Thanks @bengoshi - as you can see, jokes on some topics will fly right over my head
That said, by participating in this thread, I know I am taking on certain risks and generally read with care and usually jump over paragraphs if they tread close to topics I am avoiding - that one caught me off guard.
And looking back at my post, I should probably be clear I was not trying to call out Seth as doing a bad thing - even if it were a genuine spoiler, accidents happen, and I was (mistakenly, thank goodness!) pointing out how easy mistakes can be for even the well intentioned - I know, as I have made them myself.
Dee points out the worst of the problem, which is malicious spoiling, or refusal to accept someone's stated desire to stay spoiler free on a topic before the spoilers hit. These forums are a friendly place that proceed on good faith, and the overwhelmingly common case is that the problems this thread highlights are a rarity here, but sadly less so on other forums. There is a reason I still hang out around here
I really think that if the first run of a game is before reading the boards the player gain something that can happen only that time and that way, then he will have a lot of time to partecipate to the boards, expanding his knowledge and sharing tricks, tactics and opinions with other players.
That is a wonderful feeling, I agree. Not everyone follows the same path as you did. All we are saying is that it takes nothing at all for you to restrict your spoiler posts to those threads specifically labeled spoiler, or to add a spoiler tab if the thread isn't that way. In today's world, not everyone will avoid the internet when faced with a problem. All we are asking is that you respect that others may do things differently than you. And what we are suggesting takes VERY LITTLE from you to do it.
Everyone gets carried away. Everyone slips up. Life happens. I (as a fellow forumite) just ask that you at least try to respect that you may know things that others don't and that if you feel compelled to post them that you respect that people may want to read the thread and decide for themselves if they want something spoiled. Sounds like you had a great experience with BG2. Help others have that experience even if they don't avoid the internet as you did.
Even if you get spoiled by something, a lot of spoilers don't mean a thing if you don't have the context.
For example:
Snape kills Dumbledore!
You now know the What. But you still don't know why or how (or where or when). And even then, this spoiler only makes sense if you have a basic understanding of the story it's related to; if you're not familiar with this story, then it's nonsense. The spoiler won't make sense.
Like when people say:
"Rosebud is the sled!"
I have no idea what that means. I haven't seen that movie, know nothing about it, so I have zero context. Yes, I've been spoiled of something...and it means nothing to me.
I'd say it's always better to avoid spoilers to get the full impact of the twists and turns. But I also don't think getting spoiled is the worst thing in the world.
I did share a spoiler on Facebook once. I know, I know, but it was just a small one. Zero impact on the plot. I was just really excited that:
The Doctor went back to using his screwdriver instead of those stupid sonic sunglasses.
And I wanted to share.
Then one of my "friends" jumped on my butt and chewed me out for spoiling her. And I'm like... Come on. It's not even important! Sheesh!
I'll be the first to admit that I wasn't thinking and it was pretty inconsiderate to share a spoiler on a social media site, no matter how small. But still. The way she went on at me, you'd think that I'd spoiled part of Star Wars: The Force Awakens. As in that scene in Awakens. Sorry, but isn't there something better for this person to do? Something more worthwhile to get upset about?
@Nonnahswriter - true enough that some people get bent about the littlest things. And true enough people have different scales of what "Important" is. Given our pop-culture based society it is probably very hard to not quote
"I see dumb people."... sorry 'Dead people.
on a regular basis.
The best any of us can hope for is to just become a little more aware of our surroundings.
@the_spyder , if you read my previous posts you will see how I always told that is good to keep the level of spoiling the lowest possible, I never told that the fact that someone read the boards is a good motivation to feel free to spoil him, just that to some extent he spoil himself. Also I have the habit to respect what the moderators ask to do, no matter what I think about, joining a community each one have to respect the rules of that community, his only freedom about is to join or not. For me what the OP, a moderator, told in the first post is compelling. Don't worry about it.
Incidentally, I notice that whenever someone brings up the topic of spoilers (especially in the context of "please don't spoil this for me"), the first instinct of a lot of people is to actively spoil several things at once, as a joke. I'll say this right now: I don't find the joke amusing. In fact I find it disrespectful; at its basest level, it's the very definition of trolling, and I expect better behavior than that from this community.
Couldn't disagree more. And the disagreement comes down to the intent of the joke -- if you assume that the purpose of the joke is the ha-ha then, yeah, the jokes don't work. But if the point of joke is to deliver a message then they do work. So if the 'joke' is: "spoiler! Darth is Luke's" father, the point of the joke is "that isn't a spoiler". And, obviously, if you think that spoiler never expire -- neither the 'rosebud' reference nor the identity of machine man -- you won't find it funny at all. But this is a point of disagreement It's not trolling nor is it disrespectful -- it's using the structure of a joke to make a point.
Take, for example, this saying: "Newsflash -- the Dutch have taken Holland". It's a 'joke' designed to say that the information isn't news. Same structure. Not terribly funny but it is a 'joke' designed to make a point.
"Luke, I am your father" isn't a spoiler any more than "that's his rosebud", it's a phrase that has become part of our culture.
And I think this is only an issue because of the Beamdog timewarp. I get the point about trying to keep the game fresh for new players but that is a discussion for 2014. That *notion* has expired. The idea 'we are trying to introduce new players to the game' is now old. Auld! The game came out in 2013!
I know we are (absurdly) still waiting for a patch but the game has been out for a looooong time. I'm the same age as most of the beamdogs and thus have the same sense of time as the olds but imagine if someone had told 18 old you that something that you learned at 16 was still novel. When I was eighteen 6 months was an eternity. We're at two years and counting -- half of high school, time enough to complete community college. A long time even if we don't start the clock at first release of BG2.
The spoiler period starts to wear off about a year or so and is pretty much gone after three years. Expiration dates allow for new forms of expression -- because I don't need to spoiler tag I can say "that's his rosebud" or "total Ned Stark moment". Spoilers tags aren't just things that take a moment of effort -- they dictate what kind analogies you can use and how you can structure a sentence.
TL;DR. Spoiler tags = good, but they expire; no expiration date = limits on expression; BG2's spoilers have expired.
Still, I'll abide by the group's decision even as I disagree with it and send @bengoshi a thanks for making this a topic of conversation.
@killerrabbit It doesn't stop being disrespectful by virtue of being a joke. Most disrespectful things on the internet begin their lives as jokes.
An absurd comparison: If you tell me that you don't like being punched in the face, and then I punch you in the face "as a joke", the fact that I'm laughing doesn't make it okay.
It's like Santa Claus. That story's been around for over a hundred years. As a culture, we've decided that (among adults) it's totally fine to talk about it openly, even make jokes about the secret we've all uncovered through the course of our lives. But we've also, as a culture, decided that it's not okay to make those jokes or talk openly about it in the presence of young people.
