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When we posted our Game of Thrones parody, it had been two years since the content we covered in the video had aired on television, and more than ten since the book was published. We even added “season one” into the title so that people who were still in the middle of season two or three would know that this video was spoiler-free for them. But despite all this, the comments immediately began rolling in.
This raised a really interesting question: when do spoilers stop being spoilers?
The root of this question is ultimately one of responsibility. How much of spoiler-avoidance is the responsibility of the viewer, and how much is the responsibility of the poster? To say that the burden lies 100% on one set of shoulders is ridiculous, in my opinion. It can’t be entirely the poster’s responsibility, because there will always be horrible people who try to spoil things. If you expect that the rest of the internet will take care of you, you will quickly and painfully be reeducated. But to place the entire burden on the shoulders of the viewer isn’t fair either. Fans of things should care about other fans of things, and try not to ruin their lives. How do we share responsibility between courteous posters and careful viewers?
Let’s consider an example: people who haven’t seen Star Wars. Yes, they exist. Tragic, really. On the one hand, if you’re old enough to browse the Internet and still haven’t seen Star Wars, you probably already know that Darth Vader is Luke’s father, since it is literally the most-quoted line in the movie and is integrated into pop culture references daily around the world. (Also, what’s your problem? What are you waiting for? Geez.)
On the other hand, if you consider a different fandom, say…people who haven’t seen Doctor Who, we run into a more complex problem. I started watching the new series of Doctor Who about two years ago, and River Song’s identity was spoiled for me before I even met her. That ultimately may be one of the reasons I find her storyline so uninteresting. In order to avoid spoilers about River (or any other Who-related spoilers), I would’ve had to avoid the online Whovian community until I was caught up to the series (which, incidentally, just happened last week.)
But if we choose to gauge long-running fandoms like Who, in which there are newcomers every day, separately from cultural staples like Star Wars, which most people have seen by the age of ten if they’re going to see it at all, then how do we decide which fandom to put into which box?
Ultimately, there isn’t a higher power that can decide when spoiler warnings are and aren’t needed, so it comes down to courtesy. The problem is that everyone has different ideas of what is courteous. Some commenters on A Character I Used to Know where enraged at the spoilers in the video, and I thought we did a fair job trying to be kind. After all, if you haven’t seen season one, why are you watching a season one parody? Not just because of potential spoilers, but also because how do you expect to get the jokes and references if you aren’t familiar with the source material? But no matter how we justify it, there are people who watched that video who had major character deaths spoiled for them, and that’s not cool.
I can’t decide. What do you guys think? Whose responsibility is it to protect new viewers from spoilers? Do you think a lack of spoilers creates a barrier to new viewers entering fandom community? Tell me in the comments!
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My take on spoilers varies. Personally, once things have been out for a year I generally don’t get mad if something is spoiled for me. However, my response to a spoiler is also based on the intent of the person revealing it. If they are clearly trying to ruin something for me, I of course get mad. If it’s accidental, not so much.
To completely avoid spoilers in today’s mass media age you have to work at it. I was reading an article about actresses who have a lot of clout in Hollywood right now and when talking about Sandra Bullock it revealed the end of Gravity. This was 2 days after the movie was released. NBC’s official Revolution Facebook page was running RIP notices after characters were killed in the form of pictures with RIP on them the day after the episode aired. (The admin’s response btw was that I didn’t have to look.)
In conversations amongst friends we treat spoilers thusly. If we start talking about something, be it a book or movie or whatever, if you haven’t read or seen it then speak up. However if you walk into the room and we are discussing something it’s on you to turn around and walk away.
We have a few people that don’t care about spoilers and also don’t care about spoiling things for others. We are thinking of renting a woodchipper for them.
On a separate note, love the videos.
This kind of got me to thinking about all of the drama surrounding the Spoiling of a certain Significant Character plot point in the recent Rick Riordan book, “House of Hades”, thanks to the people who were leaking it on Tumblr.
