Spoiler Chat Ingame

[lezard21]

The spoiler culture is so annoying and dumb.

"No Spoilers" makes sense in movies like 6th Sense because the whole movie was constructed around said twist, and without it you just have an average spookie movie.

When you build a good story and include a twist in it, the story stands on itself without having to crutch on said twist. Knowing about the Red Wedding in ASoIaF beforehand does not take away from how impactful and tragic the scene is. Knowing about the Eclipse in Berserk beforehand doesn't make it less shocking. Knowing that Snape always loved Harry's mother and has since protected him from the shadows doesn't make it less emotional. Knowing that the old guy was the creator of the Squid Games doesn't take away from the drama of everything that happened during said Squid Games. And everyone and their grandmother know that Aerith dies in FFVII and it's still Square Enix's most succesful milk cow.

On the other hand, take Season 8 Game of Thrones. No spoilers leaked out, and even with all the unspoiled EXPECTATION SUBVERSION twists it's regarded as one of the worst pieces of media ever written to the point of being so bad that it poisoned the whole well and killed 3 out of the 4 children the series was gonna have before they were even born.

With that being said, I don't think this game possess any of those moments to begin with, nor is it constructed around a big twist.

Surprise and shocking WOWEEH moments do not merit being spoiler tagged.

A character falling off a cliff and suddenly jumping out of the Lifestream shouting "ZIMBABWE!" does not merit being spoiler tagged.
A character that you haven't seen for 2 expansions that is still pretty much alive suddenly finding his pass for the return bus does not merit being spoiler tagged.

If your story has to rely on pikachufacesurprisejumpingoutofaboxscreaminginyourface moments, then the story is not good to begin with.

Twitter antics to Twitter, please.

[Breakbeat]

The spoiler culture is so annoying and dumb.

Yeah, I remember the days before anyone said that word, and those days were good.

One blustery evening in 1999, people somehow decided that 'spoilers' were an actual thing. Being so horribly disappointed by the Phantom Menace, folks started going outside after the movie and yelling 'spoilers' to the crowd waiting in line. I literally never heard the word before that. Thanks, George Lucas.

- Never went to school in 1985 and said, "DON'T tell me what happened on Knight Rider - SPOILERS!"
- Never showed up at work in 1990 and heard anyone bitching about someone spoiling Twin Peaks for them. "Laura's dad... is BOB! ... AARGH, SPOILERS!"
- Never had anyone walk out of T2 while I was waiting in line in 1991 and yell, "He ends up in a pot of molten steel!"
- Never saw anyone at work or school complaining about Star Trek: Voyager spoilers in 1995. And whoa boy, did we talk about it.

(Further on that last particular point, by '95 I was involved in heavy online discussion centered around ST and ST: Voyager in particular. There was nary a mention of 'spoilers' in thousands and thousands of usenet posts and endless hours of IRC.)

But, somehow, on that fateful day in 1999, everything changed. You could try to argue the point that people didn't "spoil" things before that day... but that would be ludicrous. Surely people went to work and school and the movies back in the day and talked about Knight Rider, Twin Peaks, Terminator 2 and Star Trek. We just didn't care if we heard an 'ending' or a 'secret'. At the very worst, it might have been a momentary pang of disappointment upon hearing these things.

Back in the day, we just dealt with 'momentary pangs of disappointment' on a personal, internal level. Today, we go online with 'momentary pangs of disappointment' to find the other sixty-five people that felt the same pangs, and turn that into a 'trend' or a #hashtagmovement.

Another point in the 'social media is a friggin' disease' column.

One day many years from now, we're going to look back on social media with the same disdain we have now for things like smoking. I mean, we quantify the cancer risk from cigarettes, and put it on the package. One day we will grow the hell up and realize that the brain is as valuable an organ as the lungs. Strike that - it's more valuable. You can live without lungs via machinery, or get a lung transplant. You cannot live without a brain under any circumstances.

Further, I'd argue that a broken brain is as hellish to live with as a cancerous lung. Maybe even more so, since a broken brain can be a life sentence, whereas cancer is either cured (you live normally) or it takes you (you have no further worries). You don't live out your life with 'a little bit of lung cancer that makes day-to-day life really suck'.

'Till we come to our senses, though, we just keep puffing away on social media. Ten packs a day. Adults, children, all of us. Puff, puff, puff.... #exhale.