Study shows that spoilers don't "spoil" anything
By
7deCoeur,
Posted on: 2011-08-12 11:19 in Comic and Hero-Villain Culture
Quote:
Maybe there's no in-between, but there ARE extremes. There are people who will overreact to anything, which is who my "over-touchy" comment was aimed at.|
Originally Posted by Electric-Knight
There's no in-between to be touchy about. It's sort of an on or off, yes or no type situation. It seems pretty simple to respect.
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I don't mind someone expressing regret or even anger when someone lets a spoiler slip. I do it enough myself on topics I might feel strongly about. But I've seen enough multiple paragraph rants full of unnecessary insults.
I guess I shoulda said, "people CAN be over-touchy about things". Using the word "spoilers" DOES kinda imply that I'm limiting it to that topic, I suppose.
I personally don't mind spoilers at all. As an example, I read the epilogue to George R. R. Martin's new book, A Dance with Dragons, when I started to get bogged down a bit after reading a couple hundred pages. At the time, the following 750+ pages seemed like a long slog, but knowing some direction of the story reenergized me. A further spoiler I ran across in an A.V. Club discussion about Jon Snow's fate gave me another jolt forward.
Any fans of the recently completed Game of Thrones HBO series will know of fans' reaction to Ned Stark's fate in episode 9. Those who read the book knew what was coming and still experienced a high level of tension and emotion, which shows how well done it was. Some of those who had not read the book, like my girlfriend, still saw it coming. The event didn't come out of nowhere. Others, as you will find if you search for reactions on Youtube, simply freaked out in disbelief:
Spoiler warning, of course...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owf6D2vfZqM
Martin himself has said that he will likely be out of the country when the main event of season 3 will be broadcast, one the producers and some fans refer to only be its initials, RW, as they don't want to focus attention on a giant spoiler. He's likely only half joking.
So while I don't mind them, I am usually careful not to spoil other people's enjoyment if they wish to be surprised.
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Obviously you've never taught before.|
Originally Posted by Durakken
No >.>
The difference is not Teaching vs "enteraining" it's Teaching vs "Art" If you're not entertaining and engaging as a teacher you are not a teacher. You're an informant... that likely isn't getting your information to whrere it needs to go. |
If you're not entertaining and engaging, you're not a GOOD teacher. Teaching is nothing more than presenting information to people that haven't heard it before, and showing them what to do with it.
Bad teachers come in all sizes. They can be horrible presenters, they can be great. If their students aren't learning and replicating (testing) well, the teacher is bad no matter how well they presented.
Writers shouldn't be scared to write in such a way that people will figure out the ending before everyone else gets there. That's just gonna happen no matter what. People are wired different ways. Tell a good story, and it doesn't matter that you figured out the ending by the second chapter. Just don't blatantly tell me, via poor plot exposition, or via spoilers, the one fact ("The Butler Did it" or "She's a man") that the entire story hinges around. I'd rather figure it out myself than be told before I see it. It's no different than watching a movie with someone that's already seen it, and they're telling you to get ready for everything that's coming, or saying all the funny lines a half second before the actor does.
Loose --> not tight.
Lose --> Did not win, misplace, cannot find, subtract.
One extra 'o' makes a big difference.
Quote:
You are talking to Ironik, not me. You agree with me.|
Originally Posted by White Hot Flash
Obviously you've never taught before.
If you're not entertaining and engaging, you're not a GOOD teacher. Teaching is nothing more than presenting information to people that haven't heard it before, and showing them what to do with it. Bad teachers come in all sizes. They can be horrible presenters, they can be great. If their students aren't learning and replicating (testing) well, the teacher is bad no matter how well they presented. Writers shouldn't be scared to write in such a way that people will figure out the ending before everyone else gets there. That's just gonna happen no matter what. People are wired different ways. Tell a good story, and it doesn't matter that you figured out the ending by the second chapter. Just don't blatantly tell me, via poor plot exposition, or via spoilers, the one fact ("The Butler Did it" or "She's a man") that the entire story hinges around. I'd rather figure it out myself than be told before I see it. It's no different than watching a movie with someone that's already seen it, and they're telling you to get ready for everything that's coming, or saying all the funny lines a half second before the actor does. |
You want to say someone is a bad teacher... a bad teacher doesn't teach and thus isn't a teacher in my book. I don't consider someone something just cuz thy have a job title or something that says they are that. I go by if they actually are doing what that title implies they are doing.
But yeah that's only thing we disagree on in that post you call them bad, i call them not teachers.
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Just for the record I don't consider myself "over-touchy" about spoilers. For example if I really didn't want to know anything about an upcoming movie I'd probably have to avoid the Internet altogether. That's just not going to happen. My main point about that is that despite this study's dubious findings I'm not going to go out of my way to spoil myself on some vague notion I'm going to automatically like it better because of it. If a movie's good enough the first time to watch it again with experienced eyes then that'll happen on its own - I don't need to rush anything.|
Originally Posted by Cowman
Maybe there's no in-between, but there ARE extremes. There are people who will overreact to anything, which is who my "over-touchy" comment was aimed at.
