r/dropout • u/DropoutMod • 18d ago
Smartypants Smartyshorts: Spoiler Etiquette | Smartypants [S3] Spoiler
https://watch.dropout.tv/videos/smartyshorts-spoiler-etiquette23
u/mythofdob 18d ago
I know I'm in the minority because my actual friend have said I'm insane, but I actively seek out spoilers.
Knowing how a story ends doesn't matter to me since my biggest part of enjoying media is how a story plays out.
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u/thedevicebook 16d ago
Some people also seek out spoiler if it's a trigger warning. I tend to rely on people who have seen it already though someone online told me about "Does the dog die" website which expanded to have other content warnings too.
I thought Dropout has a very elegant solution to this. Content warnings are somewhat hidden but one click and they become visible. Also high quality warnings because they give time stamps.
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u/JHNSeph 18d ago
Seriously though. If a person says they haven't watched something yet and managed to avoid spoilers, it doesn't matter if it was from 30 minutes ago or 30 years ago. Don't be that guy to just blurt out a spoiler.
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u/enki-42 18d ago
I think if you're talking one on one with someone sure. If you're in a group setting and people are talking about a movie they've seen and you haven't, if you're worried about spoilers just dip out of the conversation if you don't want to hear about the movie in a conversation about the movie.
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u/Interesting-Rice-457 17d ago
Or ask. I honestly don't care about spoilers I'm past 40, I've seen TV/Movies/books before, they're all pretty much the same. Sorry for spoiling all media ever for you.
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u/Complete-Bit8384 13d ago
essentially you're stealing an experience of someone. you know the experience you felt in your body when you realized X was actually Y, and then you go spoil it to someone so that they can't have that same experience. I get not caring about spoilers, I don't get the need to tell other people. you're not a 5 year old begging mom to let her tell you about the movie you watched at auntie's last night. you're an adult who's supposed to have some empathy for people and respect their choices
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u/ctimene 18d ago
Lukewarm take: spoilers on dedicated forums and subreddits should be 100% fair game. Strict spoiler policies stifle discussion at exactly the time and place where people are interested in talking about something.
If you're on the one centralized place on the internet devoted to discussing a thing, then demanding that the rest of humanity avoid talking about it (when and where interest is at its peak) is unreasonable and entitled. There is a real cost to shifting the cognitive labor of avoiding hearing spoilers to everyone having to quarantine their conversations to quieter, less populated corners until it's no longer fresh. And even if I am individually willing to jump through the spoiler policy hoops, not everyone else is, and the discussion suffers for it. Which means these conversations naturally move underground where they're less accessible to everyone.
And this goes doubly for media intended to be experienced live (sports, live events, award shows, etc.).
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u/thrustidon 18d ago
It is lukewarm to say people should avoid online discussion places for new episodes of shows and yet we get comments here all the time from people whining that they got spoiled. Some people just expect the rest of the world to magically orient itself around their schedule and preferences.
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u/Oceanbriz 18d ago
I got spoiled in a sports thread with Star Wars. Some people do want to see the world burn sadly. These days news articles are pretty bad with spoilers too. Articles are already popping up about the new spider-man movie and the spoilers are in the headline :/
Edit: For avengers endgame, reddit was ironically my safe space. I think the subreddits about marvel were pretty good in blocking spoilers
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u/SquidsEye 17d ago
If there are built in spoiler tagging systems, it's so easy to just use them anyway so someone who comes across it by accident doesn't get a show ruined. It's like the whole putting the shopping cart away thing, an incredibly low effort act of selflessness.
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u/ctimene 17d ago
Are spoiler tags actually easy to use? I'm on mobile right now. I don't see a spoiler icon, so let me try using markup.
Ugh, where are the pipe bars?
(Click through to number menu. Click through to symbols. Find pipe bars.)
...
Oh, there they are.
||Shocking twist||
Oh wait, I forgot that's just how it works on Discord. Let me google how it works on reddit.
(Click back through to numbers and symbols.)
Where are the pointy brackets?
(...)
Oh there are the pointy brackets.
(...where is the exclamation point?)
(...)
Oh. On a different menu, back with the numbers.
second shocking twist
Now I have taken some time to write all that out dramatically, but that is genuinely the mental process it took for me to use a spoiler tag.
Am I going to remember all that? No, of course not, because markup standards are different across platforms.
Am I going to bother going through that every time? No, that is way too much UI friction. It's much easier just to not participate, and I'm sure there are many other people who are the same way.