Did it damage my enjoyment of the book? No, because, at least for me, the spoiler was a single moment outside of a larger scene. Was it a huge spoiler that upset people? Well, if you’re homophobic, yes. However, over all it didn’t destroy my enjoyment of the book (although, I confess, I was intentionally seeking out spoilers just to see what the whole hullabaloo was about, and I just wanted spoilers). Unfortunately, the spoiler is what everyone wants to talk about because homosexuality is still enough of a hot button issue that you can’t leak that kind of shit without it generating all kinds of discussion.
That being said, as it concerns your GoT parody, if they saw Game of Thrones Season 1 in the frigging title of the vidoe, they should have clued in that there would be CONTENT FROM SEASON 1, AND POSSIBLY SPOILERY CONTENT FROM SEASON 1, REFERENCED IN THE VIDEO. I honestly don’t know how you make a parody about Season 1/book 1 without mentioning anything potentially spoilery. I can’t wrap my brain around how to make a good GoT themed parody without mentioning spoilers.
Yeah, they knew what they were getting into when they clicked the link so they shouldn’t have been freaking out over the spoilers.
Actually there is no such thing as a spoiler. If one tiny bit of information can spoil a whole movie or a complete season of a tv show then the whole stuff is probably not worth watching, hence nothing is spoiled. And on the other hand nobody would watch a movie twice if spoiling really worked…
I 99.999% agree with you. There’s no such thing as a spoiler except in those very, very, VERY rare circumstances where the end of a film changes the context of the entire film (e.g. Sixth Sense) or things like detective stories where a big part of the fun is following along with the detective to work out who the murderer was.
Aside from those very, very, VERY rare circumstances anyone crying spoiler deserves a good clip round the ear and to be sent back to Kindergarten. That is doubly the case for a TV show where they’ve had an opportunity to read the book it’s based on, snag the wild feed, watch it in broadcast, see it on a catch up service, see it on an on-demand service, watch it on netflix, buy the DVD box set, borrow the DVD box set from a friend &c. That is doubly, doubly, doubly the case for GoT where the fact that G R R R Martin kills his characters on a regular basis has become an icon of pop culture.
Spoilers aren’t spoilers after the contents been out for more than two weeks. Take for example… Doctor who. If you say you’re a fan but you haven’t seen an episode thats been out for two weeks then you aren’t a very a good one. I understand people watch it from earlier series but then you shouldn’t be on the internet if you don’t want spoilers.
I watched your GoT parody before watching the show, knowing full well what I was getting myself into. (I guess I just couldn’t resist not hearing your beautiful new work.)
Of course, I didn’t understand or get as much enjoyment out of that parody as I did with the other parodies — I was expecting that. It also spoiled a certain someone’s death for me, but like I said, I knew that would happen?
Why? Because I read the title. You probably couldn’t have been any more obvious about the fact that it would most likely spoil something for the watcher if they hadn’t watch season one. In this case, the blame is not on you.
On the other hand, if you had just put the title as “Parody”, or something else just as vague, I probably would have been a little bit irked by the spoilers.
Speaking of that parody, I haven’t watched it since I’ve watch Game of Thrones, so I’m going to go do that now.
I personally avoided all youtube videos from the seasons I haven’t watched (or those that I wasn’t sure of what they would contain – I only claimed a video ‘safe’ if uploaded before the airing of season2) when I started wathing The Vampire Diaries. Plus I stopped checking the comments under the videos I watched, thus avoiding finding out about a character’s death by reading “aww, that was my fav moment back in season1, I miss him so much!”-like comments. I still couldn’t save myself from spoilers. One of the suggested videos’ title read a major spoiler (RIP xy.) It felt terrible, and I didn’t know who to be angry at, because I did everything I could, I couldn’t blame myself, nor did I feel fair to blame the uploader, who wasn’t trying to show their video to me forcefully. It was the non-human youtube system, so I just had to let my anger go and hope that it was just a fan fiction.
