The Atlantic - Latest Comments in Spoiler Test

Re: Spoiler Test

Salah — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 19:01:33 -0000

The only death in the show that shouldn't be spoiled comes in Season 1. From that point on, if you aren't aware that the show plans to kill your favorite character (either literally or figuratively) you aren't really paying attention.

Re: Spoiler Test

Alexa — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 23:36:51 -0000

One DVD version of The Usual Suspects plays a montage when the main menu is displayed. If you take more than just a few seconds to make a selection (such as "play"), one of the clips you see is Verbal Kint's feet as he's walking away from the police station. It's not just a snippet of that shot, either. It plays all the way from "limp. limp. less limp?" to "holy crap, less limp!" to "OMFG HE'S KEYSER SOZE!" If you've seen the movie, you know that the entire thing hinges on that shot -- ruined literally before you hit play. If you haven't seen it: this evening's special is schadenfreude with a twist of booyah, clearly.

Catherine, with all due respect, it's not fair to put the burden on other people this late in the game. Yeah, all one has to do in any given case is say "spoiler alert." But when does something stop being being a surprise? If you just received Thirteen Days from Netflix, and happen to read a post about how we don't get nuked by Cuba at the end of the day -- who's fault is that?

Epic television becomes cultural history fairly immediately. Early screenings aside, spoiler alerts are pure courtesies. That means they are done solely for the benefit of others. It's a limited-time offer though. I'm not drawing a line at any particular day here, but some point after it's been out on DVD for a month or so, you can assume the offer has expired.

Re: Spoiler Test

heroofthebeach — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 16:38:14 -0000

For real, just get yourself one of these suckers:

http://www.threadless.com/product/844/Spoilt

Re: Spoiler Test

Jen R — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 14:05:47 -0000

I don't understand the hate for people who don't like to be spoiled. For some shows/movies/books, I want to get caught up in the experience and not already know what's coming. The characters don't know what's coming, after all, so to me it feels more immersive not to be spoiled. I also like to analyze, discuss the work with others, and watch/read more than once to catch things I might have missed the first time. These aren't mutually exclusive.

I'm not commenting on the "how long till it's not a spoiler" question, because I don't really know. If I get spoiled for something that's been out a few years, I pretty much blame myself.

Re: Spoiler Test

Lindsay Katai — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 12:59:57 -0000

That's a good question. I got irked when you made a post about a spoiler in Mad Men and titled that post with the very shocking incident itself, but that was because it was right after it aired. If I'd read that plot point about The Wire, I wouldn't have minded because it's my own fault for not getting around to watching it. I think that if it's been a whole season or if it's been off the air for a while, then it's fair game and you can't be held responsible for people choosing not to be up to date with a show. After a while, it naturally becomes a part of referential pop culture and people have to be willing to let go of their (often) irrational need for a spoiler alert.

Re: Spoiler Test

DB Cooper — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 09:26:35 -0000

This particular issue really pissed me off: Entertainment Weekly spoiled Omar's death in that dumbass bullseye gimmick they have, the week after it aired.

Not in a story, not covered by a "Spoiler" tag, not after the fact entered common knowledge. Just out there in some cheesy gimmick. I think anyone can agree that was inappropriate, especially in this era of time-shifting.

I was hoarding episodes on Tivo to watch after I finished the Season 4 DVDs (latecomer to The Wire), and I was really pissed. EW ignored my bitchy email, and neglected to cancel my subscription.

Re: Spoiler Test

Persia — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 09:12:31 -0000

While I understand wanting to be surprised by the plot, it just follows that the best books, movies, shows, etc, stand up on a REPEAT VIEWING. The Greeks understood this. Why can't the geeks?

You got it. Once it's aired, it's fair game, as far as I'm concerned. Now, that doesn't mean that, say, the day after Sixth Sense came out you should put in the top of your post, "So, Bruce Willis was dead all along!" That's just common courtesy. But, as we've said above, if you're discussing a show that ended six months ago and it's clear you're doing so, you should be ready to be spoiled.

