Seeing people freak out over spoilers in negative ways has more or less made me not care all that much about them. I saw someone complaining about a headline being a spoiler recently and I really had no idea what they were talking about, if it was a spoiler it was in the most oblique way possible, it seems like it's away for people to vent their ire at the world over fairly insignificant information. I have to say having certain things spoiled has not hurt my enjoyment of them at all, I was a GOT book reader so the Red Wedding was no surprise and I still enjoyed it. Watching videos of people who had no idea freaking out over it was fun though, I have to admit.
If there is something I don't want many details about I try to avoid any articles directly referencing it, for the most part this works, although it's not uncommon to have it spoiled in seemingly unrelated spots or in comments.
I think the answer to the problem is to have someone - critics, HBO themselves - tweet something like "Trust us, stay offline tonight". I'm fine knowing a huge spoiler is going to happen; I would have been crushed to know what it was before I watched. I'm West Coast, so I wasn't available at 6pm my time and started watching the episode about an hour after it finished airing back East. I paused about 20 minutes in when my pizza delivery arrived and happened to check my email. I'm signed up for the Vulture Succession newsletter which had the subject line "Do not open this email until you finished the episode". That worked for me. So when Tom called, I instantly understood what was happening to be real and not just a test for the kids, but it didn't bother me because I got to see it with my own eyes.
I enjoy being surprised as much as the next person and I don't actively seek out spoilers, but I generally don't get too bent out of shape if it happens. Usually because if I do get spoiled, it's on me for being some place on the internet that I shouldn't be. If you know might get spoiled on twitter or reddit or an RSS reader, then stay off! And if you have to be on for work or something, mute/unsubscribe/unfollow as much as makes you feel is necessary. But I'm more of the opinion that it is less what happens that matters, but how it happens, so as long as something is well executed it shouldn't matter how much foreknowledge you bring to the table. There is more to media than merely the plot.
Other assorted spoiler thoughts:
1) Spoilers apply to the plot only. Things like episode titles, soundtrack titles, or trailers could potentially spoil the plot, but news that is intentionally released by the cast/crew/studio/network prior to airing does not count as a spoiler. Cast announcements? Not a spoiler. BTS photos? Not a spoiler. The runtime of a movie? Not a spoiler. A warning to stay off social media because something spoiliery happens? Not a spoiler.
2) This ship has sailed for most of the internet, but I don't put any uncoded spoilers on social media until after a certain length of time has passed. I try to do a day for a TV episode with a weekly release, one day per episode for a TV show with a binge release, and a week after wide release for a movie. There are still plenty of ways to talk around specifics and have a good conversation about something. Just because I have a higher tolerance for spoilers doesn't mean that everybody does, and I try to be respectful of that.
This is a wonderful analysis. I’ve gotten to a place where it’s less about when or if I’m spoiled, and more about who is responsible.
Did I wait to long to watch something while existing on the internet? Did I, like with last night’s episode, make the stupid decision to load reviews on my browser before watching the episode? Well, that’s on me. And knowing lets me focus on the build in ways I wouldn’t be able to had I remained unspoiled.
But woe to the friend who texts the group before confirming where everyone is at with a show!
Another angle to this is that the intersection of TV and social media is a global phenomenon. Succession airs in the US at 11am Monday for me! I’ve got to wait a minimum of 7 hours to get home from work and get into it.
I think I fall on the side of with spoilers aren't everything. Living in the UK, it's usually the next evening after a full day of internetting that I'm going to be able to catch up with a US show (the exception was streaming releases during the pandemic, when I had time to watch them over breakfast as soon as they were released). As I've had with last night's Succession, it's often oblique references rather than outright spoilers, but it's can be enough that you have a good idea what's coming, so it's rarely a complete shock.
Also, no one is watching everything as it comes out so we're all going to be catching up on things that passed us by. That often comes with some knowledge of the big moments, just by cultural osmosis. Same with adaptations - I'd never played The Last of Us but still knew how it ended.
The thing is, if it's good it still hits, and realistically a show can only really sustain a certain amount of big moments. I can definitely think of shows where every episode came with a cliff-hanger or a twist and it just became nonsense - there's only so many reveals of the actual REAL villains that you can sit through without it being ridiculous. A decent twist or big moment will work even if you know it's coming because, on reflection, it didn't come out of nowhere and it takes the story and characters somewhere interesting. That survives foreknowledge.