An other thing was when I stopped 9gagging after the first two huge reveals about things I watch or read. Thank God I don’t even remember what those spoilers were so I enjoyed the storyline equally when getting to it. The only thing I remembered was that “never again” feeling when I deleted the 9gag button from my browser. There were debates going on on the site about these kind of situations, users tried to convince each other to stop making such posts – the problem is that even if the community changes it’s behavior, it’s in vain, cause the majority of the posts are not uploaded by the users but the makers, but that’s an other story.
So as you can see, we have to make smaller and bigger sacrifices. Of course one can not shut themself out from the internet world until they’re caught up with all nine or so seasons of something. Even if we did, we still have to interact with people in life, and they can spoil it for us just as well, like when organising a surprise party and a guest somehow tells the birthday girl about it. There’s always a chance and we have to deal with it. But in my opinion if you really do make steps towards it, if you really want it, you can reduce this chance as much as humaly possible. You can and only you can, not the others. (Okay, your friends not being mean and telling you on purpose does help a bit.)
As for your video…
What do we call a spoiler anyway? Where an event, a storyline or an information starts being a spoiler is relative. Let’s say I start reading Harry Potter and I want to be surprised when reaching the point Hagrid says “Yer a wizard, Harry.” But it’s already on the back of the book when I first grab it from the shelf! Or I, being extremely precautious, don’t even look at the summary on the back. Doesn’t matter, because there’s Harry on the cover picture with a wand in his hand. See? Should every cover just be a blank black sheet? No, noone would be interested in the books. How would you chose what to read? One must offer some information. I’m sure there are people who have a wider spectrum of what they feel to be spoilers than I do. So if I make something that consists nothing I would consider a spoiler, that doesn’t mean there isn’t any in it, does it? Now, should we start everything we post, say, sing, write or show by writing, saying, singing “spoiler alert” first? No, that would be ridiculus. So the wiever or reader or listener has to change their point of view. They have to accept the chance of spoilers when watching a video somewhat related to the topic. Othervise, if you’re to blame, you could really start writing literally everywhere “watch out, spoilers”, because who’s to tell if that is one to someone?
And for anyone to think your parody video wouldn’t contain any facts about the series, even if there’s no sign in red capital letters reading “spoilers” is simply stupid.
I think it’s all about mutual effort. Let people know that there are going to be spoilers, and if you are someone who doesn’t want things spoiled, then avoid areas of the world where things could be spoiled for you.
Over the last year or so I’ve read the Game of Thrones series. I worked with people who were further along, I’ve been that person who’s further along. So it’s not just the internet, it’s my real life where I’ve either put my hands to my ears and run away shouting, “NO DON’T TELL ME I HAVEN’T READ THAT FAR YET!” of I’ve been the person trading the most cryptic comments ever to try and ascertain where a friend is in the book they’re on. I’ve had it happen where, someone accidentally reveals something that a friend didn’t know yet, and it usually ends up with one person saying, “AWWWW!” and the other saying, “OH NO I’M SO SORRY!” and then everybody builds a bridge and gets over it.
It’s the way of life, no need to be more tetchy about it just because it’s the internet.
I am one of the few who actually saw your video without having read the books or seen the show.
I accepted that I might not fully understand it and that ‘spoilers’ would be shown.
Did I get up in arms? No, your video inspired me to read the books. Which has been a blessing and a curse all in one haha.
At the end of the day, it was my choice to click the link, so I would say it was my responsibility alone, as it is for anyone elses. Otherwise it’s just pure naivety or being a pain for the sake of being a pain!
Not your responsibility guys, but as you are aware, you will never please everyone on the Internet.
I am one of the few who actually saw you’re video without having read the books or seen the show.
I accepted that I might not fully understand it and that ‘spoilers’ would be shown.
Did I get up in arms? No, your video inspired me to read the books. Which has been a blessing and a curse all in one haha.
At the end of the day, I chose to click the link, so I would say it is my responsibility alone, as it is for anyone elses. Otherwise it’s just pure naivety or being a pain for the sake of being a pain!
