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But thatās not what I said, is it? Soā¦ no.
Itās interesting, you seem to really believe that the event loses all significance once your feelings are less intense.
I guess itās about having low reaction emotional stimulation and it cranked up to 11 to feel anything?
You have no idea how much anxiety I experience. Honestly, a mg of Klonopin canāt shut me down easily just from ambient stress, so it doesnāt take a lot of work to get me on edge. I know Iām not normal though 
And noā¦ I donāt enjoy it. I find it painful. Really painful. Like I usually stop watching or try to go look up what happens because itās that uncomfortable to feel emotionally manipulated and/or to take on extra angst even for things that are totally fantastical. Hence I ask what it is like for other people. Because Iāll never know!
I donāt understand. In your first sentence you suggest that there is a place for surprises or plot twists, and then you dismiss the emotional experience as being only for people with ālow reaction emotional stimulation?ā
Ok, I understand. You get anxious when thereās tension in a piece of work. But clearly you recognize that not everyone feels that way, or else why would authors and artists work to create tension? This isnāt some new Hollywood thing. Authors have been creating dramatic tension since literature has existed.
I guess if youāre really trying to understand, Iād say: that feeling you donāt like? Other people like it.
And itās not just the edge-of-your-seat tension. Weāre also talking about surprises here ā there was no anticipation that Joffrey was going to die, and so the surprise in and of itself was a different kind of excitement.
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Itās not dismissive. It just honestly doesnāt seem to me like knowing that xyz dies makes it less intense to see how/why etc.
You appealed entirely to emotions. āBecause we careā so I figured youād really not care otherwise. Hence, you only care if nothing diminishes the total ignorance of what might happen next. Hence, it must take a lot to make you care.
And of course I know other people like what I donāt. What I find strange is that they like it so much that everything is ruined to the point of there being no reason to watch something without it.
Those are two very different things.
And āOMG THIS WHOLE THING IS COMPLETELY RUINED!ā is very different from āScrew you I didnāt know that was going to happen, youāve spoiled that surprise for meā
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I donāt think youāre genuinely trying to understand if you keep exaggerating what I say. To say that something increases our enjoyment of a work is hardly to say that we wouldnāt enjoy it at all otherwise. I said so in my first post.
You say I appeal entirely to emotions, as if thatās a bad thing. What else is a work of art, except something that makes us feel, as well as think? No, emotions arenāt everything, clearly, but theyāre just as clearly something, right?
I can only re-iterate what Iāve been trying (poorly, apparently) to say. If you accept thereās a reason that authors and story-tellers since the dawn of stories have used tension, surprise and twists to engage their audiences, then that reason is the reason people dislike unwanted spoilers.
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Iām trying to think of a good analogy here. I dunno, Imagine someone sneaking up and taking the first sip every time youāre about to take drink. Does it mean the drink is no longer enjoyable? no. But is it annoying as hell? and maybe diminish your first enjoyment of it? absolutely.
Maybe to spell it out a different way. Thereās a lot to enjoy in a good story. One of those things is a well crafted surprise. Now just because the surprise for an audience is spoiled, it doesnāt mean the rest of the work isnāt enjoyable, it just means that the audience was cheated from enjoying that aspect of the story.
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Nearly a week!? Seriously? People do have lives that occasionally get in the way of their television watching. Go ahead with the stories and spoilers, but BB used to generally keep the spoilers above the fold. It was a pretty simply policy*, but one that made it easy to enough to not ruin things by simply glancing at a headline and photo.
*It may never have been a strict policy per se, but it almost always happened. It perhaps should become policy.
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I really like got, but only just had a chance to watch last season a few weeks ago!
Last seasonās finale ( errrā¦ second to last episode ) was a surprise for me, and it was excellent because of it.
My life aināt ruined ā and I figure probably everyone dies eventually ā but, Iād rather not have seen the headline, nor even the bit just now about Tyrion.
( Fwiw: thanks for all the boingboing goodness in general. )
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Rob was a joking (which I suppose is a spoiler in that if you catch the joke, you know heāll live for at least another few episodes).
Spoilers are a complicated issue. Different media have different lengths where a warning is still appropriate. With TV, Iād say a few days after it aired. With movies, maybe not until itās been available for home viewing for a bit. With books, Iād say you pretty much always need one unless the book is considered a classic.
A couple weeks ago, I ran into an issue with the Marvel universe. I enjoy watching both the Marvel movies and the TV show Agents of SHIELD. Usually I watch the show as it comes out, but I wait for the movie to come out in a format where I can watch at home. Earlier in the season, Thor: The Dark World came out and a couple weeks later, the events of that movie had a minor effect on the show. Enough that I was a little annoyed by it, but not enough to be a major spoiler for the movie.
More recently, Captain America: The Winter Soldier came out on April 4 in North America. On April 8, Agents of SHIELD aired an episode that followed on from some huge events that happened in the movie. Thankfully I have friends who told me to not watch the show until Iād seen the movie.
Oh my god dude, serious Romeo & Juliet spoiler there, give a warning, sheesh! 
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Thereās also a difference with GoT because a lot of the mayhem happens SUDDENLY. So youāre not really being manipulated pre-facto, itās more like post-facto manipulation BECAUSE itās often so out of the blue.
My life isnāt ruined but this was pretty jacked up. Iāve been reading bOINGbOING for well over a decade and Iāve never seen secrets that I didnāt want to until GoT coverage. The Red Wedding was mentioned with revealing info upfront and now this.
Seriously, keep secrets and revealing images behind the Read More link.
I offer this criticism because I fucking love this site.
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People complain about the spoilers that GRR Martin himself puts into the books.
For example, in the very first episode of season one we are told that Ned is going to die at the hand of a Baratheon. Thats what the omen of the direwolf killed by the stag is all about. But people are all shocked about it.
Then we find out that Cersei has received an prediction that her three children will die before she does. But they get all surprised at Joffrey the Jerk getting killed and they will be surprised when the other two runts get their comeuppance.
Thereās a difference between foreshadowing within context and flat out spoilers.
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Nice trolljob, bro. Spoil in a spoiler thread. Stay classy, Kings Landing.
Maybe in the pre-digital/DVD era. Nowadays Iād say thereās a pretty huge chunk of viewers who enjoy shows like Game of Thrones weeks or months after the initial air date. You could argue that illegal Bittorrenters get what they deserve, but a lot of people watch on DVD or Netflix Amazon Prime streaming video.
Whatever your thoughts on āappropriate spoiler warning periodā are, I think it stands to reason that if youāre going to bother including a spoiler warning at all it should precede the spoiler in question.
Spoilers: Character ____ dies of _____ in episode ____
is perfectly fine, but
Character ____ dies of _____ in episode ____ (spoilers!)
is just mean.
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People who download the show get to watch earlier than anyone except the people watching the EST/EDT feed live. I do think that sites should be very careful and err on the side of caution when it comes to spoilers. I love to see people react to things like the Red Wedding.
Tywinās got it coming to him, spoiler much?
Love the spoiler warning below the giant picture of dead Joffrey. Idiots.
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