Nothing I hate more than nerds crying about spoilers. That Breakthrough guy, who seems to be a legit paid shill, saying anyone who posts spoilers will be banned.....
Spoilers don't make or break a fucking film/game/book IF the story is good. It's why knowing the spoiler for Empire Strikes Back doesn't take away from the experience, it's spoiler is part of pop culture now with multiple movies referencing it - somehow Star Wars continues to gain younger fans who weren't around when they were first released.
The concept of a "spoiler" is stupid. Always has been. "MUH EXPERIENCE!"
The "first impression" is built upon myths that being spoiled will ruin an experience. Like I said, we can already observe this just isn't the case. The Sixth Sense is still considered a brilliant film while the twist in the movie, like Empire Strikes Back, is now part of pop culture.
I have to preface this by saying I 100% agree with the
sentiment, because these days the biggest whiners are capeshit (Marvel) fans. It's not possible to "spoil" a Marvel movie. The stakes are always at their highest, and in light of that nothing else matters. Meanwhile, who lives and who dies is transparently driven by outside factors. A capeshit movie is a function that takes a binary number and returns a binary number, everything else is just flashing lights. So most complaints about spoilers on the interwebs, by volume, are baseless and deserve no sympathy. That said --
Well yes, muh experience, that's what entertainment is for.
Now, most products are shit and if a "spoiled" movie is no fun anymore, you can watch a different one. Unless you made arrangements to watch it with friends or something. One of the users here flogs a completed series which I'd been "spoiled" on, and know I'd hate the ending and therefore the thing as a whole. As it is, it's no loss for anyone, but if we were friends, I could've enjoyed watching it and discussing it with him.
A good movie doesn't become worthless when "spoiled", but it's a different, and repeatable, experience. Watching something unspoiled is non-repeatable, and the more rare the more "classic" a movie is. If you don't get that, you miss out on wondering what happens next and the ideas this speculation can generate.
If you don't know the story of the Star Wars OT, you might think, "Would I kill the guy who killed my father? Would I assassinate him, or kill him when he surrenders? Would be willing to ally with scum and villains and offer them places of power in a post-Empire galaxy? If I have to choose between killing the guy and trying to save a friend, what'd I choose?"
Knowing what will happen casts a different light on the characters' actions and morality. Characters in fiction often take radical actions with extreme results either way; knowing the result beforehand biases your "would a reasonable person assume that..." judgment.
The most obvious effect for me is in horror games. I'm a huge pussy regarding them (games only, not movies or books), to the point I'm too scared to play. If I watch or even read a walkthrough, the game stops being scary. Even the sparse, spoiler-free walkthroughs: "Go three screens to the left" - whew good, it means there's nothing scary in these three screens.