Not your guys responsibility
honestly, I think that your parody was awesome and in the first few moments in the song you sing: “now and then I think back yo 2011, back in season 1 when all the character’s were alive” if someone first hears this and realizes, ‘hey I didn’t know that anyone dies in game of thrones’ then they should have clicked out of that video and been like ‘I should go watch season 1, and after I am done watching it I will watch that awesome parody’ As a fangirl who has had A LOT of things spoiled for me, I have come to find out that it is MY job to make sure that I advert my eyes or cover my ears so that I don’t have something spoiled for me. Honestly Not Literally did an amazing job by coming up with an amazing parody and warning people that the parody was over season 1!!!!! ok I am off my soap box now
I’m of the general opinion that within fandom discussion spoiler limits are highly variable, and often very short. Any given episode of a show has about a week – IF ANY LIMIT AT ALL – before people post about within fandom spaces (excepting season finales and some plot heavy shows). Movies have a couple of months, and books have maybe three or four months. Major events/spoilers generally have a longer shelf life needing to be tagged as spoilers. That is polite and sensible. After all, you can’t expect people within fandoms to be constantly tagging everything spoilers. Those timelimits give ‘fully in the know’ fans time to catch up unspoiled if they weren’t able to engage the material in real time.
Thus if you are new to a fandom, then you should know to avoid places where people are talking about and engaging with the material. It’s insane to think a community should be constantly censoring itself for new people. After all, fandoms are places for fans, for people that are excited about and fully engaged with the show. New fans should be very careful about stepping into the fandom setting if they aren’t up to date on the material and care about not being spoiled. (Also, once spoilers have left fandoms and become pop culture, then those that wish to engage unspoiled are living on borrowed time.)
Also, it’s one thing if you dilberately spoil someone new to the material because you can, and another if someone new to the material stumbles into a spoilers because they weren’t thinking.
So yeah, even though game of thrones is kind of unique in that, they’re often are book vs show only fandom spaces, the spoilers you revealed were 2 years old even for those just watching the show. For either of those communities, even if they were major spoilers, were well past spoiler tag requirement in fandom discussion.
However, despite my general anti-long term spoiler opinions above, I get why these people were frustrated. Being spoiled when you don’t want to be sucks, especial when dealing with major spoilers (even when googling and engaging in fan material without considering potential spoilers is ridiculously naive). Prehaps, because you do have soo many major spoilers in the song, the best thing to do in this case is adding a notification at the beginning of the video that says “Major spoilers for season 1 contained within.” Or something to that effect. It’ll be the ALLCAP SPOILERS that people want. If you didn’t have so MANY major spoilers (that haven’t quite reached pop culture level yet) then I would say forget it, but otherwise, maybe the best thing to do in this case is to throw them a small bone.
Today’s world has come to the point where people aren’t responsible for their own actions any more. These days you have to put warning labels on everything like “don’t eat fast food all the time or you’ll get fat”. A lot of it is common sense stuff and you watch these people and think “well DUH”. But people seem to lack common sense these days. It’s not taught at schools or at home. You pretty much have to be born with it or or learn it on your own.
It’s common sense to avoid Doctor Who web sites and discussion groups until you have watched the latest episode because people are going to want to talk about it with others who watched it the very minute it has aired. It’s common sense that most fans of Game of Thrones have watched the first season and many have watched the second and third also. So, any discussions, posts, pictures, videos, references, and so on, are going to contain content from the show and most likely spoilers. It’s up to the individual to restrain themselves from viewing such media. When you read the book, do you start flipping through the pages to see how it ends before reading the whole story? If you do then is it the publisher’s fault for giving you the whole book at once or is you yours for skipping to the end? If you don’t want to be spoiled then don’t go watching videos based on the story before you are caught up yourself.
I do believe there is a bit of responsibility (or courtesy) on the poster’s side. It is polite not to disclose vital plot points in the title of your post whether it be an article, discussion, or video. I don’t want to be browsing the internet and randomly find something called so-and-so killed the main character. I don’t know what it was about until or to avoid the post without reading the title and in this case it would be too late to avoid it since the spoiler was the first and only thing I read of it. Even then, you willingly take the risk of seeing spoilers of your favorite stories any time you get on the internet. The only sure way of avoiding spoilers is to avoid getting online all together.
