20141219

Movie spoilage?

Been meaning to write this for a while, but I keep forgetting.  Gruber quoted a piece by JJ Abrams not long ago, giving Abrams' thoughts on movie spoilers.

As an avid fan of movies and TV myself, I completely understand the desire to find out behind-the-scenes details in a nanosecond. Which, given technology, is often how long it takes — to the frustration of the storytellers. Efforts to gather this intel and the attempts to plug leaks create an ongoing battle between filmmakers and the very fans they are dying to entertain and impress. But the real damage isn’t so much that the secret gets out. It’s that the experience is destroyed.


That might be Abrams' opinion, but it isn't backed up by evidence.  As a careful study reveals, it generally does not ruin the experience.  Changes it, but not ruins it.

It's pretty standard these days for people to offer up "spoiler alert" warnings when revealing a surprising twist in a story that some might not have read/seen/heard. However, a new study, that tested a variety of books both with and without key points "spoiled," found that people actually seem to prefer a book if they've been told a spoiler ahead of time.


I generally avoid spoilers, myself, but I can certainly understand what they're saying.

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