It's the same thing here. Society has made the assumption that everyone who participates in our culture has seen all of the Star Wars movies, and so has decided that it's acceptable to openly talk about every plot detail of those movies. And while it may be true that the majority of adults have seen them, there are plenty of people who haven't; and for those people, this societal decision means that it's apparently acceptable to spoil the end of Empire Strikes Back. That social acceptance doesn't change the fact that the ending is ruined for those people. But it does mean that for a lot of people, those movies will never hold the same wonder that they did for the rest of the world.
So, yes, that assumption is a disrespectful one. It might not be world-ending, but it doesn't respect the right of discovery when it comes to stories that we ourselves have decided are worth discovering. It says, "You should experience this thing if you haven't already. But you don't deserve to experience it as fully as I did, because I experienced it first."
So on this site, we've made the decision to encourage people to try and preserve that mystery by spoiler-tagging discussions or posts that reveal secrets from the plot of these games. We've made the (perhaps controversial) assumption that not everyone who comes here has played these games, or at least has not played them through to the end.
@Dee if you are saying that you think people here should go above and beyond what is normally accepted then yes, I reiterate my position that I will abide and happy to see it clarified that the position on the board is above and beyond.
I don't think the assumption is that everyone has seen the Empire Strikes Back but that the movie has so much influence on our culture that it would be wrong to prevent people from speaking about it. Should I ask everyone to stop referring to Citizen Kane so I watch it without knowing the end? And I'm not sure that knowing the twist beforehand always ruins the experience -- I enjoyed reading Pogo all the more because I had *first* read the commentary on "we have seen the enemy and he is us", lots of people enjoy watching Shakespeare exactly because the know what is going to happen and they want to how the actors / director interpret a given scene.
I can't really work with your punch in the face analogy very well. I get your position but I'm not sure you are able to see through the eyes of someone who doesn't regard the jokes as spoilers. The point is that people who offer 'spoiler' jokes are saying "no X isn't a spoiler just like *joke* isn't one".
It's not like face punching at all it's more like some says "I hate peppers, they're too hot" and someone replies "try a green bell pepper, they are actually rather cool and refreshing".
Now if the first person replies: "why would you recommend a hot pepper right after I said I didn't like them?!" that person has missed the point and misinterpreted the intent of the person making the recommendation. The 'recomender' is challenging the assumptions of the pepper hater just as the joke maker is challenging the assumptions of the person calling spoiler.
Annnnnd while I expect that a good number of people will agree with I've said so far, I don't expect many to agree with the following: I actually find the business of lying to kids about Santa Claus creepy. Bleh. Better to make the kids feel happy by being generous *and* forthright.
I don't usually care much about spoilers really, although I do admit that some of the plot twists would probably not have been as exciting if I had known them beforehand. Kotor comes to mind as an example.
@killerrabbit there is a difference between suggesting someone try a green pepper, and forcing the green pepper into their mouth, and then saying it is their fault that they are stupid if they think green peppers are hot, because anyone whose opinion you care about says they are not. The latter is more similar to spoiling something for someone who has expressly said that they want to avoid spoilers for a specific topic - you are taking something that they have explicitly said they do not want, and giving it to them in a way they cannot ignore, and cannot go back to their previous, ignorance-free state. You might think it is funny-peculiar they they think something that should be common knowledge would be a spoiler, but it is certainly not funny-ha-ha to the people on the butt-end of the joke when you take the bait to spoil them.
As a slightly different analogy where 'just a joke' does not make it all right. There are certain words that are NOT all right for me to use around friends with a skin tone that is different to mine. Just because certain comedians of the appropriate tone will frequently use those words does NOT suddenly make it OK for me to use those words to tell jokes, not even to repeat the identical jokes. I may think that society is fouled up that in the name of promoting 'equality', there are some things I am not allowed to do that other can for no other reason than the color of my skin. I can even make jokes about that topic too - just don't actually use those words when making the argument/joke.
Of course, there are audiences where I can safely get away with making such jokes, the majority of audiences (where I don't know everyone personally) are likely to be highly offended, and there are more than a few where those might be taken as 'fighting words' inciting an immediate physical response. You don't get to blame the latter two audiences for not getting the joke.
@iKrivetko a colleague at work likes to quote actual scientific studies researching the topic, that shows that the average audience enjoys a work at least as much if it has been spoiled than if it had not. The experience is different, as you are reading/watching how the cast of characters come to the knowledge that you had going in, and it takes away a large element of fear of the unknown, allowing you to relax and enjoy the story more.
This skips a couple of points that always apply in when you are dealing with a specific person (audience) and a specific story: not all people behave as the average, and some people really do get a thrill out of that first time discovery, not knowing who will live/die etc., and telling them that they are wrong, don't know who they themselves are, because research says that they are in the wrong place on the bell-curve does not change the way they enjoy embracing a new story. Second, not all stories follow the same structure, and sometimes figuring out what is happening is the whole point of the story, and even the average audience will not get the same pleasure out of the experience if it were spoiled.
It is also worth noting that Hollywood is well aware of this research, and actively exploiting it. If you think that modern movie trailers are giving away too much information, often revealing twists or important surprises from movies, that is no mistake. Hollywood notice that even if there is a pronounced minority who are upset by such things (and who eventually learn to avoid trailers for movies they already know they want to see), they see bigger ticket sales if audiences are comfortably spoiled so that they can go to the movie knowing that they will enjoy the ride as most of the risk of the story taking the /wrong/ twist on that spoiler has already been resolved.
Important tip: just because it is in the trailer does not mean it is fair game when talking to that ardent star wars fan, speculating on the new movie(s). The odds are, if they are a serious fan, they have been deliberately avoiding even the trailers in order to experience the new movie(s) as fresh as possible. In this case, I gave in and watched the trailers, but I had friends who I had to be careful around after that - at least if I respected my friends.
I started playing Skyrim yesterday. AFTER 6 YEARS I FINALLY DECIDED TO TRY IT OUT YES GUYS AND I LIKED IT IT'S AN ACTION GAME NOT AN RPG BUT I LIKE IT. And no spoilers don't expire. I yet have to play Half-Life. No spoiler will expire until I finish those games :o
Edit: why isn't this thread a poll? :o we need moar poles :v
warning : if you believe that Beowulf and/or Hamlet can be spoiled this post contains 'spoilers'
@GreenWarlock I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and believe that you are not *intentionally distorting my position. Nonetheless, your account of my position is a distortion of the position I do hold. If you are saying that 'aggression is not okay even if it is communicated in joke' I agree -- this is the problem with racist and sexist jokes. The 'joke' doesn't make it okay. We're agreed up to this point -- right?
