Spoiler free

This is a very serious topic. Decision making would be a trivial problem if there were no uncertainty over the consequences of our choices. Therefore, the knowledge, or lack of, information is vital for the decisions we make, whether they are thoroughly thought or subconscious ones. If one already knew where the goat is in the Monty Hall problem, right?

Well, when one is watching a film or reading a book there are a lot of things going on with one's mind. I'm going to take for example Harry Potter... so this is the spoiler alert, skip this paragraph or keep reading under your own discretion... In the Philosopher's Stone, Rowling keeps developing the idea that Professor Snape is the bad guy of the story but it ends up not being it. During the Chamber of Secrets, the idea still lingers but by The Prisoner of Azkaban we are all quite sure he is a, bad tempered, good guy. Plot twist! In the Half-Blood Prince, Snape kills Dumbledore! Major WTF moment! No one saw that one coming. Would it be cool knowing this from the very beginning? I don't think so.

In recent weeks a couple of very good friends casually posted on facebook a couple of spoilers for Game of Thrones and The Amazing Spiderman 2 respectively, and they're justifying it by saying that the internet is full of spoilers. They do have a point, the internet is full of spoilers. As soon as the plot of anything hits the general public one can find the story on the web. But I believe that one thing is to actively search for that information and another very different is to just find it while reading your facebook.

There's nothing wrong on writing anything, but I think it is quite inconsiderate to post spoilers, or more generally, give spoilers on casual conversations. One should find out if the person one's addressing has already seen the film or if he's intending to see it before giving up a spoiler. Or at least, as I did here, warn your audience with a spoiler alert so that they can decide accordingly.

Another argument I heard is "Dude, read the books!" Well, it so happens that I do read some books, but just as the films I see, I only see the books, films, and shows I like. I read the first LOTR book and I didn't enjoy it on the other hand I really like the films. The other way around, one of my favourite books is Timeline by Michael Crichton, years later they made a film out of that book. I thought it was going to be awesome... and it's one of the worst films ever. But sometimes I enjoy the film and the book too like with Ender's Game.

The point is that the book, the comic, the graphic novel, the videogame, and the film are all different objects even when based on the same story. One should not expect that everybody should know everything. 

So next time you are about to give away some information that was not required by your audience, think about it twice, don't be a dick and don't give away spoilers.