-
Gizmodo retold a report that says that people enjoy stories better when they have been shown spoilers. I say bunk because when I see someone died in an episode I have not seen yet, the shock of the experience is lost. In fact it's distracting to be looking for something while watching a show.
No, I hate spoilers (and despise laugh tracks) and have repeatedly called out major outlets for not caring about the viewers while their titles gave things away, like for instance, (AND THIS IS A GoT SPOILER) that Jon Snow is alive.
But that's just me and several other people I know.
-First, the spoilers were in relation to reading books, not watching TV or movies. It's a bit of a different medium than a quicker, televised story or movie.
-The control group came from psychology students from the same college that was doing the study. This could be argued that psych students have a certain craving for insights. Or that college students like spoilers. I mean, face it, some college students are the ones stealing online movies "to preview" before buying! LOL.
-The mix of all these younger folks included 176 males and 643 females. So this could be young, female psych students having a preference for knowing ahead of time what's coming. I mean, it is an uncertain world and all.
-Plus most of the results from the various stories seemed statistically closer than I'd like to think would indicate a strong preference.
-
The premise of why is that they suppose knowing the endings increased the tension in the experience of the reading. They say that spoilers make reading the book more fluent (Ease of processing). This means they can avoid being trapped by red herrings and focus on the important characters early on. In my mind, that means making it an easier experience rather than devoting time and energy into the entire experience.
Another perspective is that readers could enjoy the aesthetics of a story better because they can relax into it and not trying to guess the outcome. My take... lazy.
The most believed theory is that readers enjoy it when stories end as expected. Which could be why we love watching those repeats sometimes.
But the study administrators also admit that these findings seem more like intuitions than results.
-
A second test was done years later with undergrads, 140 men, 191 women. But this time they were interrupted midway through a reading, and the results looked the same or similar, where folks liked the stories better when spoiled.
They did find that spoilers did not improve the reading experience of short stories. But that they also liked spoiled versions of simple stories.
The scientists do recognize that their findings may not generalize across all subjects or materials.
-
So tell me, if you knew who Luke's father was before going into seeing the film, would that ruin it for you? Or knowing who gets killed off in an episode, or who comes to life, or who Arrow killed in a recent episode, would that make it better?
Would you have enjoyed Sixth Sense more KNOWING, or was the reveal so awesome as to make that a very memorable movie experience? Thus, making you then want to see it again and look for all the scenes with red in it?
Recently ABC disproved this spoilers theorem by advertising all season long that someone on the Agents of SHIELD team was going to die, and they pushed it hard every week. And they kept us guessing almost right up to the last second.
NOW that was fun, wondering and worrying who.
Hell, how would you have liked the first season of Game of Thrones knowing exactly who gets beheaded?Me? What's the point of watching if you know the ending already? Where's the journey you go on if you know how it ends?
But then again, in contrast to their TV properties, Disney spoils the living crap out of their movies in those last 30 days leading up to a release of a film. Heck, I almost did not go see Iron Man 3 because so much was put out there that I saw.
For me, what's the point of caring about a character if you know they're going to explode at the end of the movie or episode? If they're going to die, then who cares that they just saved a kitten from a tree.
Some of the suspense these days is how much more writers are killing off primary characters rather than the tried and true format of never killing the hero, or anyone off.
Look at the recently cancelled Castle series. I did not care if an episode ended with Castle and Beckett tied up next to a bomb, in a freezer. So what? It's his show and it can't go on without him.
Or the suspense the CW tries to build up when Oliver Queen becomes endangered in his flashbacks. Um, he obviously gets through the situation or we would not be having this show right now. Duh.
(OH, and the production staff says they will keep going with these flashback fillers because it helps them tell a story. Um... no, it doesn't.)
For me, spoilers are distractions. Period. Knowing someone will die in tonight's episode just keeps you focused on that crap instead of other nuances. Or knowing someone will come back to life keeps on wondering when the f*! it will happen?
Unless it's a CW DC superhero show, where when people die, they come back as someone else. Or the CW's vampire show, where people keep dying and coming back. This practice has made character deaths so boring and nonplussed.
I like watching something unfold. I feel that you get to experience something for the first time, only once. I don't try to predict things as they go, I just watch and enjoy. Hence, one of my premises about spoilers is that people like the idea of knowing what's going to happen and bragging about their intelligence that brought these insights on and saying "I told you so!"
So what?
- - -
Gizmodo: Spoilers actually help
Disclaimer & Bonus Opinion Piece:
If you go check out the source article, as usual, the comments devolve into dictators telling each other how they should be or what to do. No one is stopping to understand the other side, but rather, enforcing their own perspectives on others.
"Stay off the internet if it means that much to you. You’re tilting at windmills here."
"wow. whine some more. god forbid you can’t stay off social media for 24 hours."
"Asking for consideration is egotistical." (Meaning typing a warning about spoilers)
Then there are those with instant internet degrees:
"Empathy is described as the ability to understand and share the feelings of another. You appear to lack that in this case."
Then there are those that knew (spoiler) was going to die in TFA, before going into the movie.
Aholes and idiot chest-beaters like these are kind of sad really.
-
Then someone said they intentionally read all the spoilers to the latest Game of Thrones episode and then started sobbing before the scene started to fully develop.
Then someone else tried to defend the premise that it's not the spoilers that are upsetting, but the aholes who don't put spoiler warnings in their posts or headlines. Which is a nice point. I always give warning because I RESPECT YOU.
But then someone put out a great point, saying, "if you’ve clicked into literally any article about Game of Thrones on a Sunday night or Monday morning, expect spoilers." But then they go on and on and ruined a perfectly good point and their own validity.
Then there was the nice person who started getting pissed off because the other aholes kept attacking the point they were trying to make.
Ahh, the internet.
But then SUDDENLY, there was wisdom in one comment: "It’s almost as if different people can experience things in different ways. Hmmm..."
Holy shit, ban that logic from the comments!!! Oh wait, don't worry. No one paid attention to one of the most intelligent comments out there.
But the comments started devolving around GoT and who they knew who it was that was going to do this, or that or what have you.
Heck, I want to go chime in just to piss more people off over there! LOL.
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
Follow Cinema Static on: 
Comments
Post a Comment
Apologies for the moderation mode. I presume you understand...