What I am saying is something else: the 'spoilers' that Dee and others don't find funny weren't really intended to be funny -- even though they are structured as jokes
Many jokes have the following characteristics: building tension, misdirection, surprise. So do spoiler 'jokes'. Take for example:
X says: The liberals have taken control of the Canadian parliament
Y says: spoiler: the Dutch have taken Holland!
This exchange has the same structure as a joke but the *point* is not the ha-ha, the point is to say something about X's statement -- in this case X's news is so old it is no longer news.
Likewise:
X says (the BG2 'spoiler' that started this all)
Yoshimo is working for Irenicus
Y says spoiler: Beowulf kills Grendel!
Y is saying a X's news is so old it doesn't qualify as a spoiler. The point is not to aggress -- to face punch or shove something into someone's mouth -- but to challenge the assumptions that X is making.
And this gets to @CrevsDaak 's point. I now get it but I am stunned that some people believe that there is *no* expiration date *at all*. Imagine what the world would look like if we applied this rule consistently. We would have censor book titles like "the Ophelia complex", we would need to put warnings before we allowed people to view certain paintings, we would need to put spoiler labels on books that referred to Ophelia's death.
(spoiler: Ophelia dies).
Now this is *not* an attempt to punch anyone in the face -- I use it as exaggerated example of 1) a spoiler loooong past its due date and 2) to show how refusing to let certain information become common knowledge limits discussion and inhibits creative expression.
Does anyone truly believe that the statement: 'Ophelia, Hamlet's sister, dies' should have a spoiler tag?
Would we want to live in a world where paintings had 'spoiler' curtains in front of them?
First, the example of Hamlet is a poor one; Shakespeare's plays, and especially his tragedies, operate on the concept of inevitability. The end is a foregone conclusion; in fact, many of them come with prologues (and many others were performed with impromptu prologues) that explain the story for the audience, before the play even begins. The suspense of Shakespeare's work comes precisely from knowing how it's going to end; he starts with the assumption that soon-to-die characters are marked, and uses that assumption to carry the audience's emotions through the story.
So saying that Ophelia (who is not Hamlet's sister, incidentally) dies in Hamlet wouldn't really be considered a spoiler, at least not in the day and age where the play was first being performed.
However, let's assume that wasn't Shakespeare's modus operandi, that he wanted audiences to be surprised by his plot (rather than the choices of his actors). In that case, yes, revealing an important plot detail like Ophelia's death would be a spoiler, and an important one. If the fact of her death is meant to be shocking rather than inevitable, then revealing that surprise before someone walks into the theatre would be terribly rude.
There is a bit of a difference, though, with a story that has entered the world of academia, like Hamlet, or like Oedipus--stories that, for many people in the United States, are actually required reading during school, so at some point or another, everyone is going to be exposed to the details of those stories. At that point, the plots of these stories becomes "common knowledge", at least in the United States. If you're living in the United States and you haven't read Hamlet or don't know how Oedipus Rex ends, by this country's standards your education is deficient.
But that being said, if you haven't yet read Hamlet (either because you haven't reached that grade in school, or because your particular school happened to read Macbeth instead), and then someone tells you how it ends, if we're working under the assumption (for the sake of argument) that Hamlet depends on surprise for its story to be successful, then yes, that's still a spoiler. It spoils the ending for someone who didn't know what the ending was. It may be a surprise that academia has decided is "okay" to ruin, but that doesn't change the fact that the surprise is ruined.
So if we're talking about "When is it acceptable to spoil a story's ending or details to people who haven't experienced it", we can certainly discuss that in the context of society, academia, or polite company on the Internet. But if we're talking about "When does it stop being a spoiler to reveal a story's ending or details to people who haven't experienced it", the answer is never. Because if the person hasn't experienced that story, and you give away the ending to them before they do, you're taking away the suspense and excitement of that story for that person.
I should also point out that assuming someone knows the details of a story and discussing them openly is not the same as knowing someone doesn't know the details of a story, doesn't want to hear spoilers, and then discussing them anyway.
To return to the absurd comparison about punching people in the face, let's make it even more absurd --
If you assume that someone likes being punched in the face, because you come from a culture where people get punched in the face all the time and it's no big deal, your decision to punch that person in the face isn't an act of aggression; it's normal behavior.
But if that person, when you meet them, says "Hey, I don't like being punched in the face; I know we're in a part of town where that sort of thing is normal, but I'd really rather you didn't punch me in the face," and then you immediately punch them in the face... that is an act of aggression. Not because you're punching someone in the face at all (as we've established, you come from Facepunchertown where that sort of thing is perfectly normal), but because that person explicitly told you not to punch them in the face, and then you did it anyway.
@killerrabbit thanks for explaining - some of these words have slightly different meaning for us, which is always a danger with a language as flexible as English. You and I have different interpretations of 'joke', and I don't think your interpretation is the one that @Dee was using, and I was responding too - although we would need Dee to verify. Dee's concern is that we have observed (generally in other fora) that some folks take great glee in jumping on someone who has clearly stated a desire not to be spoiled, with as important a set spoilers as they can hit with, in order to get a reaction. This is more akin to a practical joke, where there is a real victim, and the joke is for the benefit of everyone else watching instead. With a practical joke, the only upside for the victim is that sense of relief when you realize the awful thing had not happened after all, which can be quite a positive, but with spoilers there is no such relief, just an awful thing.
Your point is different, you are trying to structure a way of telling the spoilee that they have no right to be concerned about what you deem to be common knowledge, and to illustrate the lesson, you spoil them further. I may have a problem with that. I do not agree with the fundamental assumption that spoilers have an expiry date (and certainly no-one has given me a hard-and-fast rule on what that date is), but I do agree they decay - so the onus transfers from the the pre-emptively not spoiling a topic, to asking other to not spoil when a conversation enters certain topic areas. Forums for a given subject become a trickier subject, and we clearly have some here that are called out to be no-spoilers, and others where the whole BG saga is fair game.
As for the origin of this thread - I just jumped onto the title, so I want back to check on the cause from the original thread, and I agree with Bengoshi on this one. The spoiler in question is probably the biggest spoiler in BG2, one of the major plot twists in the game. Even in the BG2-specific forum I am careful with that spoiler, not because of the expiration date, but because of the impact of revealing THAT specific spoiler. As a counter-example, discussing the merits of the best weapons of the game are also spoilers, giving away information about the great prizes you want to explore the game to discover, and putting a cap on the expectations of what you might find. However, in a BG2 forum, these are going to be well-known topics for most, and the impact of the reveal is relatively minor. If the reader wants to be spoiler-free to that extent, then you are right, they should simply avoid reading a forum given over to lovers of the game. If the forum did not contain a simple spoiler facility, I might even yield on the plot twist, but we do make it simple to protect such information, and it is good manners to use use it for such cases.
