

Spoilers Don’t Spoil Anything - ugh
http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2011/08/spoilers-dont-spoil-anything.ars

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lt
I find that expecting a twist lowers the enjoyment. The twist, when it
arrives, tends to usually be anticlimatic. If it turns out there's no twist,
it ruins the whole experience.

I think that's why Shyamalan's later movies are considered so badly.

The "prediction error" point is interesting; I feel cheated when the twist is
not so much a twist but hidden information; when one could never have
suspected of the truth because not all facts where given. For example, I found
the ending of the movie Number 23 to ruin the movie for me, so frustrating it
was.

On the other hand, when it makes perfect sense, and facts were there all
along, the twist is satisfying. That's why Sixth Sense is so popular.

Also, spoilers aren't always about twists. Telling me the whole plot of a
movie robs me the experience of discovering it as it goes. Some of movies I
enjoyed watching the most were ones I went in knowing absolutely nothing of
what it was about (also some of the ones I disliked the most, but that's
another story).

~~~
dfxm12
_Telling me the whole plot of a movie robs me the experience of discovering it
as it goes._

I've always wondered about people who can sit through the same movie several
times. If you already know what's going to happen, how can you get any
enjoyment out of it?

I say this only half sarcastically. I get bored rewatching movies, except for
only my very favorites. Those movies have been spoiled for me, and yet I enjoy
them just as much as I did the first time I saw them (maybe a little more).

Remember, the journey is half the fun, even if you know where you are going...

~~~
ugh
I like to re-watch movies for discovering small details and for all the well
choreographed sequences. That’s more like re-watching a music video, you do it
because the material is just plain cool to watch.

As you say, this only works for movies I like, only for movies that have
sequences like that and details.

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DanielStraight
This ignores too many issues to be relevant.

If something has a surprise, I can enjoy showing it to friends and watching
them get caught by the surprise. That adds pleasure.

If something has a surprise, it can make a bigger impact and stick in my
memory longer. That adds pleasure.

Sometimes I can guess a surprise. That adds pleasure.

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msg
My dad was reading Game of Thrones and got to a shocking spoiler at the end of
book 1 (you can guess which one). He told me he stopped reading the series
right there. He probably wouldn't even have begun reading if he knew
beforehand.

He reads a lot in the genre and he just couldn't take what GRR dished out.

I thought it was a brilliant move and I certainly would have been sad to know
it was coming. When an author is reversing tropes and dumbfounding your
expectations, when you're suspended between possible outcomes and don't know
what's going to happen next, that's the golden time in reading.

~~~
killerswan
How was something written in the book a spoiler when you're reading the pages
in order?

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gwern
The spoiler wasn't for his father, it would have been for _him_ :

> I thought it was a brilliant move and I certainly would have been sad to
> know it was coming. When an author is reversing tropes and dumbfounding your
> expectations, when you're suspended between possible outcomes and don't know
> what's going to happen next, that's the golden time in reading.

"My pleasure would have been reduced to know about the spoiler in advance."

~~~
msg
Correct. Sorry if I was obtuse. Neither my father nor I knew about the
"shocking event" before reading it. I would call this a spoiler (certainly I
would encase it in a spoiler warning before mentioning it online) but I guess
you can argue about whether it's really a spoiler if it wasn't actually
spoiled for anyone in the story.

For similar reasons I do not hesitate to say "John was walking across the
street when he was hit by a car." As it turned out, John was walking to the
middle of the street when he was hit by a car, but from his point of view he
was engaged in a very different activity.

I have another story on the same lines. About 18 months ago a friend was
giving a presentation on a new software module at work. We were waiting for
supervisors to arrive and to pass the time, I showed everyone that I had
recently seen the entire Star Wars trilogy (IV, V, VI) uploaded to Youtube in
ten minute increments.

In the course of this, the friend giving the presentation mentioned he had
never seen them. He was from China, but also did university in Canada. He
watched a lot of anime but wasn't much into Western media.

Somewhat at a loss, I made him promise to watch them that weekend. He did, but
right before he started his talk someone else asked about it and he said, "I
am your father."

That, friends, is a real tragedy of spoiling and I defy anyone to defend it.

Postscript, my friend did actually watch all the movies that weekend, but he
said they didn't hold up well. He watched an extremely suspect order though,
something like 4, 1, 2, 3, 5, 6.

