ST Why I shall be spoiled...

Well, I don't give up before I give up. I will only answer people who quoted me, then off I go.

 

Non-SW-related story of my disillusion with both spoilers and the seeming inevitability of being spoiled: There was a video game that came out last year called "Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Dual Destinies", for the Nintendo 3DS. It's basically a murder mystery lawyer game that's a little like if the guy who created Law & Order drank a bunch of Mountain Dew and then Binged-watched a bunch of Space Ghost reruns before writing a plot. The game was a long-awaited sequel to a previous series of games, and I followed the game development very similarly to how I am following Ep. VII. I would always read environment/beginning story spoilers, as well as things like character design and voice acting. Then the game came out in Japan, a couple of months before it was released in the U.S, and I decided since the game was out I would avoid all spoiler-allowed forums and news so I wouldn't know anything about what was going on. About two days after deciding this, I was reading the official Capcom forums (where spoilers in general seemed to not be allowed to be out in public) and I made the mistake of clicking on a topic that seemed to be a no-spoiler topic about "who was able to predict the ending?" or something like that. Turned out to be a joke topic where the guy just created a random bunch of info, including mentioning who the villain supposedly was. I got really worried about possibly being spoiled, so I checked other forums in hopes of spoiling myself a little in order to assure myself that the spoiler I just read was untrue (no, it didn't occur to me how crazy this was). Anyway, it turns out that while the topic was a joke, and 99% of the topic was wrong, the topic accidentally correctly predicted the twist ending - the identity of the mastermind behind all the crimes. And in the process of fact-checking that information, I was spoiled on a bunch of other big information. I played the game and enjoyed it immensely, but I was always aware of the spoiler when I shouldn't have been. In a murder mystery, knowing the murderer takes away a little of the fun. Now, I clicked on the link, so I'm not blaming anyone else than myself, but if you're used to clicking on every bit of info it's very hard to stop.

So the morale of this story (for me) is that the minute I start to feel that hint of disappointment in my stomach when I read a spoiler, I need to try and fight the impulse to keep reading and just focus on something else. And above all, if I get spoiled on something, I should NEVER go out looking for more spoilers in order to deny the fact that I've been spoiled. Also, I need to think about what spoilers would actually ruin the experience for me. For a murder mystery, any twist endings or secret identities are really important to me. For Star Wars, not so much. The Darth Luke thing (if true) is the twist but Star Wars is all about the journey throughout the movie and knowing the end of that journey isn't the end of the world for me. But I think that in order to avoid spoilers I'd have to avoid visiting Star Wars websites, talking about Star Wars to friends, or reading film news sites in general.

For those who were old enough to keep up with all the Prequel news, was it easier or harder to A) get supposedly "legitimate" spoilers and B) to actually spoil yourself? I feel like it might have been easier to avoid spoilers back then since they'd probably appear on less websites and news publications.

EDIT: Basically another post, but I didn't want to clutter up the topic, so I added it here
I'm not big on the Abrams Mystery Box, at least in its current state. I much preferred the JJ mystery box of previous years, when the key wasn't keeping everything secret but was instead occupying the fans with time-consuming red-herrings which were fun to find and solve.

A lot of this was the Alternate Reality Game concept. In between seasons of LOST, Bad Robot would keep people occupied by posting in-universe diaries from new characters trying to somehow solve part of the solution, strange websites with hidden puzzles and information, and answers to some of the less-important questions from the show.

Cloverfield was another great example. The first trailer didn't even have a title on it, only the date, 1-18-08, and people discovered that 1-18-08.com was a website with tons of photos that had hidden information in progressing further in "the game". Websites were discovered for corporations that you heard about in the film, and youtube/webcam videos and MySpace pages for characters were found and were updated regularly with cool mysteries that were related to the movie but didn't actually spoil anything.

Even the original Star Trek had a bit of this. A website was found featuring webcams spying inside the still-under-construction USS Enterprise. A wonderful prequel comic was written and released in the months before the movie that acted as a connection between Star Trek: Nemesis and the new film.

And then, suddenly with Star Trek Into Darkness suddenly it became "don't show anything". There was no marketing or real mention of the film until the first trailer came out, and I don't think there was any cool mystery stuff to look at. I think that in combination with the long production time contributed to the lessened excitement over the movie compared to the 2009 one.