Now is it appropriate to reveal that spoiler in a forum for a different game, like Siege of Dragonspear, which will potentially be played by some of our community before ever starting on BG2EE? I think the onus has definitely switched in favor of tagging the spoilers, but I do believe spoiler expiration dates are contextual, not absolute.
I do wonder what the expiration date might be, for those who do believe in such things. I remember a friend who believed that as soon as any info was released, spoilers expired, even before the release date of the film/book/show, so there are definitely extremes at both ends of the spectrum Might be worth a poll?
I see big problems with a poll, because a forum is not a democracy, those who set the rules and those who have to watch that the rules are respected are not elected by the people, and the people joining the forum accept those rules. A poll result opposite to the opinion of who sets the rule could force the administrators to change them against what they think is the best or if they don't change the rules flames could start. Imo to debate politely about a rule is acceptable, even if I, having some good reason to change it, would prefer to expose my reasons to the administrators in a personal message and not in a topic. But a poll is too similar to a referendum.
I see big problems also with the whole no spoiler thing beyond the expiration time. I agree with @GreenWarlock when he tells " The spoiler in question is probably the biggest spoiler in BG2, one of the major plot twists in the game. Even in the BG2-specific forum I am careful with that spoiler, not because of the expiration date, but because of the impact of revealing THAT specific spoiler". But because it is one of the major plots is also probable that many new players know it, just like is probable that people that have never seen the Star Wars saga know "that" other thing. Is more unlikely that the new player knows which are the best war hammers and when and where they can be found. And how much knowing a thing ruins the experience of the new player is very subjective, I can not tell it in advance, and also who have to set or police the rules can not. Nobody can read other people mind. And the forums rules name explicitly the plot as something to be not spoiled but also tell "the game's plot or anything else that might "spoil the fun" for somebody". As no one can tell in advance what might spoil the fun for an other person almost everything about the game is a potential spoiler, even suggesting a tactic without naming specific weapons, NPCs or places.
So I will follow the rules, just like I did before. But if I have REALLY to follow them I should flag as spoiler every post where a weapon is named, a single detail of a quest is given, or even the existence of that quest is exposed to people potentially unaware. Unless there is a spoiler warning. I would flag the 90% of the topics I read and flag also a lot of my posts, even if I try to keep the level of spoiling the lowest possible.
But as the site rules about spoiling speak specifically of spoiling this game(S) I feel free to spoil the possible and also the impossible about Star Wars, Harry Potter and the big world conspiracy. I will not do it, because I don't think that is polite to spoil the fun of other people, but as far as I understand english language this is not forbidden by the site rules as they are now implemented.
All this put me in a very difficult position as a person who want to follow the site rules, don't matter if I agree with them or not, because joining in I I have undertaken to respect them.
I am not arguing with anybody and I don't want to troll or open flames, I am only asking for help and elucidations.
The unfortunate reality in which we live is that if you do not wish to have something spoiled for you, whether it is a movie, a television show, a book, a comic book, or a video game, then you have to avoid that topic on the Internet in its entirety. You cannot even browse related movies on sites like imdb.com; for example, if you do not wish to have Dawn of Justice spoiled for you then do not search Suicide Squad since its events are a direct result of events in DoJ. Watching trailers is typically okay since movie studios are really good at not spoiling the plot via trailers (in fact, sometimes there are scenes in trailers which wind up not being in the movie at all). Other than that, though, you have to keep an eye on content to avoid having something spoiled.
Clearly, this becomes much more difficult the longer the subject in question has been available to the public. You can avoid Deadpool spoilers for the rest of the month, for the most part, as long as you don't look up information about it and you stay away from movie-based memes. You cannot avoid spoilers for movies which have been out for years, though; they have filtered into general public knowledge too much.
I would say "one year" is a pretty good expiration date on "don't spoil the surprise" for most things.
@Mathsorcerer thanks for the tip - I did not know the two DC films were going to be so connected, so you have saved me the pain of spoilers elsewhere [knowing that a connection exists is not a spoiler for me, but knowing more probably would be]
@gorgonzola - I was not thinking of taking a poll to change the policy, I like the current policy I was thinking it would be informational, like so many other polls on this forum. I genuinely have no idea how widespread others ideas of expiration dates might be, and simply understanding the range of opinion might be helpful when it (mistakenly) feels that others are acting in bad faith. That said, as you say, it might be interpreted as a challenge to the existing policy, and that would be counterproductive, so I will not make such a poll - for all I would be interested in the results.
As for how strictly we should police spoilers, let's use my own example of Harry Potter again. For any reasonable person, Harry Potter should be a fair reference point in any discussion of Fantasy fiction. I am sure it is full of tropes, both old and new, that people will want to call out. That is fine. It is my risk participating in discussions where such spoilers may occur without warning, and I am happy with that.
That said, if someone now aware of my being careful wrt Potter spoilers seeks me out to spoil the series, that would not be cool. My impression of this forum is that we don't need rules to spell that out though, people are generally polite and friendly. The onus remains on my to flag potter as a risky topic if I am deeply investing in a thread where it comes up, or to simply walk away from a thread that strays in that direction.
For major plot twists from any piece of fiction, I would always think carefully about posting those in plain rather than spoiler tags, as the nature of such a spoiler is so much more costly. As for the famous spoiler at the end of Empire Strikes Back - that always surprises me to be held up as such an example as George Lucas himself said he had deliberately set up a cliff-hanger to hold his audience for 3 years. The spoiler is revealing whether Return of the Jedi confirms or denies the claim
I now get it but I am stunned that some people believe that there is *no* expiration date *at all*. Imagine what the world would look like if we applied this rule consistently. We would have censor book titles like "the Ophelia complex", we would need to put warnings before we allowed people to view certain paintings, we would need to put spoiler labels on books that referred to Ophelia's death.
I don't think it should be taken to that extent, but, there are people (me for example) that haven't read any of Shakespeare's works, but I don't read those for the surprise, I read them for play as a whole (besides what Dee mentioned). Which is different from getting Star Wars VII spoiled.
Also, there are people (like me) that actually never used Yoshimo until they had actually found out, because my first time I was playing a M/T and also got Jan with me, so I kicked Yoshimo then... But when I got back from Spellhold he wasn't there, I googled, and then I spoiled myself.
Also, I think some movies aren't like "worth watching", so getting a movie spoiled maybe means not watching it at all, whilst getting a book spoiled doesn't change that much (well, this depends on the book tho), for example I've read how the story of several plays was so I knew if I should read that or not (anyway I didn't find them later :'| #thirdworldcountriesproblems), also because I'm very interested in dramas written in verse (got addicted after Faust) but I have no idea about anything and I normally don't like other plays that much.
