The project is due tomorrow

The project is due tomorrow. spoiler culture is a relatively recent phenomenon

I recently said something in a video that caused some offense. I had spoiled a sitcom that had ended over three years ago and implied that spoilers weren’t that big of a deal. If the spoiler ruined someone’s enjoyment of the show, I think that’s more of a them problem than a me problem.

We’ve talked before about why spoilers might not be that bad, and to answer the request of some viewers, here’s a clip from the video. In it, one host slaps the other. Does knowing that someone was going to get slapped make it any less satisfying to watch?

This got us thinking about spoilers in general. Is the term a complete misnomer? What does the concept of a spoiler mean on a philosophical level? Do they really ruin the viewer experience or is good art unspoilable?

We wanted to take a step back and ask: are we wrong about spoilers? To answer this, we looked at the definition of a spoiler, and how spoilers have become a ubiquitous part of modern discourse. We also looked at how spoilers have been used in the past, such as in Greek tragedies, Shakespeare’s plays, and even in the Bible.

We then looked at how George Lucas revealed the plot of Star Wars to the New York Times a full year before the film came out, and how trailers for older films would often reveal almost the entire plot.

Arguably, modern spoiler culture is a relatively recent phenomenon. So, are we wrong about spoilers? We wanted to find out. ollywood acting by David Mamet and how he talks about the importance of knowing the context of a scene and the need for an actor to have a sense of the whole story in order to make their performance as good as it can be

**Indeed, whether it’s been about Harry Potter movies, Game of Thrones, or superhero movies produced by the Walt Disney Corporation that serve as advertisements for toys, video games, and theme parks, we’ve been worried about spoilers ever since. As Saint James notes, most of the spoiler anxiety is centered around media made by Disney and other mega corporations, in particular the MCU. She writes:

“Most of the time, the biggest conversations around spoilers center on enormous franchises where the range of possible outcomes is incredibly narrow. To preserve an untainted experience is a weird act of faith that the rules of the world you love are still the rules of the world you love. The biggest example of this was the massive no spoilers campaign around the release of Avengers: Endgame. ‘Don’t spoil the Endgame’ which the filmmakers and cast have begged the public to go an entire weekend without spoiling the movie, which is honestly kind of funny because we all knew more or less what was going to happen and we all knew that all the folks who disappeared in Infinity War were coming back because they were all the most famous ones.

UC San Diego psychology professor Nicholas Christenfeld found that spoiling stories actually helps people enjoy them. In his study, participants were read stories from three genres - literary stories, mystery stories, and ironic twist stories - with half of them hearing the stories with no prior context and half having them accidentally spoiled by the researcher. According to Christenfeld: “What we found remarkably was if you spoil stories, they actually enjoy them more.” He went on to say that, across all three genres, spoilers actually were enhancers. Reflecting on these results, he points out that, of course, many of us watch romantic comedies knowing damn well that the unlikely couple is going to end up together, or detective movies knowing that the protagonist is definitely going to solve the case.

Our obsession with not being spoiled and consuming content as fast as possible has led studios to try and avoid spoilers at all costs, even if this means modifying scripts or not letting cast and crew know what’s going on while they’re on set. Brie Larson described what it’s like as an actor in the spoiler-adverse MCU ecosystem:

“I flew to Atlanta for my first day on Endgame. I had no idea what I was shooting, what the movie was. I didn’t know if anybody else was in a scene with me. I didn’t know anything. It’s not until you show up that you get your pages for the day, but you only get your part. So it was like a scene that was completely black redacted, and then just my one line.”

Hearing this quote, I can’t help but think about the book I read recently called The Method on Hollywood Acting by David Mamet and how he talks about the importance of knowing the context of a scene and the need for an actor to have a sense of the whole story in order to make their performance as good as it can be.**