Spoiler Alerts Need To Die

Spoiler Alert — companies want you to not criticize their products

It’s always been in poor taste to reveal the ending of a book or film prematurely. If you see me sitting on the bus enjoying the sixth book in the Harry Potter series and you unceremoniously walk up to me and tell me the surprise ending that “Snape kills Dumbledore” (as was a popular meme back in the summer of 2005), then you are, indeed, being malicious and spiteful. The Internet has taken this logic one step further and asserted that talking about a work in-depth at any capacity online is the same thing as being that man on the bus. If you talk about a piece of media and don’t add a “spoiler alert” to it, then you are violating some serious online norms.

This taboo has rightly garnered a lot of criticism recently because, when you analyze this norm carefully, it has nothing to do with politeness. Spoiler culture is all about preserving social capital — both that of the people that consume popular products and that of their producers.

Spoilers have been weaponized recently to insulate producers of popular culture from criticism, and that should give all of its defenders pause. Spoiler culture has already been used to protect some pretty terrible products, and, if we continue down this road, it will hurt future consumers’ ability to criticize media.

A Spoiler, What Art Thou?

Before we dive into the history, I want to pose a philosophical inquiry which has plagued online commentators for decades:

What is thy purpose, spoiler?

What function dost thou serve?

The popular answer is to protect users from learning critical information that would prevent their enjoyment of a work. In the words of LifeHacker’s David Murphy:

“…Nothing will ruin the fun of these huge franchises faster than stumbling across a spoiler for a movie, episode, or your favorite character before you’ve had a chance to see what happens yourself.”

It’s important to note that spoilers, in this context, are exclusively plot focused. I have yet to see someone freak out about cinematography or musical scores being discussed upfront. It’s all about the plot. Viewers don’t want to know narrative beats…