I don’t understand why people are getting bent out of shape at NL for posting the video when it was clearly listed that the video was about the show. It is their own fault for searching for and viewing the video. No one forced them to and it’s only common sense that the video would contain information from the show.
I feel that it is necessary to put a reference of the point in the series that you are parodying, so your 1st season was enough. however you do not have a shoulder warning or time reference for your doctor who, which I found a but upsetting because I had not gotten to the angels yet so it kinda spoiled that episode. I guess it was mostly my fault however your previous harry potter parodies had no real spoilers in them, so I thought it was safe. I feel since you do so many fandom related parodies, so have to make a reference of where in the series it is so your fans know what’s safe to watch and what is not
I’m a firm believer in equality and I think both sides share responsibilities for spoilers. The readers should be smart enough to stay away from articles/videos/etc. which talk about their fandom if they aren’t all caught up. On the other hand it’s always nice when the poster throws up the “spoilers alert” when their spoilers are newish.
You guys are fine with your videos I’d say. Throwing “Season 1 Parody” up = “go away if you don’t know to know stuff about Season 1.” Plain and simple. Don’t mind the comments Ginny, you’ll get nonsensical hate no matter what you post.
Spoilers suck and that sting can truly ruin wonderful stories and shows but if everybody acts with some courtesy I’m convinced the amount of hurt feelings will drop off.
I didn’t watch the video. I clicked through, saw a comment, went “NOPE” and backed out. I’ve only just finished Season 1, and I just finished A Game of Thrones, and that one comment spoiled something that I’m pretty sure is big. But then I realized that it was totally my fault. What was I doing clicking on Game of Thrones parody links if I’m not caught up? What did I expect? You can’t exactly parody something without using the content.
Another example: I recently started watching Elementary, and I found a post with a spoilery caption while scrolling Tumblr. When I mentioned it to the poster, a friend, she apologized profusely but added that she didn’t tag it as a spoiler since the episodes had aired 5 months ago. I’m often months behind shows because I don’t watch much weekly TV during my school semesters–but I should know that, and I should have blacklisted the show’s tag.
I’ve been spoiled for some things and still enjoyed them. The general plot of Avatar: The Last Airbender was not a surprise for me, but the execution and character development were. Long story short, it’s on the reader, not the poster. Only you can know where you are in the show or book or whatever. That means you can stop clicking on links until you’re caught up. If you do get spoiled, get over it and enjoy the story for the storytelling’s sake.
I think that if you are new to something that’s existed for a while, it’s your own responsibility to stay away from spoilers until you’re caught up. If you seek out videos, discussions, etc. you cannot expect other people from catering to you, especially since most of the time they aren’t even aware that you just aren’t *there* yet. It sucks, but that’s just the way it is. I’ve often come into things that have been around for years already, and I accept that I will most likely not make it through without being spoiled, lest I avoid that particular fandom community until I’m caught up.
I ultimately found out who River Song was before I got to that point in the show (since I only started watching it last year), but thankfully I got to mostly learn it bit by bit. I knew about the season 6 cliffhanger of Bones before I actually watched a single episode of the show. And that’s on me and only me.
I don’t deliberately spoil someone if I know they aren’t caught up, and if it’s an important plot point, I make sure the person actually wants to hear it before I say it. And in the case of River, I refused to tell a newbie whovian who she was, because I felt she really needed to learn that in her own time – and thankfully the other whovians in the same chatroom agreed with me. If I write about something that would majorly spoil someone not caught up, I add a warning (like when I recently wrote a blog piece on River), but for the most part I feel it’s people’s own responsibility. If they don’t want to know, they really have no business searching for it…
There comes a point where spoiler warnings are not necessary. The people complaining about Lord of the Rings spoilers when the movies were coming out were unjustified in their complaints. I hadn’t read all of the books myself when I saw them, and even I knew how it all ended. It’s not my job to help you avoid decades old spoilers. Given that though, spoiling a single major plot twist (ie. The Sixth Sense) is out of line in a general forum or in person to someone you know hasn’t seen it. But if someone is in a forum related specifically to it and the material is not very new then no spoiler tags are needed. If you haven”t seen the movie/read the book/watched the show then why are you hanging around threads discussing it? I will add a proviso about not spoiling in thread or post titles as those force the spoiler on those who would otherwise choose to avoid them.