Sometimes I think the Internet is the beginning of the end of common sense, but then I remember it wasn't that common to begin with.

Oh, and the Titanic sinks. Sorry to spoil y'all.

Re: Spoiler Test

Auguste — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 03:56:23 -0000

Once upon a time there was a whole Seinfeld episode about how impossible it was for Jerry to avoid spoilers about a Mets game he'd taped earlier in the day.

Two years gets no sympathy from me.

Re: Spoiler Test

JoshA — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 03:17:37 -0000

I just finished season 3, but really, you can't complain about spoilers two years after something went off the air.

My rule of thumb is this: it is fine to talk about a show without doing "spoiler alert" either once the new season has started airing (ie, you can then talk about the previous season without warnings) or 6 months after a show has gone off the air for good.

Re: Spoiler Test

mike — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 00:56:31 -0000

I don't think The Wire was about the big reveal and the plot twist. That show was all execution. When it was on BET, my wife didn't want to jump in on the middle of it, and I just told her: "Don't worry about who anybody is, or their backstory, or what's going on. Just watch and marvel how each scene is shot and how well it's written and acted. To me, the show was about how well it was made all the way through. Except maybe the newspaper arc in the last season.

Re: Spoiler Test

Lemmy Caution — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 00:13:32 -0000

From Andrew O'Hehir's review of Steven Soderbergh's Solaris remake:

... my view is that the spoiler obsession, born of the Internet's fan-geek culture, is the enemy of real criticism, real discussion and maybe even real thought ...

I think that says it all. People who get upset about spoilers are infantile in their approach to culture and narrative, as if the pay-off of a story were just the "a-ha", like it's just a jack-in-the-box. It's idiotic.

Re: Spoiler Test

Sweet Jones — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 00:05:01 -0000

It takes real heart to wander into a thread discussing a defunct show on a site where the owner and his readers are KNOWN 'stans' of the show, and then get upset because they had had the unmitigated gall to 'spoil' it for YOU.

I mean that takes real sack.

And BTW - Thelma decides not to marry Ebay, and the Evans' family eventually makes it out of Cabrini Green. Oh, and James died before that.

Re: Spoiler Test

toxic — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 21:38:00 -0000

They guys who just say put spoiler alert in the title are missing the point. The question is what qualifies as a spoiler, not what to do about it when it is.

Re: Spoiler Test

dana — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 19:59:34 -0000

As the person who got spoiled on, can't you just put a disclaimer at the top of your posts saying that you're going to reveal pertinent info and if you don't want it to be spoiled don't read? I've read other of your Wire posts that were good and relevant that didn't reveal plot details so thought it would be OK to read this one too. And in my defense, it was a pretty big plot detail! I mean, Omar dying?!?! Come on, that's a big one!

The Wire's been over for a while now. People were talking about it as it aired, too. "Spoiler" used to mean secret or surprising information about a show that hadn't yet aired, like a leak from a set, with some wiggle room for surprise endings on recently aired stuff not "make sure every person who watches a show has a pristine experience."

For what it's worth, I was a latecomer, I knew that Omar died, and it doesn't actually spoil a thing. I figure for TV, it's about a week (give people time to watch TiVo), and for movies, once they're out of the theaters.

Re: Spoiler Test

SeanH — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 18:35:26 -0000

I'm with most of the others, if it's on DVD spoilers are the reader's worry.

Re: Spoiler Test

Sporcupine — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 18:27:35 -0000

In the end, it's Ron and Hermione, Harry and Ginny, and their kids all go to Hogwarts.

Meanwhile, our household plan is to start "The Wire" at the beginning and march right through, pausing for work, sleep, Stewart, and Colbert--except we can't start until February. We know full well we won't get the experience of folks who started when the show did.

As one with the most "to lose" from spoilers, I think people should just go ahead and discuss the whole series.

Re: Spoiler Test

Leee — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 18:24:43 -0000

How many years since Veronica Mars ended? I love the show and can't remember.

