Last year after I finished playing Among the Sleep, I really wanted to discuss the game with someone. The game was awesome and scary and disturbing. I didn’t know how, exactly, I felt about the game and, in particular, the ending, but I craved a conversation about it. At the time, though, I didn’t know anyone else who had played the game, so I was stuck with reading other players’ opinions on the Internet. I knew the game would stick with me, and I always planned to write a follow up post discussing the game in more detail. But, it never seems enough time has gone by. The game released in May 2014, but I still feel it’s too soon to spoil it. I started thinking about Among the Sleep again after last week’s podcast when I named it as my favorite game of the year, but I still felt I couldn’t talk in detail about it. I started wondering how long is long enough to wait before we talk about spoilers?
I know some people feel we should be free to talk about spoilers immediately, and I see discussions of this nature on Facebook all the time. And, I have friends who say spoilers don’t bother them; that knowing the ending won’t ruin their enjoyment. I think I fall at the other end of that spectrum: I never want spoilers. To that end, I’m pretty much fine with never talking about games I love in great detail with those who haven’t played them. I know there are ways around all this. We can write or talk about the spoilers, as long as we have the disclaimer SPOILER ALERT! But, the Internet can make it difficult at best to completely avoid spoilers. And, then there are certain friends who will keep talking, giving everything about the game (movie, tv show, novel, etc.) away even after they have been asked not to spoil it. I can sort of get that too: it’s not that they are necessarily trying to ruin it for others, it’s often just that they are that excited about the game, movie, tv show, or novel, etc.
I watched an episode of Downton Abbey this weekend for the first time in years. I watched the first season years ago, but I never really got into it and didn’t continue with it. Other people love the show though, of course, so I’ve always sort of thought maybe someday I would try again. My mother was in town over the weekend and Downton Abbey is her absolute favorite show. She kept worrying over whether it was going to get recorded for her at home so she could watch it. I wanted to offer to let her watch it at my house, but I hesitated: what if I wanted to try to get back into it? In the end, I decided I was probably never going to care about Downton Abbey, so we watched it. I discovered that season 5 is so far removed from season 1 anyway, that with everything out of context, nothing was spoiled anyway. She even explained everything to me afterwards, and I still feel like I could go back and watch the entire thing without the danger of feeling like I already know what’s coming. But, I probably won’t.
A long running TV series is probably different, though, then a novel, movie or game, where more happens in a shorter piece. Or maybe, I just feel that way because it’s been so long since I originally watched Downton Abbey. Currently, I’m rewatching Friends (because, yay Netflix!), and over the weekend I watched the episode where Joey spoils The Shining for Rachel. The episode in question must have been from around 1996, and The Shining was published in 1977. So, in the world of Friends, we are talking about spoiling a 20 year old novel. But, even today, in 2015, the Friends episode made me nervous because I kept thinking, what if someone still hasn’t read The Shining? So, I guess for me there is no statute of limitations on spoiler alerts if the person I’m talking to hasn’t seen the show or played the game, unless they are able to really convince me it doesn’t matter to them.