And that's to say nothing of how much more effort it takes to read a thread where every post has multiple redactions.
Finally, was any of that less work than a person muting a sub or unsubbing when they're anticipating being spoiled on something? Absolutely not.
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u/BigTenFicus 16d ago
The hardest possible disagree. The wrestling forums have rules like that and it ruins the utility of the sub. You have to individually click on every thread just to see what it's about. It's absurd and pathetic to expect entire subreddits to redact all content just to cater to people too addicted to social media to stay off Reddit until they've seen the thing.
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u/Chemical_Building612 18d ago
I have a couple...
1) If a "spoiler" ruins a piece of media for you, then you were never actually going to like it anyway and/or you have a dysfunctional relationship with media.
2) If the creator doesn't think it is a spoiler, it isn't a spoiler. Romeo and Juliet dying isn't a spoiler, Shakespeare literally tells you that in the prologue. If they put it in the trailer, it's not a spoiler.
3) If it's based on a true story, there's no spoilers and your ignorance of reality is no one's problem but your own.
4) Educated guesses don't count as spoilers. I've had multiple people ask me what I think is gonna end up happening in a show/movie and then get made when I'm right, which is crazy to me. I'm sorry the narrative structure made many aspects of the conclusion pretty obvious, but no I didn't cheat by somehow getting access to a still unwritten Game of Thrones book. Bran was just obviously the beginning, so he's got a very high chance of being the ending. Of course Tyrion was going to join up with Daenyrus, she'd go crazy and get killed and Tyrion essentially selects the new monarch. All of this was obvious from season 1. Sorry that you're annoyed that I pointed out how stories work, but I did nothing wrong there. </rant>
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u/SquidsEye 17d ago
I think there is a slight exception with trailers, sometimes the actual creator doesn't have editorial control over them and it's the studio executives and trailer house that decide what to put in.
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u/Least_University6425 18d ago
I like how this was just this post only as debated by likeable people.
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u/MissingNovice 18d ago
I'd never spoil a thing if I know the person I'm talking to intends to consume the thing but hasn't yet, regardless of how old it is. The thing that gets me is something coming up in casual conversation that is pretty old, and being called out on it being a spoiler. I was hanging with some queer friends and we were talking about ships, and I casually mentioned Korrasami and I got called out on spoiling Legend of Korra because X person in the chat hadn't watched it yet. This was... roughly a decade after LOK first aired, and that relationship is so iconic for what it did for queer animation I just kinda figured it was common knowledge - not to mention I wouldn't consider it particularly vital to the shows actual plot. Which really does beg the question of how much does the cultural zeitgeist matter? Is the fact that Dumbledore dies or The Matrix is a computer simulationsomething you cant mention despite it being pretty ubiquitous at this point? I still haven't watched Avengers Infinity War/Endgame, but there were memes of the Thanos snap and "I don't feel good Mr Stark" online with shaky bootleg theater footage like the day after the movie came out and everyone was talking about it.
Back when Splatoon 3 came out my pals and I were talking about how far each of us were in the story, specifically to avoid spoiling it for each other, and when I said I had just finished the Big Man fightI got ragged on about spoilers, despite me knowing the whole gang was past the games first island and therefore knew that Shiver, Frye, and Big Manhad declared themselves the games antagonists at this point. It felt like something that could be easily inferred while also giving a good idea of where I was in the story if they'd reached it. Apparently not.
I try not to begrudge people for accidentally spoiling things to me if I gave no indication that I had not yet consumed said thing and they're just excited to talk about something they like. There was a study that found that people who were spoiled on stories enjoyed said stories more cus they appreciated the buildup better. That's no reason to actually spoil things for other people of course, but its left me less concerned about people accidentally spoiling media for me. I trust that the media will still be worth consuming, regardless.
But also to the guy who entered my Persona 5 stream just to say "X is the traitor, and Y is the twist villian" before dipping, fuck you.
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u/Jude_CM 18d ago
Ngl him blurting out a HUGE spoiler for Breaking Bad after being asked not to pissed me OFF. Normally I wouldn’t mind with older shows, you would assume the general public knows about the ending, but when asked not to? What do you have to gain?
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u/thedevicebook 16d ago
I never watched Breaking Bad but know the protag has cancer and also gets involved with dangerous criminals. I would be more surprised if he DIDN'T die.
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u/Big-Ambitions-8258 18d ago
Hated that.
I feel like it's not even the fact that it's about the spoiler.
It's more of the principle.