2007, probably in May.

It's pretty easy for the writer to put up some kind of spoiler notification -- at the minimum, put it somewhere in the body of the post in all caps -- without creating undue hassle for readers. But in the end, it's really up to the reader to know well enough when to (t)read carefully when it comes to narratives that they haven't seen.

Re: Spoiler Test

TW Andrews — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 17:33:04 -0000

Just include "Spoiler Alert" in the post title and your ass is sufficiently covered, imho.

Re: Spoiler Test

low-tech cyclist — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 17:30:27 -0000

Fox canceled Firefly after only 13 episodes.

Oh, and Book and Wash both got killed in the movie.

IMHO, the old rules still apply to TV shows: once they've aired on the West Coast, they're fair game.

Movies? Once they're out of the theaters.

Books? Once they're off the bestseller lists. If they were never on the bestseller lists to begin with, then who cares?

Re: Spoiler Test

Incertus (Brian) — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 17:29:27 -0000

I have never much cared about spoilers because individual elements of a plot have very little to do with my reasons for liking or not liking a piece of fiction. Its the way a story is told, the way it develops, the character development and interaction, etc. that make or break things for me. In other words, its not what happens but how you get there that I find interesting. Of course, it is possible to "spoil" that experience as well but it is not something someone could do with an inadvertant comment weeks after the story.

Quoted for truth. If a film or tv show or book loses its oomph because you learn something out of order, then it's not as strong as it should be, and won't bear a second or third take.

Re: Spoiler Test

Deborah — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 17:14:07 -0000

5) Fonzie survives his jump over the sharks.

Literally, if not figuratively.

There is no good guideline, and I certainly can't be bothered to keep track of how many years its been since a show or movie aired. And everyone knows Rosebud is the sled even though a lot of us have never seen Citizen Kane--at some point, as with Luke's father, it becomes cultural knowledge even if you never read/watched the original source.

I'd suggest spoiler warnings for any film you clearly remember seeing in the theater, and tv shows of one week. How many years since Veronica Mars ended? I love the show and can't remember.

Re: Spoiler Test

sgwhiteinfla — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 17:03:16 -0000

roac

Evidently it has already gone all of those routes. I am not familiar with this website but here is the story. Judge for yourself, I am confident that Obama is a citizen so for me its not about the Supreme Court hearing the case, for me its all about Clarence Thomas.

http://www.afro.com/tabid/456/itemid/2273/Thomas-breaks-custom-forces-court-to-look-at-Obam.aspx

Re: Spoiler Test

roac — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 16:56:09 -0000

I know this is WAY off topic and I am not trying to thread jack, but has anybody heard anything abouut Clarence Thomas recommending that the rest of the SCOTUS justices hear the Obama birth certificate cases? Yes I am being serious

Had not heard that, but I guarantee it's BS. A case has to go through the trial court and the court of appeals before the Supremes can even think about hearing it.

My opinion is that any such case is due to get thrown out very quickly because, under decisions 30+ years old, nobody in the country (except John McCain!) has "standing to sue." A decision dismissing the case for that reason could (theoretically) make its way to the S.Ct., but if that happened, the court would be deciding whether to change its standing rules. If it did, then we would get to find out if Obama was born in Kenya (or wherever the nutcases think it was).

Re: Spoiler Test

eltoro — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 16:40:13 -0000

Spoiler alerts also shouldn't apply to movies about historical events, such as the Tom Cruise movie Valkrye. However, I will provide one as a courtesty

SPOILER ALERT

Hitler survived the assasination attempt on him.

Re: Spoiler Test

Herb — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 16:39:50 -0000

Anyone who gets upset over spoilers is a herb. I remember a lady I worked with got all upset when I was about to drop the dime on the ending of Star Wars: Episode III. (Get this...Anakin becomes DARTH VADER. OMG!)

While I understand wanting to be surprised by the plot, it just follows that the best books, movies, shows, etc, stand up on a REPEAT VIEWING. The Greeks understood this. Why can't the geeks?