I said some stuff on Twitter today about spoilers, and I thought I’d bleat them out here, too. Because there’s a certain movie coming out next week and it lands in some international territories earlier than others and I feel like there’s been a very effective curtain pulled across the story so far, and it’d be awesome to help keep that curtain pulled tight for those folks who cannot immediately jump out and see the movie the moment it exists in the world. Like, I know most of the movie, but I’m not gonna tell you about it because I want you to experience it yourself!
Engage Storify:
I’ll add, too, to this discussion that as a storyteller I very clearly try to orchestrate big, jaw-dropping moments in the work — yes, the small moments and emotional beats are important, too, but I love to have those dramatic plot events where SHIT GOES BUCK WILD. Like, my greatest pleasure is sitting over someone’s shoulder as they read new pages of my work and they get to one of those moments. I can barely contain my excitement. I engineer those moments precisely because I want them to be read organically as part of the piece — I don’t want it told to you as some kind of narrative data point. I want you to experience it inside the work. Those moments are part of the fabric of the narrative — and tearing them out of the fabric and plopping them on the ground is rude and destructive to the thing I just endeavored to create.
I mean, sure, I can’t control how you consume it or what you do with it.
But I can, just the same, hope you don’t barf up spoilers of my work into other people’s mouths — they’re not baby birds, they don’t need you feeding them that way. I want you to talk about the work! But talking about the work isn’t the same as yelling it into the ear of some guy sitting down at a Starbucks. He hasn’t read it. Go find people who have read it explicitly, then talk to them. That’s how conversation works. Discussion is meaningful when it’s with people who have the context needed. Otherwise, you’re just on FULL BLAST BROADCAST, which I guess is arguably one of the negative sides of social media. Noise overwhelming signal and all that.
ANYWAY.
Them’s my thoughts.
Do with them as you will.
*jetpacks away*
*hits a tree*
*dies*
Joe says:
I call dibs on Wendig’s jetpack! Look for his beard (with bits of tree bark) on sale later today on Ebay. *pulls out knife. Starts a-cutting*
December 10, 2015 — 12:05 PM
Courtney C says:
So you were just there, lurking in the bushes watching bearded men play with their jetpacks?
December 10, 2015 — 12:33 PM
Peter Sturdee says:
Weren’t you?
December 10, 2015 — 2:39 PM
Peter Sturdee says:
Best ten bucks I ever spent.
December 10, 2015 — 2:40 PM
Carmingo says:
Thanks for those comments. I hate it when someone spoils a film or story or whatever by revealing the critical plot development or denouement. And thanks for that new word: “spoilering.” Hee, hee.
December 10, 2015 — 12:25 PM
mikes75Mikel Strom says:
When the seventh Harry Potter came out, I was in line for the midnight release. I also went to a bookstore about four days later on a normal shopping trip. The second time I went (four days later), there was a couple gushing about Deathly Hallows next to me in the cafe. I hadn’t finished the book yet, so I picked up my things and moved (they were pretty involved, I don’t think it bothered them much). They had a right to discuss the thing that thrilled them in public, and I didn’t have a right to police their conversation for my comfort, which is sort of how I view most chatter about TFA that’ll happen between when it releases and when I see it.
Now, the night of the release, while I waited in line, a group of teens who were at the front of the line rolled slowly past the rest of us, reading passages aloud dealing with major plot points. Those were assholes who earned the full large soda someone tossed at them.
My point is, there’s a difference between enthusiastic discussion with your social group about a thing you all love, which might unintentionally spoil someone to a given plot point, and active spoiling to flaunt your superiority at having read or watched a thing an hour or so before everyone else. I can stand fans being fans, but I fucking hate assholes in fan clothing.
December 10, 2015 — 12:42 PM
Brian Basham says:
I am going to see the first showing and then immediately going to twitter afterwards to post fake spoilers. This is how I protest the cutting of the ewok orgy scenes from Aftermath
December 10, 2015 — 1:31 PM
Sheck Threepew (@SheckyX) says:
WHY DID YOU TELL US YOU DIED OMG SPOILERS
December 10, 2015 — 1:55 PM
Kay Camden says:
I’m so with you on this. I also wish people understood that posting, tweeting, or writing a review for a book/film/television show/whatever does not mean they should explain the plot book-report style. And the subplots. Including all the twists. Why you gotta do that, internet people? Why?
December 10, 2015 — 3:44 PM
curleyqueue says:
Oh golly, how I hate when the internet people do that!!