@dee apologies for practicing the dark arts of thread necromancy. Some trivial things happened on Earth that compelled me ignore real life here on a video game forum.
While it might be fun to explain why *exactly* it is next to impossible to work with your analogy since saying "we would all agree X is not a spoiler, right" is almost perfectly unlike being punched in the face I think I just say that @Mathsorcerer nailed it.
Achem: Mathsorcer nailed it.
Oh and "Facepunchertown" is brilliant (never traveling there) and your comments on Hamlet were insightful.
so sad to have such a good analysis support a point that is so wrong. sad.
Looking forward to SoA congrats on the release date.
I enjoy my absurd analogies because they force me to think about the topic in an impartial way.
Another example: Kittens.
Let's say you love kittens. Obviously, right? Everybody loves kittens in the entire universe. Kittens are universally adored. That's why we put kittens on everything. We give people kittens as gifts when we see them in public. It's what we do.
But then one day, a portal opens from another dimension where kittens are not the lovable creatures they are to us. To that other dimension, kittens are poisonous. If you so much as touch a kitten, you break out in purple scars all over your face that stay with you forever.
So when a person from that other dimension wanders into our world, and we hand that person a kitten, we don't know that we're handing them a poisonous demon. To us, we're just taking part in a grand tradition of kitten-giving.
But if that person looks at the kitten and says "please don't give me a kitten, in my world such things are poisonous to touch," now we know what the kitten means. At that point, if we insist on giving this poor stranger a kitten, we're forcing them to develop permanent scars all over their face. Our act of kindness has become an act of aggression--and once given, it can't be ungiven. The damage is irreversible.
Spoilers are the same way. If you don't care, or if you've already been spoiled, then obviously spoilers aren't going to affect you. If you do care about not being spoiled, then having a spoiler thrust upon you when you've specifically made it clear you don't want that to happen is a definitively negative experience, and it's one that has a permanent effect because you can't just forget you know the ending to Book 6 of Harry Potter.
Again I say: We can decide culturally that there's a statute of limitations on being upset by spoilers, but the definition of the spoiler itself isn't up to interpretation. If you are trying to avoid foreknowledge of a thing before you experience it yourself, then thrusting that foreknowledge onto you is a spoiler. Even if it's been in the public domain for 500 years.
Okay, the problem with your analogies is that they are always unambiguous stand in for 'spoilers' where the face puncher / kitty giver is told that *said act* is an act of aggression and yet the 'kitty giver' proceeds despite ample warning that *said act* will be interpreted as a hostile one.
My analogues, on the other hand, are green eggs and hamish -- the very converse of yours. My analogies are 'what seems to be one thing is actually another' kindo' analogies.
So --
The aliens from another dimension with the kitty analogues.
************
Human: It is our custom to give visitors young cats -- everyone loves kitties!
Alien: No! It cannot be! Cats produce horrible scars. They lead to suffering. And, besides, they never listen when you say 'come'. We cannot accept your kitty.
Human: Hmm. Tricky. Here take Pepe -- it has the same meaning. Surely you are okay with a nice skunk?
Alien: No! Black and white cats are just as bad as ginger cats. This is a declaration of war!
Human: No, no. Cats are 'Felis' and skunks are 'Mephitis' -- entirely different species. See?
Alien: Yes I see. How cute. What does it eat?
Human: Soylent green.
Alien: Where could I get some?
Human: We'll have some tonight. I'll be happy to serve you.
Alien: No need, we're here to serve man.
**************
Where your analogues 'what at first seem innocuous is actually aggression' mine are 'what is misinterpreted as an act of aggression is, in truth, an attempt to have you evaluate the assumptions you bring to the discussion'
Comments
That said, by participating in this thread, I know I am taking on certain risks and generally read with care and usually jump over paragraphs if they tread close to topics I am avoiding - that one caught me off guard.
And looking back at my post, I should probably be clear I was not trying to call out Seth as doing a bad thing - even if it were a genuine spoiler, accidents happen, and I was (mistakenly, thank goodness!) pointing out how easy mistakes can be for even the well intentioned - I know, as I have made them myself.
Dee points out the worst of the problem, which is malicious spoiling, or refusal to accept someone's stated desire to stay spoiler free on a topic before the spoilers hit. These forums are a friendly place that proceed on good faith, and the overwhelmingly common case is that the problems this thread highlights are a rarity here, but sadly less so on other forums. There is a reason I still hang out around here
Oooouck, now I have spoiled you!
Everyone gets carried away. Everyone slips up. Life happens. I (as a fellow forumite) just ask that you at least try to respect that you may know things that others don't and that if you feel compelled to post them that you respect that people may want to read the thread and decide for themselves if they want something spoiled. Sounds like you had a great experience with BG2. Help others have that experience even if they don't avoid the internet as you did.
For example:
You now know the What. But you still don't know why or how (or where or when). And even then, this spoiler only makes sense if you have a basic understanding of the story it's related to; if you're not familiar with this story, then it's nonsense. The spoiler won't make sense.
Like when people say:
I have no idea what that means. I haven't seen that movie, know nothing about it, so I have zero context. Yes, I've been spoiled of something...and it means nothing to me.
I'd say it's always better to avoid spoilers to get the full impact of the twists and turns. But I also don't think getting spoiled is the worst thing in the world.
I did share a spoiler on Facebook once. I know, I know, but it was just a small one. Zero impact on the plot. I was just really excited that:
And I wanted to share.
Then one of my "friends" jumped on my butt and chewed me out for spoiling her. And I'm like... Come on. It's not even important! Sheesh!
I'll be the first to admit that I wasn't thinking and it was pretty inconsiderate to share a spoiler on a social media site, no matter how small. But still. The way she went on at me, you'd think that I'd spoiled part of Star Wars: The Force Awakens. As in that scene in Awakens. Sorry, but isn't there something better for this person to do? Something more worthwhile to get upset about?
Just my two cents.
The best any of us can hope for is to just become a little more aware of our surroundings.
Also I have the habit to respect what the moderators ask to do, no matter what I think about, joining a community each one have to respect the rules of that community, his only freedom about is to join or not.
For me what the OP, a moderator, told in the first post is compelling.
Don't worry about it.
Couldn't disagree more. And the disagreement comes down to the intent of the joke -- if you assume that the purpose of the joke is the ha-ha then, yeah, the jokes don't work. But if the point of joke is to deliver a message then they do work. So if the 'joke' is: "spoiler! Darth is Luke's" father, the point of the joke is "that isn't a spoiler". And, obviously, if you think that spoiler never expire -- neither the 'rosebud' reference nor the identity of machine man -- you won't find it funny at all. But this is a point of disagreement It's not trolling nor is it disrespectful -- it's using the structure of a joke to make a point.