I also saw Rye Lane in the cinema a few weeks ago. Really enjoyed it! However, literally half way through the film a guy comes in to the screen and sits next to me in an otherwise pretty empty theatre. He proceeds to put on his headphones and loudly listen to tunes while scrolling through his phone. Thankfully he was apologetic when I asked him to turn it down, but what the hell! That's the real bad behaviour we need to stop.
Although I broadly agree that spoilers aren't the be-all-end-all, I personally prefer to know as little as possible about an episode/film/book before I go in. To the point that I even tend to skip introductions in classic novels, because I want to experience the thing unmediated first!
However, I'm also very aware that whatever the etiquette *should* be (24 hours after airing seems reasonable to me, or 7 days for a movie), it's simply unrealistic to expect that from social media - especially since I live outside the US. It's one thing to watch TV hours or days after it airs, but films like Barbarian can take months to arrive here in Europe, and you simply cannot expect American film Twitter to avoid talking about them until they're out in every market. If spoilers are big deal for you, it really isn't that hard to mute or unfollow key words (though it would be nice if Twitter had a spoiler function, which would also help for content warnings). For shows released week to week like House of the Dragon or Better Call Saul, I simply stay off social media until I've had a chance to watch the episode (and you can use a blocker if your self-control is lacking, which I do while working from home). I care about spoilers, but you shouldn't let the spoiler become more important than the show.
I was shocked when I found out that screeners for the 1st four episodes had already been made available and I hadn't been spoiled. It seems that some people cannot keep their yaps shut on the internet and start saying little non-spoiler-spoilers, like the comments that started popping up after the episode aired so you know something huge has happened, or some sites that just have to put the full spoiler in the headline. Damn that's the thing that really pisses me off. I got the feeling that I'd better watch it ASAP even though I was exhausted last night and I'm glad I did. But my wife hasn't seen it yet and I have to not make those same comments. :)
I've moved beyond letting spoilers upset me, and do all the regular things a pop culture sponge should do such as watching as soon as possible, avoiding the internet until then, etc. but something about this weeks' Succession felt especially egregious, particularly a few sites that posted headlines/links to videos/articles that had no point to exist except to loudly blast out what happened in clear plain terms. That's crossing the line into total dick territory, and as you noted, must be on the readers/consumers to see their plain intent for views and clicks over any integrity or focus on quality curation. Anyways, thanks to Steven for the heads up on Picard...I don't love staying up til 1am on weeknights to watch some of my shows (makes for a long work day the next day), but this is the price to pay to be a sponge I suppose.
Oh man, I got into a bit of a fight with someone over spoilers a few weeks ago. (Not even specific spoilers -- about this very topic of what the acceptable grace period for posting them should be.) I maintain that I was right: in this day and age, that ship has sailed. There exists a subculture of posting excited reactions and jokes and memes and whatnot soon after certain titles air. You might not like it, you might think it's rude, but for some people, that's a fun form of engaging with their fandoms, and it's not going away anytime soon.
If it's important for you to avoid all that, you can curate your online experience to avoid the places where people tend to post those things! Or manage your time to prioritize your watching leisure over your browsing leisure, whatever. But scolding people for not respecting the window you'd prefer before they launch their reactions (as my interlocutor was) isn't going to accomplish anything.
Personally, I don't know that I've ever met a spoiler that negatively impacted how I consumed a story anyway. I don't go out of my way to seek them out, but knowing the shape of a plot in advance just yields a different experience for me, not a better or worse one. There's a reason people reread books and rewatch movies and shows, and it's because you can still find entertainment in things even when you know the big twists in advance.
The TV death this most reminded me of was Josh Charles on The Good Wife, seven years ago. Slightly different in that people assumed Logan would die sometime this season, but similar in the way they mostly come out of nowhere partway through an episode in the middle of the season, upending various storylines that the shows appeared to be building up.
Like then, I didn't see any headlines/links that actually spoiled what happened (I didn't go on Twitter until the evening after), but I saw more than usual articles show up in my RSS reader alluding to some shocking event. Being in Europe, I'm just glad I got to the Succession episode early in the morning, rather have to avoid spoilers all day (the big HBO shows air at 2/3AM here). I likely won't get to see The Mandalorian finale until about 12 hours after it airs, and am already planning some mute words, even if I doubt I'll care about anything that will happen.
