Dawn and Patrick are a little perturbed. Miffed. Irked. What phenomenon has them grumbling and frowning throughout this week’s show? Spoilers. Not being spoiled, because they’ve learned to be clever in the years since the internet has caused Spoilers to become a big fat hairy “thing,” but the idea that what constitutes “Spoilers” has become an already-too-wide, and ever-widening loose definition meant solely to coddle people who might not even understand what it is they’re trying to hide from themselves. Rules need to be set, and so they are – but first, a trip through the land of the dermatological. It is a frustrating, flaky place, all the more annoying when you’re 73, like Dawn is, and you’re still getting pimples. Lucky for us, there are some tried and true solutions offered up in today’s show, including [Spoiler Redacted] and the frankly amazing [Spoiler Redacted]. Enjoy!
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What? Walt is Jesse’s real father.
Bobby hit on something that I was thinking about as I was listening to it, and he touched upon it in the last 20 minutes and that is the idea of “the experience”. I have been touching upon this too in what I write about but… I’m sure I’m not alone but I think when it comes to means of entertainment, we all want to have “the virgin experience”. In other words, if we become aware of a movie or TV show, we want to experience this on our own, without influence. Yet as stated in this show, we are part of a culture where instant gratification is king, so people now have to battle between experiencing everything RIGHT NOW!!! vs. “I’ll experience it on my own, and on my own time.”
I don’t watch “True Blood”, but when I hear Dawn doing the wrap-up of an episode, I’m thinking “wow, is the show that intense?” Sure, there are loads of spoilers but I don’t watch it nor do I have interest in watching it but the spoilers/lures has made me reconsider. Will I watch it, most likely not.
I listen to Cortandfatboy and I know first and foremost what I’m getting into. They are going to discuss a lot of things, I’m entering a pocket of pop culture sunshine, I am taking that risk and I am in. Yet I also know that a good amount of the movies, TV shows, and comic books they may touch on are things I may not watch nor ever watch. Yet I’m that nerdy guy who has a need to know about every little aspect of things, where liner notes and director’s commentary are not enough, I love that part. Which leads me to ask: what do people hate most, the information that becomes a spoiler, or the person doing the spoiling? We all want to be “in the know”, but sometimes we want that virgin experience to be unique to ourselves, which can lead to the inevitable shared experience, be it in a movie theater setting, a bar, at home, or in a chat room.
Another interesting phenomenon in the last few years is the award show spoiler. I cover music, so the award shows I am supposed to watch are delayed by three hours. However, I find what people are saying on Twitter to be far more interesting than the actual TV broadcast. Yet in the middle of people on the East Coast talking about outfits, songs, reactions, hairdo’s, and a lip-sync gone wrong are the West Coast people yelling SPOILER ALERT, DON’T TELL US WHAT’S HAPPENING. Yet we live in a time when there is no need for that three hour delay. Even if a TV network isn’t offering an official live feed across the country, one can do a few clicks and find unofficial feeds. People do it with sports events, especially expensive pay-per-view boxing. Now compare that to most movie awards shows, which are I believe shown live across the board. If it’s on 8:30pm on the East, we in the West will see it at 5:30pm. That becomes the “shared experience”, and it will only be a spoiler for those who are at work or are online and away from a TV.
Music is slightly different, it’s almost automatic these days if an album “leaks” two to four weeks before its official release, and everyone wants to be one of the FIRST! to hear it or give an opinion. There would be very few spoiler alerts in music when every aspect of the music seems to be discussed. Yet in the last few years, I would say that sometimes, it’s less about the music and more about the hype, the means of promotion that takes headlines more than what they’re creating it for in the first place. Sometimes, the music takes a backseat to “the star”, so seeing “the star” promoting a soft drink is just part of the hype. Yet it’s great to hear an album or song that is has a lot of pre-release hype, get into it and discover there are a few surprises, such as an uncredited singer, musician, or producer. That will lead to the discussion of why they didn’t get the same level of attention as the other means of superhype.
We all want and value the experience, but we want it to be our own before what we feel is influenced by others. Nothing wrong with influence, it’s what we all do, but perhaps it shows that there is a fight for individuality, even if it’s as petty as having small information on what may or may not happen in a TV season.
BTW: Dawn, I wrote this reply with two spaces between each sentence. Force of habit, even though I know it’s not needed in an online setting. I apologize.
On the topic of markreads.net/markwatches.net, Mark Oshiro’s project has always been to read/watch entertainment properties with ZERO prior knowledge of what they contain, judging them strictly on their own merits rather than with pre-conceived notions about them, which leads him to be more strident about spoilers than most folks have to be in real life. Also, all of his spoiler policies have been written in response to ways people have actually spoiled him from time to time; it’s a case of trying to make something idiot-proof only to have the universe build a bigger idiot. I personally love Mark’s reactions to almost every project he’s taken on – from Twilight, to Harry Potter, to ASOIAF, to Buffy/Angel, to Sandman, etc. – and they spring from a place of pure unspoiled fannish (or non-fannish, in the case of the Twilight books) glee.
For myself, I always say I’m spoiler-allergic thanks to my days in online X-Files and Buffy fandoms, when information about upcoming episodes was easily available and people didn’t think twice about sharing it. It was always disappointing to have surprise endings or twists ruined (or, you know, spoiled) by thoughtless commenters. And on shows like that, even casting information could be considered spoilers – if you told me James Marsters would be returning in upcoming Buffy episodes, for example, I would then know that Spike was coming back at some point, and thus know a future plot twist. In order to protect myself from info like that and give myself the most unfiltered, raw experience of a show, I had to learn to skim, to see-without-seeing, to ignore. Fandom as a whole decided they were going to self-police to make it easier for the spoilerphobes amongst us, with the recognition that we all have to take responsibility for our own news consumption.
Obviously spoilage is most annoying on properties with some sort of overarching narrative or suspenseful plot. I don’t want to know who-dunnit before I finish the mystery novel, but I couldn’t care less if you were to tell me that the couple in the romance novel ends up living happily-ever-after. I wouldn’t want a n0n-book-reader to know what happens at the end of Game of Thrones Season 1 before they get there, but don’t think it matters if someone finds out how an episode of Community is going to play out.
All of which is to say: spoilers are relative; I think it’s preferable to enter an entertainment experience with as little pre-information as possible; your mileage may vary; as a spoilerphobe it’s my responsibility to protect myself.