Take, for example, this saying: "Newsflash -- the Dutch have taken Holland". It's a 'joke' designed to say that the information isn't news. Same structure. Not terribly funny but it is a 'joke' designed to make a point.
"Luke, I am your father" isn't a spoiler any more than "that's his rosebud", it's a phrase that has become part of our culture.
And I think this is only an issue because of the Beamdog timewarp. I get the point about trying to keep the game fresh for new players but that is a discussion for 2014. That *notion* has expired. The idea 'we are trying to introduce new players to the game' is now old. Auld! The game came out in 2013!
I know we are (absurdly) still waiting for a patch but the game has been out for a looooong time. I'm the same age as most of the beamdogs and thus have the same sense of time as the olds but imagine if someone had told 18 old you that something that you learned at 16 was still novel. When I was eighteen 6 months was an eternity. We're at two years and counting -- half of high school, time enough to complete community college. A long time even if we don't start the clock at first release of BG2.
The spoiler period starts to wear off about a year or so and is pretty much gone after three years. Expiration dates allow for new forms of expression -- because I don't need to spoiler tag I can say "that's his rosebud" or "total Ned Stark moment". Spoilers tags aren't just things that take a moment of effort -- they dictate what kind analogies you can use and how you can structure a sentence.
TL;DR. Spoiler tags = good, but they expire; no expiration date = limits on expression; BG2's spoilers have expired.
Still, I'll abide by the group's decision even as I disagree with it and send @bengoshi a thanks for making this a topic of conversation.
An absurd comparison: If you tell me that you don't like being punched in the face, and then I punch you in the face "as a joke", the fact that I'm laughing doesn't make it okay.
It's like Santa Claus. That story's been around for over a hundred years. As a culture, we've decided that (among adults) it's totally fine to talk about it openly, even make jokes about the secret we've all uncovered through the course of our lives. But we've also, as a culture, decided that it's not okay to make those jokes or talk openly about it in the presence of young people.
It's the same thing here. Society has made the assumption that everyone who participates in our culture has seen all of the Star Wars movies, and so has decided that it's acceptable to openly talk about every plot detail of those movies. And while it may be true that the majority of adults have seen them, there are plenty of people who haven't; and for those people, this societal decision means that it's apparently acceptable to spoil the end of Empire Strikes Back. That social acceptance doesn't change the fact that the ending is ruined for those people. But it does mean that for a lot of people, those movies will never hold the same wonder that they did for the rest of the world.
So, yes, that assumption is a disrespectful one. It might not be world-ending, but it doesn't respect the right of discovery when it comes to stories that we ourselves have decided are worth discovering. It says, "You should experience this thing if you haven't already. But you don't deserve to experience it as fully as I did, because I experienced it first."
So on this site, we've made the decision to encourage people to try and preserve that mystery by spoiler-tagging discussions or posts that reveal secrets from the plot of these games. We've made the (perhaps controversial) assumption that not everyone who comes here has played these games, or at least has not played them through to the end.
I don't think the assumption is that everyone has seen the Empire Strikes Back but that the movie has so much influence on our culture that it would be wrong to prevent people from speaking about it. Should I ask everyone to stop referring to Citizen Kane so I watch it without knowing the end? And I'm not sure that knowing the twist beforehand always ruins the experience -- I enjoyed reading Pogo all the more because I had *first* read the commentary on "we have seen the enemy and he is us", lots of people enjoy watching Shakespeare exactly because the know what is going to happen and they want to how the actors / director interpret a given scene.
I can't really work with your punch in the face analogy very well. I get your position but I'm not sure you are able to see through the eyes of someone who doesn't regard the jokes as spoilers. The point is that people who offer 'spoiler' jokes are saying "no X isn't a spoiler just like *joke* isn't one".
It's not like face punching at all it's more like some says "I hate peppers, they're too hot" and someone replies "try a green bell pepper, they are actually rather cool and refreshing".
Now if the first person replies: "why would you recommend a hot pepper right after I said I didn't like them?!" that person has missed the point and misinterpreted the intent of the person making the recommendation. The 'recomender' is challenging the assumptions of the pepper hater just as the joke maker is challenging the assumptions of the person calling spoiler.
Annnnnd while I expect that a good number of people will agree with I've said so far, I don't expect many to agree with the following: I actually find the business of lying to kids about Santa Claus creepy. Bleh. Better to make the kids feel happy by being generous *and* forthright.
As a slightly different analogy where 'just a joke' does not make it all right. There are certain words that are NOT all right for me to use around friends with a skin tone that is different to mine. Just because certain comedians of the appropriate tone will frequently use those words does NOT suddenly make it OK for me to use those words to tell jokes, not even to repeat the identical jokes. I may think that society is fouled up that in the name of promoting 'equality', there are some things I am not allowed to do that other can for no other reason than the color of my skin. I can even make jokes about that topic too - just don't actually use those words when making the argument/joke.
Of course, there are audiences where I can safely get away with making such jokes, the majority of audiences (where I don't know everyone personally) are likely to be highly offended, and there are more than a few where those might be taken as 'fighting words' inciting an immediate physical response. You don't get to blame the latter two audiences for not getting the joke.
This skips a couple of points that always apply in when you are dealing with a specific person (audience) and a specific story: not all people behave as the average, and some people really do get a thrill out of that first time discovery, not knowing who will live/die etc., and telling them that they are wrong, don't know who they themselves are, because research says that they are in the wrong place on the bell-curve does not change the way they enjoy embracing a new story. Second, not all stories follow the same structure, and sometimes figuring out what is happening is the whole point of the story, and even the average audience will not get the same pleasure out of the experience if it were spoiled.
It is also worth noting that Hollywood is well aware of this research, and actively exploiting it. If you think that modern movie trailers are giving away too much information, often revealing twists or important surprises from movies, that is no mistake. Hollywood notice that even if there is a pronounced minority who are upset by such things (and who eventually learn to avoid trailers for movies they already know they want to see), they see bigger ticket sales if audiences are comfortably spoiled so that they can go to the movie knowing that they will enjoy the ride as most of the risk of the story taking the /wrong/ twist on that spoiler has already been resolved.
Important tip: just because it is in the trailer does not mean it is fair game when talking to that ardent star wars fan, speculating on the new movie(s). The odds are, if they are a serious fan, they have been deliberately avoiding even the trailers in order to experience the new movie(s) as fresh as possible. In this case, I gave in and watched the trailers, but I had friends who I had to be careful around after that - at least if I respected my friends.
Edit: why isn't this thread a poll? :o we need moar poles :v
Luke. I am your father.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Walton
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luke_Walton
@GreenWarlock I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and believe that you are not *intentionally distorting my position. Nonetheless, your account of my position is a distortion of the position I do hold. If you are saying that 'aggression is not okay even if it is communicated in joke' I agree -- this is the problem with racist and sexist jokes. The 'joke' doesn't make it okay. We're agreed up to this point -- right?