On the one hand, emphasizing a particular episode as very twisty or as having Very Big Spoilers is definitely a spoiler for me - the expectation of a spoiler means the twist becomes obvious. And I don't love the joy of a surprise being ruined. And yet, if a show is nothing more than its Big Twists then... the show itself may not be very good? But I don't know. [I say this as someone who runs a LOST Discord where we Do Not Allow Spoilers in general chat - spoiler tags for an almost 20 year old show].
I can remember being annoyed by a Vulture article from maybe a decade ago, posted immediately after an episode aired with the headline: "[Redacted] on their surprise exit" *photo of the actor/character in question.*
Anyway, my thinking more recently is that Peak TV breaks the social contract on older Spoiler Rules. 24 hours is so little time in a world with dozens to hundreds of shows airing at any given moment. Even if I had 2-3 shows I prioritized weekly, I would always inevitably miss something. It can take a long time to catch up. I appreciate the care with which many tread so far after (weeks, months, years) something airs on social media and in dedicated communities.
I'm a big proponent of if you can watch something live then do it, since after that all bets are off.
HOWEVER, where I find myself being occasionally spoiled is with streaming shows that have weekly releases but each episode is released at midnight (or later on the East Coast). Thus, the earliest I can watch them is after work the next day and thus they've been live for say 18 to 24 hours. As a result, I occasionally see spoilers from outlets that have published their review overnight or during the day (since the critic had advanced access). For example, two weeks ago I saw the headline from the AV Club on Wednesday afternoon "Is Ted Lasso setting the stage for a thoughtful examination of homophobia in sports?" And while sure that did not really spoil who was homosexual and/or homophobic, thanks to Myles's comments about Colin, I was pretty sure what was going to be revealed.
All of that is a way of saying, I'm not sure what the rules are or aren't for these sort of things. I realize it's unrealistic for outlets, such as this one, to wait 24 hours to publish reviews. But I do occasionally find myself being a dozen or so hours behind, which I don't think should be as punishing as it can be.
That said maybe I'm in the minority? If you watch these kind of shows (The Mandalorian also comes to mind), do you stay up to watch it the night it's released?
Seeing people freak out over spoilers in negative ways has more or less made me not care all that much about them. I saw someone complaining about a headline being a spoiler recently and I really had no idea what they were talking about, if it was a spoiler it was in the most oblique way possible, it seems like it's away for people to vent their ire at the world over fairly insignificant information. I have to say having certain things spoiled has not hurt my enjoyment of them at all, I was a GOT book reader so the Red Wedding was no surprise and I still enjoyed it. Watching videos of people who had no idea freaking out over it was fun though, I have to admit.
If there is something I don't want many details about I try to avoid any articles directly referencing it, for the most part this works, although it's not uncommon to have it spoiled in seemingly unrelated spots or in comments.
I think the answer to the problem is to have someone - critics, HBO themselves - tweet something like "Trust us, stay offline tonight". I'm fine knowing a huge spoiler is going to happen; I would have been crushed to know what it was before I watched. I'm West Coast, so I wasn't available at 6pm my time and started watching the episode about an hour after it finished airing back East. I paused about 20 minutes in when my pizza delivery arrived and happened to check my email. I'm signed up for the Vulture Succession newsletter which had the subject line "Do not open this email until you finished the episode". That worked for me. So when Tom called, I instantly understood what was happening to be real and not just a test for the kids, but it didn't bother me because I got to see it with my own eyes.
I enjoy being surprised as much as the next person and I don't actively seek out spoilers, but I generally don't get too bent out of shape if it happens. Usually because if I do get spoiled, it's on me for being some place on the internet that I shouldn't be. If you know might get spoiled on twitter or reddit or an RSS reader, then stay off! And if you have to be on for work or something, mute/unsubscribe/unfollow as much as makes you feel is necessary. But I'm more of the opinion that it is less what happens that matters, but how it happens, so as long as something is well executed it shouldn't matter how much foreknowledge you bring to the table. There is more to media than merely the plot.
Other assorted spoiler thoughts:
1) Spoilers apply to the plot only. Things like episode titles, soundtrack titles, or trailers could potentially spoil the plot, but news that is intentionally released by the cast/crew/studio/network prior to airing does not count as a spoiler. Cast announcements? Not a spoiler. BTS photos? Not a spoiler. The runtime of a movie? Not a spoiler. A warning to stay off social media because something spoiliery happens? Not a spoiler.
