Tell Us Dammit: Spoilers

I want to be clear: this is not somewhere to post spoilers. This is a place to discuss the issue of spoilers.

What are your thoughts on them — how long do you have? Is the responsibility on the spoiler, or the spoilee?

I had a bit of a spoiler argument recently when I posted the results of the Ronda Rousey vs Holly Holm match here at Kotaku. My feelings have always been this: sport is different from television. Sport, by its nature is a live event that people are discussing instantly the second it happens. If you don’t want to be spoiled by a sporting event you need to basically shut down the internet. A lot of people thought I was wrong about that.

Movies are different I think. We don’t watch movies as a live event. We watch them at different times. With movies I feel we need a bit longer — at least a week or two, particularly if the movie has a twist that impacts your enjoyment of that movie — ala The Sixth Sense. Particularly if the movie is something that we, as a culture, are more invested in — ala Star Wars.

TV? That’s sort of a grey area. TV sits inbetween sport and cinema in that it can often be an event. I’d argue that Game of Thrones is about as close as TV gets to a sporting event in that we mostly watch it week to week, on the day it comes out. So maybe the time frame should be a little shorter on that?

There’s also the issue of context. One thing I was happy to concede re: the Ronda Rousey vs Holly Holm thing was that people were reading Kotaku Australia thinking it was a safe space from UFC spoilers. There’s a time and a place to discuss spoilers. Like Kotaku’s Luke Plunkett was spoiled for Star Wars: The Force Awakens in r/canberra.

Unbelievable.

Anyway, let’s discuss. Spoiler free of course.


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