What I am saying is something else: the 'spoilers' that Dee and others don't find funny weren't really intended to be funny -- even though they are structured as jokes
Many jokes have the following characteristics: building tension, misdirection, surprise. So do spoiler 'jokes'. Take for example:
X says: The liberals have taken control of the Canadian parliament
Y says: spoiler: the Dutch have taken Holland!
This exchange has the same structure as a joke but the *point* is not the ha-ha, the point is to say something about X's statement -- in this case X's news is so old it is no longer news.
Likewise:
X says (the BG2 'spoiler' that started this all)
Y says spoiler: Beowulf kills Grendel!
Y is saying a X's news is so old it doesn't qualify as a spoiler. The point is not to aggress -- to face punch or shove something into someone's mouth -- but to challenge the assumptions that X is making.
And this gets to @CrevsDaak 's point. I now get it but I am stunned that some people believe that there is *no* expiration date *at all*. Imagine what the world would look like if we applied this rule consistently. We would have censor book titles like "the Ophelia complex", we would need to put warnings before we allowed people to view certain paintings, we would need to put spoiler labels on books that referred to Ophelia's death.
(spoiler: Ophelia dies).
Now this is *not* an attempt to punch anyone in the face -- I use it as exaggerated example of 1) a spoiler loooong past its due date and 2) to show how refusing to let certain information become common knowledge limits discussion and inhibits creative expression.
Does anyone truly believe that the statement: 'Ophelia, Hamlet's sister, dies' should have a spoiler tag?
Would we want to live in a world where paintings had 'spoiler' curtains in front of them?
Oh. And I do support the poles. Moar please.
First, the example of Hamlet is a poor one; Shakespeare's plays, and especially his tragedies, operate on the concept of inevitability. The end is a foregone conclusion; in fact, many of them come with prologues (and many others were performed with impromptu prologues) that explain the story for the audience, before the play even begins. The suspense of Shakespeare's work comes precisely from knowing how it's going to end; he starts with the assumption that soon-to-die characters are marked, and uses that assumption to carry the audience's emotions through the story.
So saying that Ophelia (who is not Hamlet's sister, incidentally) dies in Hamlet wouldn't really be considered a spoiler, at least not in the day and age where the play was first being performed.
However, let's assume that wasn't Shakespeare's modus operandi, that he wanted audiences to be surprised by his plot (rather than the choices of his actors). In that case, yes, revealing an important plot detail like Ophelia's death would be a spoiler, and an important one. If the fact of her death is meant to be shocking rather than inevitable, then revealing that surprise before someone walks into the theatre would be terribly rude.
There is a bit of a difference, though, with a story that has entered the world of academia, like Hamlet, or like Oedipus--stories that, for many people in the United States, are actually required reading during school, so at some point or another, everyone is going to be exposed to the details of those stories. At that point, the plots of these stories becomes "common knowledge", at least in the United States. If you're living in the United States and you haven't read Hamlet or don't know how Oedipus Rex ends, by this country's standards your education is deficient.
But that being said, if you haven't yet read Hamlet (either because you haven't reached that grade in school, or because your particular school happened to read Macbeth instead), and then someone tells you how it ends, if we're working under the assumption (for the sake of argument) that Hamlet depends on surprise for its story to be successful, then yes, that's still a spoiler. It spoils the ending for someone who didn't know what the ending was. It may be a surprise that academia has decided is "okay" to ruin, but that doesn't change the fact that the surprise is ruined.
So if we're talking about "When is it acceptable to spoil a story's ending or details to people who haven't experienced it", we can certainly discuss that in the context of society, academia, or polite company on the Internet. But if we're talking about "When does it stop being a spoiler to reveal a story's ending or details to people who haven't experienced it", the answer is never. Because if the person hasn't experienced that story, and you give away the ending to them before they do, you're taking away the suspense and excitement of that story for that person.
To return to the absurd comparison about punching people in the face, let's make it even more absurd
If you assume that someone likes being punched in the face, because you come from a culture where people get punched in the face all the time and it's no big deal, your decision to punch that person in the face isn't an act of aggression; it's normal behavior.
But if that person, when you meet them, says "Hey, I don't like being punched in the face; I know we're in a part of town where that sort of thing is normal, but I'd really rather you didn't punch me in the face," and then you immediately punch them in the face... that is an act of aggression. Not because you're punching someone in the face at all (as we've established, you come from Facepunchertown where that sort of thing is perfectly normal), but because that person explicitly told you not to punch them in the face, and then you did it anyway.
Your point is different, you are trying to structure a way of telling the spoilee that they have no right to be concerned about what you deem to be common knowledge, and to illustrate the lesson, you spoil them further. I may have a problem with that. I do not agree with the fundamental assumption that spoilers have an expiry date (and certainly no-one has given me a hard-and-fast rule on what that date is), but I do agree they decay - so the onus transfers from the the pre-emptively not spoiling a topic, to asking other to not spoil when a conversation enters certain topic areas. Forums for a given subject become a trickier subject, and we clearly have some here that are called out to be no-spoilers, and others where the whole BG saga is fair game.
As for the origin of this thread - I just jumped onto the title, so I want back to check on the cause from the original thread, and I agree with Bengoshi on this one. The spoiler in question is probably the biggest spoiler in BG2, one of the major plot twists in the game. Even in the BG2-specific forum I am careful with that spoiler, not because of the expiration date, but because of the impact of revealing THAT specific spoiler. As a counter-example, discussing the merits of the best weapons of the game are also spoilers, giving away information about the great prizes you want to explore the game to discover, and putting a cap on the expectations of what you might find. However, in a BG2 forum, these are going to be well-known topics for most, and the impact of the reveal is relatively minor. If the reader wants to be spoiler-free to that extent, then you are right, they should simply avoid reading a forum given over to lovers of the game. If the forum did not contain a simple spoiler facility, I might even yield on the plot twist, but we do make it simple to protect such information, and it is good manners to use use it for such cases.
Now is it appropriate to reveal that spoiler in a forum for a different game, like Siege of Dragonspear, which will potentially be played by some of our community before ever starting on BG2EE? I think the onus has definitely switched in favor of tagging the spoilers, but I do believe spoiler expiration dates are contextual, not absolute.
I do wonder what the expiration date might be, for those who do believe in such things. I remember a friend who believed that as soon as any info was released, spoilers expired, even before the release date of the film/book/show, so there are definitely extremes at both ends of the spectrum
Imo to debate politely about a rule is acceptable, even if I, having some good reason to change it, would prefer to expose my reasons to the administrators in a personal message and not in a topic.