2) This ship has sailed for most of the internet, but I don't put any uncoded spoilers on social media until after a certain length of time has passed. I try to do a day for a TV episode with a weekly release, one day per episode for a TV show with a binge release, and a week after wide release for a movie. There are still plenty of ways to talk around specifics and have a good conversation about something. Just because I have a higher tolerance for spoilers doesn't mean that everybody does, and I try to be respectful of that.
This is a wonderful analysis. I’ve gotten to a place where it’s less about when or if I’m spoiled, and more about who is responsible.
Did I wait to long to watch something while existing on the internet? Did I, like with last night’s episode, make the stupid decision to load reviews on my browser before watching the episode? Well, that’s on me. And knowing lets me focus on the build in ways I wouldn’t be able to had I remained unspoiled.
But woe to the friend who texts the group before confirming where everyone is at with a show!
Another angle to this is that the intersection of TV and social media is a global phenomenon. Succession airs in the US at 11am Monday for me! I’ve got to wait a minimum of 7 hours to get home from work and get into it.
I think I fall on the side of with spoilers aren't everything. Living in the UK, it's usually the next evening after a full day of internetting that I'm going to be able to catch up with a US show (the exception was streaming releases during the pandemic, when I had time to watch them over breakfast as soon as they were released). As I've had with last night's Succession, it's often oblique references rather than outright spoilers, but it's can be enough that you have a good idea what's coming, so it's rarely a complete shock.
Also, no one is watching everything as it comes out so we're all going to be catching up on things that passed us by. That often comes with some knowledge of the big moments, just by cultural osmosis. Same with adaptations - I'd never played The Last of Us but still knew how it ended.
The thing is, if it's good it still hits, and realistically a show can only really sustain a certain amount of big moments. I can definitely think of shows where every episode came with a cliff-hanger or a twist and it just became nonsense - there's only so many reveals of the actual REAL villains that you can sit through without it being ridiculous. A decent twist or big moment will work even if you know it's coming because, on reflection, it didn't come out of nowhere and it takes the story and characters somewhere interesting. That survives foreknowledge.
I also saw Rye Lane in the cinema a few weeks ago. Really enjoyed it! However, literally half way through the film a guy comes in to the screen and sits next to me in an otherwise pretty empty theatre. He proceeds to put on his headphones and loudly listen to tunes while scrolling through his phone. Thankfully he was apologetic when I asked him to turn it down, but what the hell! That's the real bad behaviour we need to stop.
Although I broadly agree that spoilers aren't the be-all-end-all, I personally prefer to know as little as possible about an episode/film/book before I go in. To the point that I even tend to skip introductions in classic novels, because I want to experience the thing unmediated first!
However, I'm also very aware that whatever the etiquette *should* be (24 hours after airing seems reasonable to me, or 7 days for a movie), it's simply unrealistic to expect that from social media - especially since I live outside the US. It's one thing to watch TV hours or days after it airs, but films like Barbarian can take months to arrive here in Europe, and you simply cannot expect American film Twitter to avoid talking about them until they're out in every market. If spoilers are big deal for you, it really isn't that hard to mute or unfollow key words (though it would be nice if Twitter had a spoiler function, which would also help for content warnings). For shows released week to week like House of the Dragon or Better Call Saul, I simply stay off social media until I've had a chance to watch the episode (and you can use a blocker if your self-control is lacking, which I do while working from home). I care about spoilers, but you shouldn't let the spoiler become more important than the show.
I was shocked when I found out that screeners for the 1st four episodes had already been made available and I hadn't been spoiled. It seems that some people cannot keep their yaps shut on the internet and start saying little non-spoiler-spoilers, like the comments that started popping up after the episode aired so you know something huge has happened, or some sites that just have to put the full spoiler in the headline. Damn that's the thing that really pisses me off. I got the feeling that I'd better watch it ASAP even though I was exhausted last night and I'm glad I did. But my wife hasn't seen it yet and I have to not make those same comments. :)
I've moved beyond letting spoilers upset me, and do all the regular things a pop culture sponge should do such as watching as soon as possible, avoiding the internet until then, etc. but something about this weeks' Succession felt especially egregious, particularly a few sites that posted headlines/links to videos/articles that had no point to exist except to loudly blast out what happened in clear plain terms. That's crossing the line into total dick territory, and as you noted, must be on the readers/consumers to see their plain intent for views and clicks over any integrity or focus on quality curation. Anyways, thanks to Steven for the heads up on Picard...I don't love staying up til 1am on weeknights to watch some of my shows (makes for a long work day the next day), but this is the price to pay to be a sponge I suppose.