I don't mind someone expressing regret or even anger when someone lets a spoiler slip. I do it enough myself on topics I might feel strongly about. But I've seen enough multiple paragraph rants full of unnecessary insults. I guess I shoulda said, "people CAN be over-touchy about things". Using the word "spoilers" DOES kinda imply that I'm limiting it to that topic, I suppose. |
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Originally Posted by Venture
I don't care about spoilers because the vast likelihood is that I will figure out which way a story is going long before it gets there. I've been critiquing fiction almost my entire life and there's only so many ways you can put these things together
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by Marsquake
I personally don't mind spoilers at all. As an example, I read the epilogue to George R. R. Martin's new book, A Dance with Dragons, when I started to get bogged down a bit after reading a couple hundred pages. At the time, the following 750+ pages seemed like a long slog, but knowing some direction of the story reenergized me. A further spoiler I ran across in an A.V. Club discussion about Jon Snow's fate gave me another jolt forward.
So while I don't mind them, I am usually careful not to spoil other people's enjoyment if they wish to be surprised. |
I don't see spoilers as outright evil because they can serve specific purposes like Marsquake described. I'm simply saying that under most normal circumstances a book/movie ought to be good enough that it doesn't -require- overt spoilage to be enjoyed. I think if you somehow rely too much on "full disclosure" spoilage all of the time as the first step to anything (like this study sort of implies we all should do) then I think that'd be overkill. Like most things it's best in moderation.
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Because you can't resolve something the audience is unaware of, so obviously resolution cannot come first.|
Originally Posted by Durakken
It's not surprising at all.
It's long been known when you present something you tell someone what you are going to tell them. Tell them what you are going to tell them. Then, tell them what you told them. In other words, you spoil what your conclusion is, tell them how you got there, and then tell them your conclusion is. It makes me wonder why someone hasn't invented the better story format than the exposition, build up, resolution format we're used to and use something like. Resolution, exposition, build up, resolution. it might be better, given the data ^.^ |
In one sense, all journeys have a beginning, a middle, and an end, so exposition, build up, resolution is more of a truism than a rule: you can't do anything I can't *describe* in that fashion, even if it was not your intent. But as to people trying to play with that basic structure, it happens. And oh lookie, directed by the same guy that played with it again quite recently. I'd say both reversal and recursion are not part of the standard base repertoire of average storytelling.
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To me that article reads as if the writer does not know the difference between a spoiler and a teaser (much like the BBC). A teaser such as "a major character will be shot by a sniper" can build tension and give the viewer or reader something to look forward to and try to predict as the story goes on, where as "Joe hero gets shot and survives" is a spoiler and removes the tension. Unless the author is good enough to have the story not rely totally on one plot point it can ruin the experience.
Many people say that the sixth sense gets better with repeat viewings, and I believe that for them it does. However for me I watched the film the first time and wondered what was up with the glaringly obvious (to me) colour queues and then realised early on what the "twist" was. I spent the rest of the film watching and waiting for some other story element to kick in and make it interesting.
The authors assertion that the human mind treats surprises as a bad thing is bizzare to me. Take for example the TV Show Dr Who, the BBC has a bad habit of showing the climactic scene of each coming episode over and over randomly as an advert for the episode before it is broadcast. This means that when you watch the show some of the suspense is removed which for me spoils the experience. However recently a BIG episode aired that a lot of people where looking forward to, the episode was written by Niel Gaiman and generated a lot of interest from the sort of people who scour the net for the slightest hint as to what is coming.
The advertisements for this episode seemed to follow the standard BBC practice of ruining one of the critical scenes, and strongly hinted that one of the characters was as had been speculated on the internet, a character from the books rather than the TV show. When the episode aired I was sitting waiting with my expectations based off of the trailer and past experience, only to find that the scene shown was not the climactic scene as expected and basically was chosen to fool Dr Who fans into thinking the episode was going in a completely different direction to what it was.
Anyone who thinks spoilers don't spoil anything has obviously never been told the punchline to a joke without hearing the rest of the joke first.
@Quasadu
"We must prepare for DOOM and hope for FREEM." - SirFrederick
Quote:
The one thing I would never do is agree with you. Same goes for this conversation. I'm talking to you as well. You don't understand what a teacher is.
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Originally Posted by Durakken
You are talking to Ironik, not me. You agree with me.
You want to say someone is a bad teacher... a bad teacher doesn't teach and thus isn't a teacher in my book. I don't consider someone something just cuz thy have a job title or something that says they are that. I go by if they actually are doing what that title implies they are doing. But yeah that's only thing we disagree on in that post you call them bad, i call them not teachers. |
Loose --> not tight.
Lose --> Did not win, misplace, cannot find, subtract.
One extra 'o' makes a big difference.
Like Alfred Hitchcock (or someone else ?) said, "Don't tell the ending." Please let me be surprised
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Patrice S.
Community Moderator
Paragon Studios </B>
As someone who had "The Matrix" (well, what it was) and "Lord of the Rings" (because I wasn't much of a reader at the time and figured I never would be) spoiled... I can safely say I hate spoilers. As has been mentioned before, you can only experience a story unspoiled once - after missing out on a couple classics, I don't want to make that mistake again.
Personally, I hate spoilers. I like to see, feel, hear, smell, taste, and live the experience from start to finish as the creator has laid out. After living through the story once, then I can play with it in my head and see other avenues of enjoyment.
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The difference is not Teaching vs "enteraining" it's Teaching vs "Art"
If you're not entertaining and engaging as a teacher you are not a teacher. You're an informant... that likely isn't getting your information to whrere it needs to go.