I'm old. Ok, maybe not like real real old, but I'm internet old. I remember the days of dialup and message boards. We had AOL Instant Messenger, Yahoo! chats and more. I can't even remember how many times I typed a/s/l! Now that seems a little strange, starting a conversation asking for that much information.
Full confession, I even used Napster and LimeWire back in the day. Once I learned about music piracy and the ramifications it had on the industry I stopped but in the short time I did some work. Back then you would set a list of all the songs you wanted in your queue then go to bed. The next morning you would, hopefully, wake up to quality mp3 ready to burn on a CD.
One of the benefits of this archaic age is it was almost impossible to come across spoilers. If they were on a board they had all the appropriate warnings so you wouldn't accidentally read them. What changed? Do we have more information now? More trolls? Or are the studios to blame? I'm going to try and get to the bottom of it all.
But first…
ANNOUNCEMENTS!!!
I had YC3 last week! Thank you to everyone who came by, said hi and/or picked up a book. It was a lot of fun, until it wasn't, then it was again. My youngest went with me and was having the time of his life. He loved the hotel, they had a breakfast buffet with allergen friendly stuff, he was slinging books, he loved it! Then on day 2 he fell asleep at the booth, which is very unlike him, and when he woke up he had a wicked case of pink eye! After my podcasting panel I made the 2 hour drive home to drop him off, we were both pretty sad. The rest of the show went smoothly, I got to meet and hang out with some of the guests and they were cool. Doug Jones is one of the sweetest humans on the face of the Earth. I can't wait until next year.
Next up is Fan Expo Dallas in June. I won't have a table but I will be there doing interviews and panels. Can't wait to see everyone there!
Ok, spoilers, we're going back to the topic at hand.
I recently read an article from Comic Book Resources1 (ironically the same site that hosted the message boards young me used to go to and talk about comics) about the state of spoilers, and it got me thinking. With The Batman still fresh in people's minds and Doctor Strange just around the corner people are talking spoilers.
First, when is it ok to talk about spoilers? For the sake of discussion I'm going to be looking at theatrical releases, not stuff that is only streaming or day and date, that opens up another can of worms. I've heard people say two weeks is how long you should wait. I also know someone who wouldn't see the movie until it came out on DVD and would get mad if you talked about it, that's four months on average! That's way too long!
I've been thinking about it and my answer is opening weekend. "But Lance, that's too short!" No, it isn't. If you're like me you watch maybe the first teaser trailer and that's it. You're going in pretty blind. We're lucky because now you can go to showings starting Thursday afternoon. In the olden days we were lucky if there was a midnight show on Thursday. With this you are given plenty of chances to watch a movie.
I live in a small-ish town, we have 4 movie theaters. As of this writing we are a week out from Doctor Strange. In my small town there are 349 chances to see the movie between Thursday and Sunday. 349! That is enough to fit anyone's schedule.
"But Lance, I work and want to spend my off time for myself!"
I get that, I really do, but you have to ask yourself what is more important. Self care and mental health is paramount in today's society but which will hurt you more, personally? Staying up 2 hours later one night to watch a movie or reading spoilers after those first few days. Unfortunately, you have to make a choice.
I'm not like everyone, I know, but I choose to see a movie I care about as fast and early as possible to avoid spoilers. Am I missing dinner with my kids next Thursday to go see Doctor Strange? Damn right I am! I love my family but we eat together almost every night. So, to me, it is worth missing one meal to see Doctor Strange before all of it is spoiled for me.
There you have it, you have roughly 96 hours before I'm going to talk about spoilers.
Now let's look at the monsters that spoil the movie before it comes out. These come in three different varieties; the speculator, the troll and the studio. While there is definitely some overlap we are treating them as three separate beings.
The speculator. These are probably the ones that make me the most upset. They are taking small unsubstantiated rumors and publishing them just as click bait articles. Sometimes they are right but usually they aren't. People are finally realizing that these places are full of crap. If someone shares something from wegotthiscovered.com they instantly lose some respect in my book. Another one I've noticed popping up is behindthemagic.com. Don't trust these places and don't click on them! They are not worth your time.
The troll. I don't give these people any emotion except pity. These are people who (usually) legit know about what's happening in a movie. They will post early spoilers without using the proper method just to ruin surprises for people. I don't know if they think it makes them cool or gives them power over others but whatever the feeling is it is really just a jerk move. When I think of people like this I'm always reminded of that scene in Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back where they track down people talking trash on the internet.
The studio. This is the one that confuses me the most. Why spoil your own product? In this day and age superhero movies really don't need a lot of publicity. At this point people are either going to see them or they won't. Even in your usual media rotation I don't understand giving away a movie's big secret. To me, it takes away from the joy of watching it. Normally Marvel does a good job keeping their talent and teams quiet. Thanks to trolls we knew Tobey and Andrew were going to be in No Way Home but Marvel denied it was going to happen until the movie came out. I wish they would've done the same with all the villains, but I figure they had to have some kind of cool hook in marketing.
Currently with Doctor Strange I've watched two trailers, the one at the end of No Way Home and the one from the Super Bowl. The first one was great but the second one bothered me. Hearing Sir Patrick Stewart's voice would've made me lose my mind in theaters, but now I hear they are using him in the commercials. I haven't seen them so I don't know. If you want to spoil someone from the Illuminati give me Black Bolt or maybe even introduce Namor, but pulling a twenty plus year cameo out just doesn't seem right.
So who is to blame for all these spoilers? I think it's us, the viewers. Everything today is so instant. You can watch an entire season of a show in one day when it drops. We have the combined knowledge of the world at our fingertips. We want stuff and we want it now! Knowing is more important than feeling. People either want to be the troll who knew Thanos was going to win at the end of Infinity War. People want to be able to play on their phone while they watch a movie, knowing they won't really miss anything if they know everything that's going to happen.
This isn't everyone though. I would like to think if you're here, reading this, and you've been a follower of mine you still enjoy the excitement of seeing a movie. If you are a spoiler person though let's go over how to type spoilers on social media.
Discord is the easiest. They have an option to "mark as spoiler" which will blur out the content. Facebook is a different beast entirely though. The general consensus is to say what you're spoiling at the top of the post, ex. "Doctor Strange Spoilers", then follow it with at least eight lines of symbols. Like this:
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The eight line method will cause the majority of users to have to click the "see more" button. If you want to be extra safe twenty lines of symbols will hide it from almost everyone.
How do you feel about spoilers? Let me know in the comments below!
Until next time,
Lance
https://www.cbr.com/the-batman-proves-the-age-of-the-spoiler-is-officially-dead/?utm_source=CBR-FB-P&utm_medium=Social-Distribution&utm_campaign=CBR-FB-P&fbclid=IwAR3aMI43njLF5EklHPXGcliyDOUchb3WLYy1NP2MeZLNpzIE5TdHOxERv4Q