mostly to prove my point). For someone to have read all of them in that year, they would need to read 900 books per day, or 37 per hour, or one every two minutes. That is literally impossible. And that's just talking about books, not even mentioning movies, tv shows, video games, or other forms of media. So for any given story, no matter how popular it is, there is an extremely high chance that any one person has not finished it yet, or may not even be aware of its existence.

Basically, what I'm saying is that having an arbitrary deadline after which it's okay to spoil literally anything you want is, to be perfectly honest, stupid and rude, because not everyone has the chance to read every book or watch every tv show or movie two weeks, months, or even years after it came out. So when you're dealing with spoilers, always give a specific warning telling people which story is being spoiled, and give them enough opportunity to click off the video, stop the conversation, or stop reading your internet post before continuing.

That's why in my youtube videos, whenever i mention any kind of book, movie, or other media i like, i always give people plenty of time to click off the video before saying spoilers, and even then, i try to be as vague as possible just in case someone who isn't ready accidentally stays. For example, i was originally going to have spoilers for Terraria in this post, with warnings showing you how to properly talk about spoilers, but i realized that i could make my point without needing to go into specifics, meaning that this blog post has zero spoilers in it.

Another thing people do is to say things like "skip like, two minutes ahead in the video to avoid the spoilers" and then talk about the spoilers for more than two minutes. If you're going to have spoilers, make it possible for non-psychic people to avoid them. Especially if the spoiler is for something the video isn't even about, like talking about harry potter in a minecraft video.

The last type of spoiler is a very different one than the other kinds, as it pretty much only applies to video or computer games. This type is when the developer of a game posts a spoiler of an upcoming feature of an unreleased game or update they're working on. For example, let's take the Terraria 1.3 update.

In the lead up to Terraria's biggest major update, 1.3, which included a ton of new features and a final boss, a lot of spoilers were posted by the devs on the forums. The community, impatient for the update, eagerly consumed these and then proceeded to immediately spread knowledge of every single thing spoiled to everyone they had contact with. This included youtube videos with spoiled content in the thumbnails, forum users making spoilers their avatars, and even, in one memorable case, literally one of the forum moderators putting a complete spoiler in his signature. This is significant because you cannot 'ignore' moderators(which hides their content), and you see their signatures below literally everything they post that isn't on someone's user profile.

Originally, i intended to avoid as many 1.3 spoilers as possible, so the content i encountered in the update would be exciting and fresh, but it was literally impossible without avoiding the forums completely. You shouldn't have to shun the internet until you've finished every single book, movie, tv show, or game you will ever be interested in. By the time the trailer rolled around, i had completely given up, and resigned myself to my fate and decided to watch the trailer. It spoiled almost everything that hadn't been spoiled already. I complained to one of the mods about it(the same guy from earlier), and he said "Don't worry, most of the content hasn't been spoiled yet!" He was completely wrong. Almost every single thing in the 1.3 update was spoiled minus the final boss(although literally every part of the lead up to the final boss was spoiled). Needless to say, i was a little disappointed.

The same thing is happening with the unreleased game Hytale. Literally almost an hour's worth of content has been spoiled so far if you combine the blog posts, gifs, images, the original trailer, tweets, and gameplay videos. For there to be more unspoiled content than spoiled content, the game will have to be bigger than Skyrim.

The reason this happens so much is because it generates hype. Most people aren't patient, and so they aren't willing to wait for the game to be released to find out what's in it. Like impatient kids trying to get a peek at their christmas presents early, they try and pry as much information as they possibly can out of the developers, pressuring and encouraging them to post lots of these spoilers. Unfortunately, they're not content with that, so not only do they read/watch these spoilers themselves, they fall over themselves trying to spoil it for others, by discussing it on forums, putting major spoiled features in youtube thumbnails and titles, and posting about it on various social media websites.

So why is spoiling things a rude action that people shouldn't do? You might say "But they're just enjoying the media in the way they like, they don't mean to ruin it for others." But there's a word for unintentionally doing something that hurts others: Thoughtlessness. When interacting with others, you are expected to think about how your actions will affect those around you before you do them. For example, blasting loud music in your car with the windows down. You might not intend to annoy people, but you do so anyway by not taking the time to think about how your actions affect others. It's the same with spoilers. If you're talking to a friend in public and you loudly spoil the ending to a popular tv show, you could try and defend yourself by saying "Well I'm talking to my friend, it's not my fault others don't want to hear what I'm saying, I'm not talking to them, they have no right to complain", but you would probably think differently if some people near you were having a conversation where they used offensive language and spoke loudly enough to annoy everyone within fifty feet. You would call that rude, and thoughtless, because it is.

Spoilers are arguably worse though, as an annoying conversation will annoy you for maybe a day, but hearing a spoiler for your favorite tv show or book can permanently taint the experience for you. You can't forget something that important to you, and because it was spoiled, you will never have the opportunity to experience it the way it was intended, and you will never get the excitement and surprise of seeing the plot twist unfold for the first time.

So to summarize:

-Give spoiler warnings before every major spoiler you talk about, specifically mention what the spoiler is for, and give people enough time to extract themselves before you say it.
-No, people have not 'had enough time'. Lots of people don't even know the story exists, but would love to experience it if they knew about it. Time is not a factor here.
-When talking about spoilers in public, talk quietly enough that people around you aren't likely to inadvertently be spoiled. In fact, talk quietly enough to avoid annoying people in public all the time, that's just basic manners.
-Something that you don't consider a spoiler might be a huge spoiler for someone else. Keep that in mind before you belt out plot details.

Some people might say, "I shouldn't have to avoid talking about things i like just because others aren't ready to hear it yet, i shouldn't have to sacrifice my enjoyment for them," but that's exactly what you force them to do when you spoil something for them. Having to put decent spoiler warnings before spoilers may be inconvenient for you, but getting your favorite story spoiled is far worse. Making a small sacrifice to help others avoid a lot of sadness is just a decent thing to do. Yes, you do have the right to spoil things, and no, this can't be enforced. But remember that there's no laws against being a jerk, but that doesn't make it any more okay.

So please, for everyone's happiness, stop spoiling things. Maybe someday your thoughtfulness will be repaid when someone avoids spoiling something for you.

And even if they don't, it's just a decent thing to do.