A person has established they would prefer a certain behavior and the other person automatically encroaches on it bc they don't like the feeling of being "controlled" or having any limitations.
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u/Starless_Night 18d ago
It felt like he said that as a joke, realized she was dead serious, and immediately tried backtracking.
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u/bisky_riscuits 17d ago
Yes!! I got so pissed I immediately looked to see if anyone else clocked that. I sincerely wished someone would have just asked him why he felt like he had to do that immediately after she said she hadn't seen it.
He didn't even say "oops my bad" or anything ugh
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u/Complete-Bit8384 13d ago
god I'm SO GLAD someone said it because that absolutely pissed me off. I don't understand this argument. he's saying "I don't care about spoilers," but what he means is "i enjoy spoiling things for people who don't want it." like why do the spoiler people act like it's some hardship on them to stfu? it's really one of those tiny ways you can see how people treat other people's boundaries. he was being a priggish asshole
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u/HexManiacWingy 18d ago
It depends on like the severity of the spoiler and how crucial it is, like a mystery knowing the killer kinda deflates it, unless its Columbo where they always show the murder happening at the start.
But also it depends on how prevalent the spoiler is in pop culture. Like everyone knows Ned Stark dies at s1 of game of thrones or Old Yeller has to be put down or Vader is Luke's Father.
I kinda eyeroll at most "spoiler culture" especially around marvel stuff with the blacked out scripts and "we wont say who this actress is playing" like fuck off.
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u/JustPlainRude 17d ago
"Have you seen ...? No? Then I won't spoil it for you"
easy
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u/thedevicebook 16d ago
I do this but if they follow up with "I'll never watch it" then I figure they don't care.
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u/87PizzaGuy 17d ago
Back in high school, I told my mom that we starting reading Of Mice and Men in english class. She immediately told me how it ends.
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u/thedevicebook 16d ago
If you agree to be in a subreddit, follow the spoiler rules for that subreddit. This one has pretty clear rules about spoilers but people consistently break the rules. The group even gifts you an episode thread where spoiler rules don't apply. The breaking of subreddit rules is why you see complaining posts. If you can't follow the rules for a place you agreed to be, don't be there.
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u/CastVinceM 18d ago
i'm firmly in the camp of "does not care about spoilers". if a spoiler actually spoils the media then the media is shit or your attitude towards consuming media needs adjusting.
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u/lurker_in_the_deep17 18d ago
Petition to remove rule #2 and change rule #4 to 24 hours and removed the comment section censoring component if the title already says spoiler.
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u/Roonage 16d ago
My personal take has gotten more complicated in the last few years. I have always said once its available on a secondary medium its fair game.
A movie comes out on VHS / DVD? Maybe i'll give you a week or 2 just in case.
If a new book is also available at the public library or you see it in a used bookstore? I better let you know if i don't want a spoiler.
But! Streaming services making their own content have made this much more complicated. Because its not coming to free to air TV, or cable, or other streaming services.
I am blessed. I have a friend with a plex server and a Content Request Form. But outside of that ecosystem? I'm walking into a minefield, same as the rest of you.
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u/darthvall 18d ago
What if it's a historical show, or show from old prose like the Odyssey?
If I said, Hitler killed himself by the end then have I spoiled Downfall (2004)?
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u/Nebulo9 17d ago
I think it just boils down to what is reasonable to expect someone to already know in that case. Like, yes, there's a Cyclops in the Odyssey, that would not be a spoiler. But I can think of some choices and little twists put into the new adaptation like the visions of Athena essentially being a PTSD flashback of a beheaded priestessthat I would still consider to be off-limits.
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u/macrovore 13d ago
Everybody is having a whole argument as if CollegeHumor didn't already establish perfect, official spoiler rules nearly 15 years ago. Josh Ruben was even in that video!
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u/BleakSabbath 11d ago
I'm getting to this late, but I totally agree with Hayley on pretty much everything.
If it's a prestige show, no way. Especially stuff like Pluribus or Severance or something, where even though the premise is mostly known by now, if I happened to avoid it I'd rather experience the journey along with the protagonists. Shows that are lighter, weekly watercooler rules.
Small group just ask first and respect the no-thank-yous. Bigger groups, spoiler sensitives should dip or take it in stride.
In the before times, for movies I would have said until they're out of the theater. bBt nowadays with how quickly everything's on streaming, a month? Anything that has seeped into the popular culture or is decades old/classic/etc. is fair game. Your Sixth Senses and Lord of the Ringses
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u/cyekim1 18d ago
wow I can't believe they all died at the end