Thursday, July 17, 2014

Thursday Thoughts || Spoilers

Hi, hi, hi, hi! Welcome to another Thursday Thoughts! This is a weekly, interactive, original meme here on my blog. Everyone with an opinion is invited to make a post, link up and join the conversation! If you don't keep up with BookTube news, this week is the BookTube-A-Thon! I'm participating in this event and am, therefore, going to be a little bit distant from the blog for the next few days. The event goes from the 14-20 and I'm actually writing this post on the 13th. So, I'm not too sure how I'm actually doing with the read-a-thon and keeping up with the blog, but I hope I'm doing well! This week's theme is "Spoilers!" I think this is probably one of my favorite Thursday Thoughts topics thus far. Spoilers are something that a lot of people have a lot of different opinion on in the bookish community. Including myself. So, I think it's about time that I throw my hat into the ring on this topic.

Let me start of by saying I hate spoilers. Plain and simple. I can't deal with spoilers. I don't understand why spoilers even have to be a conversation among bookish people. It's so simple to quickly say or type "The things I'm about to say could be considered spoilers about [insert book name here], so proceed at your own risk." It's common courtesy to do that sort of thing. I just can't wrap my head around the idea that someone would ever think it was okay to mention spoilers of something in general. Personally, hearing or knowing anything that's particularly spoiler-y about a book makes me feel like the experience of reading that book is sort of.. tainted?  Most of the time, I don't even read very much from the dust jacket of a book. I just think that the entire experience of reading a new book is much more rich when you're going in blind.

My worst spoiler experience was honestly from a BookTube video. I don't want to point any fingers, but these people know who they are because I think they got a lot of crap for it. Basically, two BookTubers were doing a collab video and they more or less spoiled a GIANT spoiler from Allegiant. Which was just lovely since I was half way through Insurgent at the time. Fortunately, I've kind of fallen off the Divergent bandwagon anyway. I can't seem to get through the second one and the books just haven't been interesting me. But, I'm still bitter to this day about being spoiled by that one horrible, little sentence. You know that feeling you get right when you hear a spoiler? Where your heart kind of sinks? Yeah, me too.

I can see why some people say that it's okay to mention certain spoilers after x amount of time. To be fair, I think everyone knows the story of the first Harry Potter book. I think everyone knows what happens at the end of Titanic. Those sort of things that have become cultural knowledge are okay, in my opinion. However, I don't think that, for example, the last Harry Potter book is something you should talk about openly. Sure, a lot more people probably know what happens at the end of Harry Potter than at the end of the Divergent series, but that doesn't mean there still aren't people who don't know. I think it's simple to just throw out a quick disclaimer and I don't see why we wouldn't do that as a courtesy to our fellow book worms. Those are my opinions on the matter and I don't think they'll be easily swayed. However, I would LOVE to hear what everyone else thinks! If you have an opinion on spoilers, tell me down below! And, if you made a post, don't forget to add yourself to the lovely link up. Don't miss next week's Thursday Thoughts where we discuss "Bookish Shame." See ya then!



3 comments:

  1. I hate spoilers too! And I don't think spoilers come with an expiration date actually. The ending of Harry Potter might be common knowledge amongst adults today, but it is not to the readers of tomorrow. Considering a review is about suggesting readers to dive into (or avoid) a book, I don't think they should ever spoil (unless hidden with javascript for instance), even if the book is centuries old.

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  2. Yes yes yes @ everything. I feel the same! Can't stand spoilers and I hate it when there is no spoiler warning and worse, when the spoiler is completely unexpected (as it would be in a booktube video) :(

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  3. I try and remember to mention spoilers, and to keep them out of my book reviews. But I'm also a medievalist by training, and we all know how Beowulf ends, so I have a fairly nonchalant attitude to them...

    My post!

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Thanks for commenting! I love hearing what you have to say!