The thing about spoilers

The day after Avengers: Endgame came out, I was having a jolly time scrolling down my news feed. I was thinking about many things, but not particularly the movie because I wasn’t due to watch it until two days later. I’m not an active liker on Facebook and I only skim through posts, but when your eye catches a spoiler, your brain registers it. I got a spoiler from Endgame, and everything was worse now.

Looking back, I was more surprised at my reaction to what turned out to be only a small spoiler from an excellent movie that had a lot more to it than that. I was angry, fuming, and for a moment, I wanted to do harm to the person who did this to me. Some people claimed to understand my reaction, this movie had a decade of build up, no one had the right to spoil it for me. And that’s the thing, no one had the right to do it, but a lot of people did do it. And that’s where I am forced to ask why.

Avengers: Endgame had a decade of build up, so does this last season of Game of Thrones that’s airing right now. It’s well known that people care deeply about these shows and movies, then why do people spoil them?

An easy answer would be that some people just like to watch the world burn. The person who spoiled Endgame for me basically thought he was allowed to do it because someone spoiled it for him. None of these are good answers, but it points to the fact that there is a lack of understanding about the impact spoilers have on people. It might seem like a first world problem, but if someone refuses to understand the significance of 10 years of emotional investment, you can never really teach them.

The bottom line is that if you care about a show or movie enough, you will stay off social media during the span of time between its release and when you watch it. If you are someone who’s watched a show before someone else has, or come to know something (intentionally or otherwise) about it, staying shut up for a couple of days isn’t that hard. You may not care if people don’t like you, you may not care that you’re making someone else’s day miserable. You may not care about anything at all, but then what are you left with?