I’m also a recent Whovian and I knew where River was going as well. It didn’t bother me much, but I can understand the frustration. As a recent convert I would have been annoyed to go to a Who forum and find threads titled “River Song is ______” (deliberately not spoiled). But if a thread is titled “Discussion of River’s origin” then no spoiler warning is needed and if I choose to read it then it is my own damn fault.
“A Character I used to Know” was clearly labelled as a GoT parody everywhere I encountered it. Spoiler warnings were not needed. If I don’t have the knowledge of GoT and don’t want it, I shouldn’t be there. If it didn’t clearly say “Game of Thrones Parody” EVERYWHERE, I could see the point. Clearly labeled parodies should not need additional spoiler warnings.
As a side note. How can parody exist without “spoilers”?
It’s referential at best. Even the most base and uninspired parody (I’m looking at you, SCARY MOVIE, et al) references specific scenes.
By the way. Bruce Willis in the Sixth Sense? Dead most of the film. Snape Kills Dumbledore. And the only one who lives in Game of Thrones is *grk* (strangled and murdered by you people, presumably).
I’m having fun being one of the only comments on the site XD I think its a joint responsibility and it depends on the show/game/book. Fight Club’s entire story hinges so much on its twist that spoiling the twist can ruin or completely change the message of the story while Star Wars doesn’t really hinge on any twists, its a classic heroes journey. For people irresponsible enough to click on your game of thrones parody without thinking that there may be spoilers it rests on them more than on you, especially since with “season 1” it felt like spoilers were prewarned. It really hinges on the structure of the story, a Fight Club twist can destroy a movie (or a River Song) but knowing Luke is Vader’s son doesn’t really ruin the rest of Star Wars (to be fair the reveal/meaning of the reveal are kinda crap). This be my two cents, as a general rule if its 3-years old or older I consider it fair to be spoiled but that doesn’t mean be a dick (which you gals were not)
Hey, the Vader=Daddy Reveal was huge at the time. It doesn’t seem like a big deal to us because it’s been true for all or most of our lives (This statement assumes that no one over… 35? knows what an internet is).
It was essentially the Snape kills Dumbledore of its day, entirely without understatement.
There have been studies into the effect of spoilers on a person’s enjoyment of a thing.
Other than a bunch of neurotic “omg spoilers”, turns out it either doesn’t matter very much or actually increases enjoyment.
If something has been truly “spoiled” for you, then it’s likely your own overreaction.
Unless you go through life watching things only once and then NEVER AGAIN, in which case- fine whatever. Go be a spoiler-hating nutbag.
Spoilers have a shelf life of maybe five years, and that’s being generous. Otherwise, you can’t expect others to tip-toe their conversations around your lack of knowledge. Otherwise we couldn’t talk about anything.
“Hey, that’s some heavy rain, right?”
“OMFG SPOILERS I HAVEN’T BEEN OUTSIDE YET.”
Why only fiction?
Who knows.
This whole thing is stupid.
Which is why I’m posting.
Because I am also stupid, apparently.
Seriously? In this day and age if you’re on the internet you don’t have the right to scream “SPOILERS!!!” It’s an unwritten rule that people will talk about movies, TV shows, books, bad porn parodies, and chocolate stink beetle cookie recipes.
I didn’t want to know about Star Trek Into Darkness because I wasn’t going to see it right away. Do you know what I did? I stayed away from discussion about it (which didn’t stop my brother from ruining all the major secrets in a one minute phone conversation).
People saw the title was about Game of Thrones, they knew what they were getting into.