December 13, 2015 — 6:55 PM
Paul Baxter says:
I am still looking forward to STAR WARS: AFTERLIFE 2: LIFE DAY: JOURNEY TO THE TALE OF DAVE SKYWALKER, COOL CAPTAIN OF THE BLUE DONKEY GARBAGE SCOW.
Uh… you WERE serious about writing that, right?
December 10, 2015 — 6:42 PM
Fiona Fire says:
My issue with spoilers is the timeline. If we worry about never spoiling anything ever, we will never be able to have a conversation about media. There has to be a statute of limitations on spoilers.
But what is fair?
I’m not all that into TFA. I won’t be there opening night. But a lot of people will and they’ll want to talk about what they saw (a totally natural response to a blockbuster film). When can they start discussing it openly? A few weeks? The theatrical run? Not until it’s been on DVD for six months?
Part of the purpose of pop culture is to give us something to talk about. And spoilers come up naturally in conversation. Obviously, there’s a difference between conversation and being an asshole. If someone tells me they just started reading THG, I’m not going to blurt out “X dies at the end!” But I don’t go around worrying about spoiling it if the series comes up in conversation. The books have been out for years. At this point, if you wanted to read it, you would have. I’ll even give people a few months since the last movie just came out.
I don’t have a hard and fast rule. I don’t mind being spoiled but I try to wait a reasonable amount of time before treating plot points like common knowledge. Reasonable depends on the form. For a TV series finale, a few days seems reasonable. Through the weekend even. For a movie, a few months is more than enough. Books are harder to gauge, but it’s rare a book is big enough that spoilers are an issue.
December 10, 2015 — 8:46 PM
terribleminds says:
The thing is, we mistake social media as ‘conversation,’ because really, it’s ‘broadcast.’
If you treat some social media like conversation, you would or could put forth a spoiler warning, or you would keep it to select forums or pages or channels where you were comfortable discussing the thing you were discussing — it would be largely consensual. But people just getting on Twitter and broadcasting spoilers is different from two or five or ten like-minded similarly-experienced people talking about a shared pop culture event.
December 11, 2015 — 10:17 AM
rathnar says:
And people wonder why jetpacks aren’t in general use. It’s because most of us would grab one, and ram into the nearest tree.
December 11, 2015 — 9:06 AM
Laura J. Quinn says:
Timely and true, as always.
I learned this the hard way earlier this year by ACCIDENTALLY spoiling the ending of the previous season finale of Supernatural for someone.
By ACCIDENTALLY I mean that I was having a genuine discussion with someone (as defined by Chuck above) about it, but a friend of this person (who I didn’t realize also watched the show) was in earshot and inadvertently heard the big jaw dropping bit that’s in the season 10 finale (Dean was an oompa-loompa all along! Sam is really that Sasquatch from that one movie!)
This person had not yet finished the season and was HEARTBROKEN. He almost started to cry…
I felt like actual shit for about two weeks.
So. Yeah. Boiling it all down into one sentence, a la Wil Wheaton: Don’t be a dick.
December 11, 2015 — 9:48 AM
Carlos Matthews Hernandez says:
You couldn’t avoid that scenario without asking everyone within earshot. I’ve had the situation where someone told me they’d seen every episode of x show and when I wanted to discuss the final moments of the recent season, their eyes opened wide upon learning they had not seen the most recent season because “I didn’t even know it was back on.” 🙁
December 11, 2015 — 5:54 PM
bryonc says:
I don’t know what the proper length of time to wait to discuss openly is, but I do know it’s not moments after you come out of a showing of the movie and are still in the theater.
For the month before “Star Trek: Nemesis” came out, I studiously avoided all the places online where spoilers might lurk. I avoided print media mentions. And my caution was rewarded by my being pretty much ignorant (of the plot) when I walked into the movie house. Until I was waiting at the refreshment counter for my order and one little snot-nosed brat said to another, “It was really sad that Data died.” I turned to the little shit: “Hey! Some of us haven’t seen the movie yet!” And since I was, in their eyes, an old fart (which I really wasn’t yet), I received the “fuck’s your problem?” look from the little bastards.
I don’t know when I’ll get to the new “Star Wars,” and I know the longer it takes, the more I risk spoilers. But FFS, get in your damn car before you open your mouth to discuss it. And have the windows up.
December 13, 2015 — 4:12 AM
Todd Moody says:
I’m seeing it on Thursday 30 minutes ahead of my eldest. I told her I was going to live tweet the movie, so she better stay off twitter during the moving unless she wanted spoilers. Obviously I won’t be doing that. I’ll be too caught up in the moment, crying uncontrollably.
December 14, 2015 — 8:45 AM