Today is one of the biggest days in history for the Star Wars fandom, as The Force Awakens finally debuts. This day is also a great one for fandom in general, since we’re all learning a much-needed lesson about spoiler awareness. Don’t worry, there are no spoilers in this article!
We’re positive that all you’re going to be seeing on Facebook and Twitter over the next several days is a ton of friends asking for people to keep the spoilers about The Force Awakens away from them. And rightly so! Spoilers are things that can absolutely ruin a moviegoing experience, no matter how into the fandom you are or not.
Never has spoiler awareness been so huge than with The Force Awakens. Everyone is on edge, everyone is avoiding the internet, and everyone is urging their friends to be cautious with what they type or say. There’s even a Google Chrome extension to help you block out spoiler-y references so that you don’t have to live like a hermit until you see the movie.
The concern about spoilers is so great that when being interviewed about the film one of the movie’s biggest stars, Harrison Ford, had to stop an interviewer to express how important it is that he not spoil anything. Take a look:
Ford’s full statement reads:
Stop that. Don’t do that. Please don’t do that. Don’t do that, because people are paying to get in and they should experience the movie. Talk about it later. Please. Don’t tell people what happens before they go into the theatre.
Article Continues BelowYou paid for it. So let them pay for it. And let them enjoy the full satisfaction in having earned the experience, because you want your audience to have an experience, not have something served to them. There’s a menu, you choose what you want to take from it. But you don’t want to spoil it.
And he’s right — not just about Star Wars, but about the act of spoiling anything for anyone when it comes to fandom.
Yes, of course Star Wars is a special case on its own with seven movies spanning 38 years, with gaps that lasted up to 16 years; people are bound to get more emotionally attached and concerned about spoilers when waiting this long for a new, good addition to the franchise. Something that all your friends should realize, though, is that for a lot of people this is how intensely they feel about their fandom’s spoilers all the time.
Maybe this increase in spoiler awareness will mean people are going to realize just how bad the act of spoiling something for someone is, not just for the new Star Wars movie but for TV shows and fandoms in general.
As Ford mentions, you’re in a fandom for the experience. You wait however long you waited, be it 16 years or a week from the last episode, because you’re interested and excited to see what happens next. Having someone spoil significant plot points can seriously alter the way you look at the episode, the movie, or even the entire franchise.
For example, I had been in the middle of catching up on Gossip Girl when the finale finally revealed who it was. The answer was spoiled for me the night it premiered by a friend, causing me to give up on watching the rest of the seasons because what was the point? Now I knew.
The sense of disappointment, anger and frustration that came from that moment of finding out the identity of Gossip Girl wasn’t any less real or intense than the time someone had spoiled a Harry Potter character death before I read the novel that was only released two nights prior. One was a franchise, much like Star Wars, that lasted years and had midnight releases for every new installment, and the other was a small TV show that wasn’t nearly as mainstreamed and hyped up. But the feelings from getting spoiled about them? They were the same.
It’s a sucky feeling when something gets spoiled — and the act of spoiling someone on purpose just to spoil them is just as rotten and gross no matter how big the fandom is you’re spoiling.
Unfortunately, not everyone is heeding Ford’s message. Hypable has seen numerous losers people blatantly spoiling major plot points in the comments of posts all over the internet. Luckily, most fans are simply avoiding social media and comment threads to make sure they don’t get spoiled.
Hopefully with everyone on their toes about what they type, they’ll realize that this is how they should act for every fandom they’re a part of, because if we lived in a digital world without aggressive spoiler moments, that would be a wonderful thing. Maybe we should come up with some sort of ultimate fandom rule for spoilers — where all spoilers can be freely discussed without worry about harming the majority. One year for the big stuff, maybe? 10?
You decide — let us know in the comments how long you think it’s appropriate to wait before spoiling major plot lines of fandoms.
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