If you care about spoilers, why are you still here reading? (Destiny)

by General Vagueness , The Vault of Sass, Thursday, September 07, 2017, 10:28 (2722 days ago) @ Funkmon

Pretty simple. A couple studies have shown that people enjoy things more when they have plot points spoiled, spoilers being talked about here are barely spoilers at all, merely acknowledging the existence of a story, and also the stranglehold people crying about spoilers have on conversation.

I'm aware of those studies, last I knew they weren't exhaustive, nor did they test against media that people were already looking forward to.

For example, I've said a big plot point of Star Wars a few times on the forum, and one time some guy got really mad at me because HE WAS WAITING FOR THE DVD. ARE YOU SERIOUSLY SHITTING ME WITH THAT?! You want to inhibit my conversation with my friends about the biggest cultural phenomenon of that summer, because YOU want to watch it on DVD?! I sincerely do not believe someone is that arrogant, much less people I know personally or reasonably well, who are otherwise normal.

They call spoilers even about things they have no intention of even seeing! For example, I once spoiled Life Is Strange by saying Rachel Amber is dead, something we knew basically from the beginning, and something which is not, strictly speaking, the main plot of the game. I was internet yelled at by a guy who was considering playing the game. Are you kidding me? The game had been FINISHED, and it was $20! If you were going to play it, you would have.

So basically the problem is some people are overzealous about it and you're mad, so now you want to pin that on anyone that cares? Do you see how dumb that is?

I just am completely incredulous. My personal incredulity leads me to think that these people cannot possibly expect people to not talk about the story until everyone conceivably has experienced it in his own time.

You're taking an extreme here. Not everyone feels that way. I remember some of these encounters, and the person on the other end is usually the more foolish. (That said, didn't you spoil someone that died? That's pretty major.)

Again, this ain't no spoilers. The trailer for Castaway is a spoiler. The appearance of literally some plot or a character isn't, and, again, I don't believe anyone actually thinks it is.

Some people may want to avoid knowing things about the game, which is fine. Don't read about the goddamn game. If you want to read about the game but have arbitrarily deemed parts of the pre release info as a spoiler, and you're still reading, you're literally lying to yourself about which thing you value more: spoilers or Destiny 2 info.

This is not a news site, it's a forum. The primary purpose is to discuss Destiny, not to give out news about it. Lots of people like to discuss something that's not fully revealed yet.

EDIT: I want to say there's a difference between faking something and fooling yourself. I fooled myself into thinking frosted tips were cool. I didn't fake liking them when they were hip. I just didn't realize that I didn't care, but MTV told me it was cool so it was, in my head.

Of course you cared, otherwise you wouldn't have even thought about it. You cared about MTV and the opinions of people on it. You can't pawn the blame off anyone. You can say "oh I was young and dumb", that would be fair, but MTV didn't make you delusional. (side note: I seem to be encountering this more lately, the accusation that people don't know what they themselves actually think and feel about something, and to me it always reads as calling them delusional or brainwashed or at least incredibly stupid)

This situation, calling this a spoiler, is just like when Star Lord's dad wasn't known to be whoever that famous actor was. The movie companies keep this stuff hidden to fuel internet speculation and keep the movie, still in development or a long time from release, in our heads. Then they release a trailer showing who he is and people call SPOILER. Dude, they manufactured that spoiler to keep you talking about the movie. You literally are pissed off because you know someone is in the movie.

As this type of thing gains traction online as a marketing tactic, so does the acknowledgement by some people of its legitimacy as a plot point.

The same way payola convinced us to like some pop artists and not others, this very avoidance of these very spoilers can be convincing to some people. They think they should feel spoiled, culture has told them they should, so they do. Then after some time, they will realize that maybe Semi Charmed Life isn't that good of a song, and they'll realize that they didn't really care as much about spoilers as they thought.

So you're saying, what, ignore all culture, don't let it inform your thoughts or your feelings or your personality? Culture wouldn't exist without that, culture is the collective sum of thoughts and feelings about well-known things.

I'm left with two things here.

Firstly, I would be ready to ask if you're new here, but you're not, you should understand well how b.org approaches these things (and things in general), which is what I can only call a romantic way. The assumption is that things will be fine, the developers know what they're doing, the marketers know what they're doing, other forumgoers and other players will be nice, and of course that people will respect their desire to not be spoiled even if other people don't care about spoilers.

Secondly, it seems like you're either having genuine trouble reading people and understanding them, or you're putting on an excuse for being a bit of an asshole because you just feel like being a bit of an asshole (possibly because you're upset at the prevailing view) but you don't want people to see you as one. Given your text walls I think it's the first one, trouble reading people. There are a lot of possible causes for either of those so I'll leave it there.