Now, I understand ARGs and Myspace pages won't work for Star Wars. But they could have gotten a Star Wars writer to writer a "prequel" of sorts, maybe focusing on a small character not super relevant to the plot of the movie, and they could have released a chapter a month or something. I think if they gave us some info, even not-that-relevant-to-the-overall-story info, people would feel less of a need to look at every spoiler. If you haven't been reading spoilers, the only real news you've heard since October of 2012 is that the movies are coming, JJ is doing the next one, and that the cast is announced.

 

I'm reading spoilers sir, what are you doing?

 

I'm enjoying all the ongoing madness. This forum is pure entertainment.

 

Sorry about the length, I had an already long post and then added another long post to it lol
Unless you meant something else about the post, I'm afraid I don't know who the alien is so I might be missing the reference.

 

Roger the Alien: American Dad

"I've pulled more tail than a slow kid at a petting zoo"

 

Oh, ok! Thanks! I've never seen American Dad. I was trying to convey that I basically could care less about spoilers now, because last time I was really interested in a project the act of trying to avoid the spoilers actually spoiled me. Then I added a totally unrelated post to it, which was also just a personal reflection on something and not newsworthy. Looking back, I probably could have edited that down a bit hahaha! Whenever I write a post that gets that long or specific, I usually try to find the usual forum "hide this" code (usually a spoiler tag) and put the super long background in that, but I actually can't seem to find a spoiler tag feature in the word editor here. Maybe its because it's the spoilers allowed forum lol.

 

The NSA forum is pretty much dead and so far there hasn't been anything on here that would actually spoil the film for me. Once something like a trailer comes out, though, I'll be out of here until the movie is released.

 

I'm probably just going to stay here for the long haul. I want to see how my predictions pan out.

 

I'm here to witness the madness that is known as nerd rage.

 

Spoilers don't bother me.

 

My exact thoughts. Only written better and stuff.

 

In this thread?

 

Yes.

 

Episode VII is the first movie I've ever had problems avoiding spoilers for. After the PT and TCW, I had concluded that the new stuff just wasn't for me. Then I saw that tiny announcement on the news crawl late 2012 that became My New Hope....

 

Chiming in every so often to if there is any new movie news....and basically since June there hasn't been.

 

Yes, there is far too much insane action here to go to the rather dead NSA forum. Other than that, there is only so much you can discuss about these movies without treading into spoiler territory. And we're just a year away from the first movie of three. This is gonna be a crazy ride and there's no way I'm dropping out.

 

I’ll just cut and paste a post I made recently regarding this subject. First of all, this is a great article by Devin Faraci on the subject of spoilers and when it can get a bit too much: http://badassdigest.com/2014/10/02/the-episode-vii-mystery-box-may-have-imploded/

I agree with Devin. There's a world of difference between getting fun little leaks here and there that won't impact your viewing of the film much, and what's apparently dropped this week which, by all accounts, is pretty staggering. I think that really takes a lot of the fun away. As I've said before, I don't mind getting leaks about character designs, costumes, vehicles or aliens and seeing the odd bit of concept art here and there, but when it comes to main plot-points and story beats (especially big ones) that's where I draw a line in the sand.

For the record, I'm not condemning any sites that leaked this info or anything like that. I can understand why a site would want to leak something as supposedly Earth-shattering as this if they so wish, but I'm just not prepared to go that far. I will still post on this board from time to time, but mainly in threads I know to be "safe".

So yeah, in short, I just feel as though a little (or maybe a whole lot) of the fun of it all has been taken away. If all this stuff was to leak six or seven months before the film was scheduled to be released, then it wouldn't that bad. However, the film's release is still fourteen months away. I don't want to know, quite literally, everything about the film over a year before I watch it.

It’s especially painful for me, because I actually really like it here. From now on, though, I have to be really careful which threads to go in. I know for a fact the Mark Hamill one is completely out of bounds for me. It is a shame.

 

http://chriscreedblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Want-To-Be-Here.jpg

 

Yup. I think the time has come to do just that. Thread merge in 3, 2, 1...

 

I'm in the spoilers forum for one simple reason: I am weak and have no self-control.

If Al Gore hadn't invented the internet I wouldn't be in this situation.

 

To troll noobs, see them cry before me, and hear the lamentations of the mods.

 

^^^
That truly is what is sweetest in life...