Spoiler alert! Spoilers actually increase enjoyment of stories.

[ninasafiri]

Story Spoilers Don’t Spoil Stories.

“The enjoyment of fiction through books, television, and movies may depend, in part, on the psychological experience of suspense. Spoilers give away endings before stories begin, and may thereby diminish suspense and impair enjoyment; indeed, as the term suggests, readers go to considerable lengths to avoid

Comments

[hikerpoet]

I was managing a bookstore at the time and I was in the bathroom and these two tweens were snapping at each other. One was yelling, "It's serious! It's serious!" And the other one was like, "Shut up shut up shutupshutupSHUTUP! I thought they were just talking about something random. Then I realized the first kid was saying, "It's Sirius!" and she was spoiling the book for us. Damn it!

Yeah, like some others, I feel like I don't like being spoiled. I have definitely been disappointed and felt like I got less out of it. Of course I've always LOVED anticipation. Of course I'm the woman who never finds out the sex of her kids until their born, and my husband is even bigger about the surprises (he doesn't even want to know what I'm making for dinner or what movie I ordered for the night!).

I do see what they are saying with the "organizing thoughts" part, though. Sometimes you are so into the bells and whistles of a movie. They are good, artistic bells and whistles, but distracting enough you actually almost miss the big twist or absorb it less well. That part makes sense, and may work for certain kinds of things but not all, imo.