Oh man, I got into a bit of a fight with someone over spoilers a few weeks ago. (Not even specific spoilers -- about this very topic of what the acceptable grace period for posting them should be.) I maintain that I was right: in this day and age, that ship has sailed. There exists a subculture of posting excited reactions and jokes and memes and whatnot soon after certain titles air. You might not like it, you might think it's rude, but for some people, that's a fun form of engaging with their fandoms, and it's not going away anytime soon.
If it's important for you to avoid all that, you can curate your online experience to avoid the places where people tend to post those things! Or manage your time to prioritize your watching leisure over your browsing leisure, whatever. But scolding people for not respecting the window you'd prefer before they launch their reactions (as my interlocutor was) isn't going to accomplish anything.
Personally, I don't know that I've ever met a spoiler that negatively impacted how I consumed a story anyway. I don't go out of my way to seek them out, but knowing the shape of a plot in advance just yields a different experience for me, not a better or worse one. There's a reason people reread books and rewatch movies and shows, and it's because you can still find entertainment in things even when you know the big twists in advance.
The TV death this most reminded me of was Josh Charles on The Good Wife, seven years ago. Slightly different in that people assumed Logan would die sometime this season, but similar in the way they mostly come out of nowhere partway through an episode in the middle of the season, upending various storylines that the shows appeared to be building up.
Like then, I didn't see any headlines/links that actually spoiled what happened (I didn't go on Twitter until the evening after), but I saw more than usual articles show up in my RSS reader alluding to some shocking event. Being in Europe, I'm just glad I got to the Succession episode early in the morning, rather have to avoid spoilers all day (the big HBO shows air at 2/3AM here). I likely won't get to see The Mandalorian finale until about 12 hours after it airs, and am already planning some mute words, even if I doubt I'll care about anything that will happen.
On the one hand, emphasizing a particular episode as very twisty or as having Very Big Spoilers is definitely a spoiler for me - the expectation of a spoiler means the twist becomes obvious. And I don't love the joy of a surprise being ruined. And yet, if a show is nothing more than its Big Twists then... the show itself may not be very good? But I don't know. [I say this as someone who runs a LOST Discord where we Do Not Allow Spoilers in general chat - spoiler tags for an almost 20 year old show].
I can remember being annoyed by a Vulture article from maybe a decade ago, posted immediately after an episode aired with the headline: "[Redacted] on their surprise exit" *photo of the actor/character in question.*
Anyway, my thinking more recently is that Peak TV breaks the social contract on older Spoiler Rules. 24 hours is so little time in a world with dozens to hundreds of shows airing at any given moment. Even if I had 2-3 shows I prioritized weekly, I would always inevitably miss something. It can take a long time to catch up. I appreciate the care with which many tread so far after (weeks, months, years) something airs on social media and in dedicated communities.
While spoilers don’t bother me, I will say if something big and unexpected happens, don’t put it on your headline.
I'm a big proponent of if you can watch something live then do it, since after that all bets are off.
HOWEVER, where I find myself being occasionally spoiled is with streaming shows that have weekly releases but each episode is released at midnight (or later on the East Coast). Thus, the earliest I can watch them is after work the next day and thus they've been live for say 18 to 24 hours. As a result, I occasionally see spoilers from outlets that have published their review overnight or during the day (since the critic had advanced access). For example, two weeks ago I saw the headline from the AV Club on Wednesday afternoon "Is Ted Lasso setting the stage for a thoughtful examination of homophobia in sports?" And while sure that did not really spoil who was homosexual and/or homophobic, thanks to Myles's comments about Colin, I was pretty sure what was going to be revealed.
All of that is a way of saying, I'm not sure what the rules are or aren't for these sort of things. I realize it's unrealistic for outlets, such as this one, to wait 24 hours to publish reviews. But I do occasionally find myself being a dozen or so hours behind, which I don't think should be as punishing as it can be.
That said maybe I'm in the minority? If you watch these kind of shows (The Mandalorian also comes to mind), do you stay up to watch it the night it's released?
“Vulture’s Kathryn VanArendonk notes that writers have no control over how Google displays their articles, often choosing the SEO URL”
Forget Bard. Forget Sydney.
We need Spoiler Safe Search™️
"neoliberal" - I am not sure that is the word you meant to use. If so, it's with a meaning with which I am unfamiliar.