Post by Ryan_MYeah on Dec 14, 2017 5:56:35 GMT
...and others. It’s not *exclusively* film related, but I thought this would make an interesting discussion.
This was ispired by a recent PSX panel I saw. In it, the hostess (Hannah Hart, I think. Doesn’t really matter. She was annoying, anyway.) basically drilled the cast and crew of The Last of Us Part 2 with questions related to possible major plot points within the game, the first few questions making Neill Druckmann artfully dodge what she was asking, and when someone seemed to almost reveal something, she shoots off the line “don’t worry, folks, we got 45 minutes left for someone to slip up.”
And this really got me thinking: Why do we intend on spoiling movies, shows, books, games, or any medium under the sun for ourselves?
Now, when it comes to movies in particular, I’m someone who likes to come in as cold as possible. So I don’t read up a whole lot on plot lines, I don’t actively seek out story beats someone got the scoop on, I don’t even like taking part in speculation. So for someone like me, when I see websites with clickbait headlines like “get all the exclusive details of [important scene and/or character goes here]”, it just frustrates me. The entire point of watching the movies is to feel the emotions a character experiences simultaneously, to discover life-changing things as they do, to live in that scene with them. It may seem geeky, but that’s the magic of the cinema (or any other medium under the sun), to come in with fresh eyes, and feel immersed in the journey unfolding in front of us. Even when we rewatch them, and all surprise is basically gone, we never forget just how enthralled we were that first time. Ok, I’ll freely echo that age old sentiment that it’s not the destination, it’s the journey that really matters, but there’s something really meaningful about those surprises along the way that make the experience even more special.
Which is why I think it’s so counter-productive when there are people who intentionally want to ruin that magic not merely for themselves, but for others by selfishly leaking things out that people would want to discover first-hand, whether it be those aforementioned clickbait articles, to Twitter and Facebook jackasses, YouTube trilobites, and even those on message boards like our dearly departed IMDb (I’m at least thankful there’s no thespoilerguys dicks here to intentionally stir the pot). There’s something really sad to those latter examples especially. Okay, articles from those “journalists” at least have a reason. Like anyone with a job, they need to make scratch, so they go wherever the feeding is rich. It’s still a dick move, but at least there’s cause. But for those other cases with no such excuse, who don’t get any compensation out of it, and who ruin the experiences for others for no other reason than to get some sick, quick kicks out of what they’ve done... that’s just low. Desperate. Depressing.
I know it’s not the end of the world if something I’m looking forward to gets ruined for me, and I’m sure I’d still enjoy it just fine even knowing it, and ultimately spoilers are just a minor blip in the craziness out in the real world. It’s nothing worth crying your eyes out over, something to be mad at for a couple minutes, and then you get on with your life. But even so, it doesn’t detract from what a mean-spirited and hateful move it is. And for what? The hope that someone will give them the attention they crave for ten seconds before vanishing into obscurity again? If something like that is how those people get their joy, it really is pitiful.
But anyway, now I turn the discussion to you. What do you think it is that’s so fascinating about spoilers, and holding that knowledge over the heads of others?
And... ”It was his sled!”
This was ispired by a recent PSX panel I saw. In it, the hostess (Hannah Hart, I think. Doesn’t really matter. She was annoying, anyway.) basically drilled the cast and crew of The Last of Us Part 2 with questions related to possible major plot points within the game, the first few questions making Neill Druckmann artfully dodge what she was asking, and when someone seemed to almost reveal something, she shoots off the line “don’t worry, folks, we got 45 minutes left for someone to slip up.”
And this really got me thinking: Why do we intend on spoiling movies, shows, books, games, or any medium under the sun for ourselves?
Now, when it comes to movies in particular, I’m someone who likes to come in as cold as possible. So I don’t read up a whole lot on plot lines, I don’t actively seek out story beats someone got the scoop on, I don’t even like taking part in speculation. So for someone like me, when I see websites with clickbait headlines like “get all the exclusive details of [important scene and/or character goes here]”, it just frustrates me. The entire point of watching the movies is to feel the emotions a character experiences simultaneously, to discover life-changing things as they do, to live in that scene with them. It may seem geeky, but that’s the magic of the cinema (or any other medium under the sun), to come in with fresh eyes, and feel immersed in the journey unfolding in front of us. Even when we rewatch them, and all surprise is basically gone, we never forget just how enthralled we were that first time. Ok, I’ll freely echo that age old sentiment that it’s not the destination, it’s the journey that really matters, but there’s something really meaningful about those surprises along the way that make the experience even more special.
Which is why I think it’s so counter-productive when there are people who intentionally want to ruin that magic not merely for themselves, but for others by selfishly leaking things out that people would want to discover first-hand, whether it be those aforementioned clickbait articles, to Twitter and Facebook jackasses, YouTube trilobites, and even those on message boards like our dearly departed IMDb (I’m at least thankful there’s no thespoilerguys dicks here to intentionally stir the pot). There’s something really sad to those latter examples especially. Okay, articles from those “journalists” at least have a reason. Like anyone with a job, they need to make scratch, so they go wherever the feeding is rich. It’s still a dick move, but at least there’s cause. But for those other cases with no such excuse, who don’t get any compensation out of it, and who ruin the experiences for others for no other reason than to get some sick, quick kicks out of what they’ve done... that’s just low. Desperate. Depressing.
I know it’s not the end of the world if something I’m looking forward to gets ruined for me, and I’m sure I’d still enjoy it just fine even knowing it, and ultimately spoilers are just a minor blip in the craziness out in the real world. It’s nothing worth crying your eyes out over, something to be mad at for a couple minutes, and then you get on with your life. But even so, it doesn’t detract from what a mean-spirited and hateful move it is. And for what? The hope that someone will give them the attention they crave for ten seconds before vanishing into obscurity again? If something like that is how those people get their joy, it really is pitiful.
But anyway, now I turn the discussion to you. What do you think it is that’s so fascinating about spoilers, and holding that knowledge over the heads of others?
And... ”It was his sled!”
).