But a poll is too similar to a referendum.
I agree with @GreenWarlock when he tells " The spoiler in question is probably the biggest spoiler in BG2, one of the major plot twists in the game. Even in the BG2-specific forum I am careful with that spoiler, not because of the expiration date, but because of the impact of revealing THAT specific spoiler".
But because it is one of the major plots is also probable that many new players know it, just like is probable that people that have never seen the Star Wars saga know "that" other thing.
Is more unlikely that the new player knows which are the best war hammers and when and where they can be found. And how much knowing a thing ruins the experience of the new player is very subjective, I can not tell it in advance, and also who have to set or police the rules can not. Nobody can read other people mind.
And the forums rules name explicitly the plot as something to be not spoiled but also tell
"the game's plot or anything else that might "spoil the fun" for somebody".
As no one can tell in advance what might spoil the fun for an other person almost everything about the game is a potential spoiler, even suggesting a tactic without naming specific weapons, NPCs or places.
So I will follow the rules, just like I did before. But if I have REALLY to follow them I should flag as spoiler every post where a weapon is named, a single detail of a quest is given, or even the existence of that quest is exposed to people potentially unaware. Unless there is a spoiler warning. I would flag the 90% of the topics I read and flag also a lot of my posts, even if I try to keep the level of spoiling the lowest possible.
But as the site rules about spoiling speak specifically of spoiling this game(S) I feel free to spoil the possible and also the impossible about Star Wars, Harry Potter and the big world conspiracy. I will not do it, because I don't think that is polite to spoil the fun of other people, but as far as I understand english language this is not forbidden by the site rules as they are now implemented.
All this put me in a very difficult position as a person who want to follow the site rules, don't matter if I agree with them or not, because joining in I I have undertaken to respect them.
I am not arguing with anybody and I don't want to troll or open flames, I am only asking for help and elucidations.
Clearly, this becomes much more difficult the longer the subject in question has been available to the public. You can avoid Deadpool spoilers for the rest of the month, for the most part, as long as you don't look up information about it and you stay away from movie-based memes. You cannot avoid spoilers for movies which have been out for years, though; they have filtered into general public knowledge too much.
I would say "one year" is a pretty good expiration date on "don't spoil the surprise" for most things.
@gorgonzola - I was not thinking of taking a poll to change the policy, I like the current policy
As for how strictly we should police spoilers, let's use my own example of Harry Potter again. For any reasonable person, Harry Potter should be a fair reference point in any discussion of Fantasy fiction. I am sure it is full of tropes, both old and new, that people will want to call out. That is fine. It is my risk participating in discussions where such spoilers may occur without warning, and I am happy with that.
That said, if someone now aware of my being careful wrt Potter spoilers seeks me out to spoil the series, that would not be cool. My impression of this forum is that we don't need rules to spell that out though, people are generally polite and friendly. The onus remains on my to flag potter as a risky topic if I am deeply investing in a thread where it comes up, or to simply walk away from a thread that strays in that direction.
For major plot twists from any piece of fiction, I would always think carefully about posting those in plain rather than spoiler tags, as the nature of such a spoiler is so much more costly. As for the famous spoiler at the end of Empire Strikes Back - that always surprises me to be held up as such an example as George Lucas himself said he had deliberately set up a cliff-hanger to hold his audience for 3 years. The spoiler is revealing whether Return of the Jedi confirms or denies the claim
While it might be fun to explain why *exactly* it is next to impossible to work with your analogy since saying "we would all agree X is not a spoiler, right" is almost perfectly unlike being punched in the face I think I just say that @Mathsorcerer nailed it.
Achem: Mathsorcer nailed it.
Oh and "Facepunchertown" is brilliant (never traveling there) and your comments on Hamlet were insightful.
Looking forward to SoA congrats on the release date.
Another example: Kittens.
Let's say you love kittens. Obviously, right? Everybody loves kittens in the entire universe. Kittens are universally adored. That's why we put kittens on everything. We give people kittens as gifts when we see them in public. It's what we do.
But then one day, a portal opens from another dimension where kittens are not the lovable creatures they are to us. To that other dimension, kittens are poisonous. If you so much as touch a kitten, you break out in purple scars all over your face that stay with you forever.
So when a person from that other dimension wanders into our world, and we hand that person a kitten, we don't know that we're handing them a poisonous demon. To us, we're just taking part in a grand tradition of kitten-giving.
But if that person looks at the kitten and says "please don't give me a kitten, in my world such things are poisonous to touch," now we know what the kitten means. At that point, if we insist on giving this poor stranger a kitten, we're forcing them to develop permanent scars all over their face. Our act of kindness has become an act of aggression--and once given, it can't be ungiven. The damage is irreversible.
Spoilers are the same way. If you don't care, or if you've already been spoiled, then obviously spoilers aren't going to affect you. If you do care about not being spoiled, then having a spoiler thrust upon you when you've specifically made it clear you don't want that to happen is a definitively negative experience, and it's one that has a permanent effect because you can't just forget you know the ending to Book 6 of Harry Potter.
Again I say: We can decide culturally that there's a statute of limitations on being upset by spoilers, but the definition of the spoiler itself isn't up to interpretation. If you are trying to avoid foreknowledge of a thing before you experience it yourself, then thrusting that foreknowledge onto you is a spoiler. Even if it's been in the public domain for 500 years.
Gahhhhh.
Okay, the problem with your analogies is that they are always unambiguous stand in for 'spoilers' where the face puncher / kitty giver is told that *said act* is an act of aggression and yet the 'kitty giver' proceeds despite ample warning that *said act* will be interpreted as a hostile one.
My analogues, on the other hand, are green eggs and hamish -- the very converse of yours. My analogies are 'what seems to be one thing is actually another' kindo' analogies.
So --
The aliens from another dimension with the kitty analogues.
************
Human: It is our custom to give visitors young cats -- everyone loves kitties!
Alien: No! It cannot be! Cats produce horrible scars. They lead to suffering. And, besides, they never listen when you say 'come'. We cannot accept your kitty.
Human: Hmm. Tricky. Here take Pepe -- it has the same meaning. Surely you are okay with a nice skunk?
Alien: No! Black and white cats are just as bad as ginger cats. This is a declaration of war!
Human: No, no. Cats are 'Felis' and skunks are 'Mephitis' -- entirely different species. See?
Alien: Yes I see. How cute. What does it eat?
Human: Soylent green.
Alien: Where could I get some?
Human: We'll have some tonight. I'll be happy to serve you.
Alien: No need, we're here to serve man.
**************
Where your analogues 'what at first seem innocuous is actually aggression' mine are 'what is misinterpreted as an act of aggression is, in truth, an attempt to have you evaluate the assumptions you bring to the discussion'