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Comment by appreciatorBus

20 hours ago

Meh, imo spoilers only spoil experiences for people who take media too seriously.

When I consider watching a movie, one of the first things I do is read a complete plot summary, including the ending. When I do this and no longer want to watch the movie, in my mind, that’s not a sign that any experience was spoiled, but rather that it just wasn’t very interesting to begin with.

Conversely, I have played Nethack on and off for decades, have read countless spoilers about it, yet still haven’t won and still find it interesting.

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appreciatorBus

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hnfong  3 hours ago

I generally agree.

But there are movies that can be spoiled because of the big plot twist.

Eg. The Sixth Sense, Fight Club, to name a few (and [anime] Your Name, even the recently released Cosmic Princess Kaguya)

And then there are some movies where the plot is so obvious that you could have a LLM one-shot predict the whole thing.

That said if the movie/game/whatever is released for a couple years, I think the spoiler warnings should be optional regardless.

abustamam  16 hours ago

I play a lot of experimental games where not knowing what the plot is is the point of the game. Doki Doki Literature Club is one such game. The experience is the point, not the plot.

Many films are meant to be experienced, not just read or watched. Otherwise what's the point of a movie when you can just read a screen play? Or what's the point of a screen play when you can just read a synopsis?

  • handoflixue  12 hours ago

    1) NetHack is not one of those games

    2) If you want to avoid spoilers, you should probably avoid discussion threads about the subject, because people will often discuss their experiences in such threads

    • vintermann  10 hours ago

      I agree Nethack is not one of those games. People always pretended it was, though. They called "spoilers" what would be called documentation in most games. No one didn't use them (the "unspoiled" win mentioned elsewhere in the thread was a stretch even if you take them at their word). It was supposed to be theoretically possible to find out core game features from e.g. random rumors, but that was completely hypothetical - I'm pretty sure at no point in Nethack's development was it ever playtested with new players.

      1 reply →

    • abustamam  10 hours ago

      1. It doesn't have to be for the experience of the plot to be important.

      2. Fair point but with a game like nethack I'd say a majority of folks are interested in discussing the development of nethack without necessarily discussing the plot. HN has no concept of spoiler tags nor topiced threads so it's not really easy to contain the discussion per-thread.

      Besides even if you don't care about spoilers, a lot of people do, regardless of your thoughts on how you personally like to experience media.

      2 replies →

  • pests  16 hours ago

    Agree 100%.

    I watched Million Dollar Baby for the first time a year or two ago. I thought it was just a boxing movie, something like rocky or something.

    I don't think reading the synopsis would have affected me like that movie did. I thought about it for days afterwards.