Spoilers suck. While there are people out there who can enjoy something and not care about being spoiled, there are still a vast majority of people who value the feeling of discovery when watching something for the first time. For some people, even the slightest description may be a spoiler, or at least imply that a certain spoiler would happen. Even trailers can have great moments that lead to great reactions, and having those moments spoiled may cause for an underwhelming reaction. As you can see, the point is that spoilers suck.
Articles that contain spoilers, whether they be for trailers, movies, TV shows and more have been showing up on this website more commonly. I’m talking about stuff like “Things That This Movie Got Right and Things It Got Wrong” or “10 Ways This Movie Sets Up Future Installments”. Articles such as these are being published every time a big movie hits theaters, or more accurately, every time someone on ComicBookMovie.com sees the movie in question, and these articles were not common a year ago.
My whole reason for stating this is the fact that Captain America: Civil War is in theaters now. It came out yesterday in the U.S. and last week in the UK. Not to mention the amount of people who saw the film earlier. I had the privilege of seeing the film yesterday, on May 6th, the date they announced that it was coming out on, and the date that the majority of the public most likely went to see it. My point for mentioning this is that the articles I mentioned earlier (I’ll be calling them “Spoiler Articles” to make life easier) have been appearing on this site for about 2 months now. There were spoiler articles for Daredevil Season 2 and Batman v Superman, and I honestly let those ones slide because they didn’t show up until a couple of days before they came out. However, several spoiler articles for Captain America: Civil War were published WEEKS before the majority of visitors to this site even saw the film. I even had to avoid this site for almost a week before I watched the film, and that was extremely difficult. That being said, I knew that the spoiler articles trend needed to stop.
Let me just get one thing out of the way, I love this site. This is the site that I go to everyday to find out news about upcoming stuff. This is my favorite news site and I would recommend it to everyone. The time that I had to stop coming to this site to avoid Civil War spoilers, 5 days to be exact, was the longest time I was away from this site. I do not mean to call anyone out or insult anyone. I just think these spoiler articles are affecting not only my experience on this site, but possibly others. That being said, here are my issues with the spoiler articles trend, and how this issue can be resolved. Unfortunately, this editorial will contain SPOILERS (for things such as Arrow) in order to demonstrate my issues. I know that may sound hypocritical, but in order for change to happen, you need to fight fire with fire.
Alright, now on to the editorial; yes, that was all an intro. So let me start off with an example of what I would consider a straight-up SPOILER ARTICLE. It was an article I saw a little while back on ComicBookMovie.com that angered me quite a bit. It involves the TV series “Arrow” (getting that spoiler out of the way right off the bat). For those who watch Arrow, you’ve known since the beginning of this season that someone was going to die. Set photos revealed the name on the gravestone, thus revealing who died. Now when spoilers such as these leak, I personally believe that they should not be posted on this site at all. Even if you do not click on the article, articles containing spoilers should just be left a secret, in order to satisfy the people who dislike spoilers. Anyways, here’s the article that was posted that contained the spoiler for who died in Arrow. As you can see, the description given pretty much gives away who it could be.
Really? Was that hint at all necessary? By this point, we obviously all know who it was that died, but for those unfortunate people to have seen this article’s description before viewing this episode (myself included), they now had a solid idea of who it most likely was. This bothers me because it could have been anyone on the show. The hint destroys that possibility and narrows it down to TWO characters (Laurel or Thea).
While that Arrow article is definitely one of the spoiler articles I mentioned, spoiler articles such as those do not happen very often, nor should they ever. I just wanted to include it in this editorial because it bothered me. But now I bring your attention for the whole point of me writing this editorial. These articles…
You’d think articles such as these would start making their way online a couple of days or so after the movie was released in America (cause once it’s released in America it’s pretty much worldwide), but no. These articles started showing up WEEKS before May 6th. WEEKS before many of the people on this website even got the chance to see it. Articles similar to these were also posted around 3 days before Batman v Superman came out. Granted, 3 days compared to 3 weeks is nothing. But like I previously stated, these articles were non-existent just last year.
If you want people to read articles that contain spoilers, why post them before people get to see the movie? Why put thoughts of what to expect into people’s minds when some people prefer going into movies blind? These articles were getting too out of hand before Civil War came out, and I had to stop coming to this site in fear that I would read something too spoilerish. I avoided this site, and who knows who else could have due to the same reason. That has never happened before and should never happen in the future.
Now I come to one last pet peeve I would like to address in this editorial: trailer spoilers. For those who believe that trailers can’t have spoilers, they most certainly can. If there is a great moment in a trailer that you weren’t expecting, you are likely to have a great reaction. If you know the moment in the trailer is coming, the reaction just isn’t the same. It’s not very different from having a movie spoiled for you. So, I’ve made the point that trailers sometimes have great moments that should be kept secret before watching the trailer. That being said…
The biggest moments of each of these trailers are spoiled in the headline, summary, and/or thumbnail. Why can’t people just watch the trailers on their own? ComicBookMovie.com spoils trailers like this a lot more commonly nowadays. It’s extremely annoying for those who want to be surprised by the contents of a trailer for a movie they’re excited for.
To basically sum up everything I’ve stated in this editorial, leaked spoilers for movies or shows SHOULD NOT be posted on this site. If they continue to be posted, don’t leave hints in the summary or thumbnail. People are not stupid. Articles that contain spoilers for movies SHOULD NOT be posted until a few days after the movie is released worldwide. You can wait, and more people will read the article. Lastly, DO NOT put trailer spoilers in the headline, summary, or thumbnail of an article when trailers come out. If anything, label the post with “TRAILER SPOILERS” so people can go watch the trailer on YouTube or something, then come back to the article.
I know I may have rambled a bit in this post (it’s only my second editorial), but I just want change to happen. I hope you all agree with me. If you do, then spread the word all throughout this site and perhaps change can happen. If anyone has any questions, comments, concerns, etc., I will gladly reply in the comments. Thank you all for reading!