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damoncali
I detest spoilers so much that I've been known to leave a good book unfinished
to avoid ruining the end.

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locopati
I've been rereading the Dune novels (because I never did read the last one and
it's been a while). Since I have read them before, but it's been so long, I've
been skipping ahead at times to read the final chapters (something I never do
with other books). I've found that refreshing my memory of how it ends
improves my enjoyment of the books quite a bit, as I can really appreciate the
Herbert's craft in getting there.

Similar to ancient Greek plays and epics, where everyone knows the story, it
allows me to focus on the performance and the details of foreshadowing,
hinting, and flow.

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losvedir
I can't find the article online (it does say it's "upcoming") but here's the
press release[1] in the journal. An interesting comment from the authors:

 _"Christenfeld and Leavitt conclude the paper by saying that perhaps some of
our “other intuitions about suspense may be similarly wrong.”

“Perhaps,” they write, “birthday presents are better when wrapped in
cellophane, and engagement rings are better when not concealed in chocolate
mousse.”

We might be also well-advised to reconsider surprise parties, Christenfeld
said._

But I don't know. Maybe they aren't spoilers, per se, but I know some of my
favorite books and movies have me going "Oh! How is this going to end?" or
"Oh! How are they going to get out of _that_!" I'd love to know how much was
actually spoiled. Was it, as in the ars article does, "Dumbledore dies on page
596", or like a cliff's notes version of the whole story.

[1]
[http://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/news/releases/...](http://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/news/releases/spoiler-
alert-stories-are-not-spoiled-byspoilers.html)

~~~
ugh
I think the authors go a bit too far with their suspicions (but they use
appropriate language, so that’s alright). I would like to see their experiment
repeated with, for example video games like Portal (where I do suspect that
spoilers matter) or movies. I think their results are very intriguing, but
it’s still very possible that the truth is a bit more complicated. It’s time
to explore the landscape of spoilers. (Isn’t that what everyone writes at the
end of their papers? “Further research, however, is necessary.“)

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rflrob
I wonder if there's a subset of people (presumably people who often do puzzles
and the like) who run counter to this finding. I often run gimmick car
rallyes[1], which is an extended exercise in parsing the rules, and when I've
fallen for a good gimmick, I'm more likely to smile once I've figured out how
I was tricked.

[1] <http://www.therallyeclub.org/what.htm>

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RobAtticus
I don't think I'm typically bothered by spoilers, but The Usual Suspects
stands out as an example of where it definitely hurt my enjoyment of that
movie. I mean, I still liked the movie, but man, I can only imagine how much
more I would've enjoyed it without the spoilers.

Also, by this point The Sixth Sense is ruined for me, so I'm not sure I'll
ever get around to seeing it.

~~~
rflrob
_I can only imagine how much more I would've enjoyed it without the spoilers._

Ah, but you're arguing a counterfactual. The study suggests that you wouldn't
have enjoyed it more without the spoiler. Similarly, with The Sixth Sense, you
might enjoy seeing how Shyamalan puts the story together and imagining how a
naive viewer would try to reconcile things.

~~~
RobAtticus
The study suggests something that is true in general for people, it doesn't
apply to every person in every case. Like I said, in most cases I'm not
bothered by spoilers. However, in this particular case, I felt a diminished
sense of enjoyment of that movie. I base this off of my experiences of other
twists of similar or lesser magnitudes and how much enjoyment I got out of
those. I liked the movie, I liked the characters, but I was missing the punch
at the end and I knew it. It felt like a letdown. Hell, I would've probably
liked the movie more if it hadn't had the twist because knowing the twist and
knowing I wouldn't be surprised made the movie end rather flat.

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wccrawford
Yet another person that doesn't find value in something and thus thinks it
should have no value for anyone else, either. -sigh-

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AlexandrB
That doesn't make sense. The article is about a piece of research that seems
to indicate that people enjoy reading "spoiled" books more.

That doesn't imply that this is true for you personally, nor does it make a
value judgement on how people should experience fiction.

~~~
ugh
Or: It’s not an opinion piece (well, it is, a little bit) but points to actual
research.

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philwelch
Sometimes telling a story non-chronologically can create the anticipation
effect of knowing a spoiler ahead of time. The recent Battlestar Galactica did
this, to the extent of possibly overdoing it.

