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A (Spoiler-Free) Discussion of the Classism and Ableism of Spoilers

photograph of Star Wars robots on film set

On Friday, the first two episodes of Obi-Wan Kenobi — the latest installment in the ever-growing Star Wars franchise — were released on Disney+. The episodes went live at midnight Pacific Time – yet within minutes of their release, YouTube was rife with reaction and review videos featuring thumbnails spoiling all kinds of details from the show.

This kind of behavior isn’t the sole realm of malicious internet trolls.

Many otherwise reputable entertainment sites do the same thing, posting spoilerific headlines and thumbnails only days — or sometimes even hours — after a movie or television episode premieres. Sometimes, even the content creators themselves are guilty of this behavior. Last year’s Spider Man: No Way Home featured many surprising cameos from the last two decades of Spider Man films. Some of these cameos were clearly advertised in trailers preceding the film’s cinematic release, but others (arguably, the best) were preserved for theatergoers to discover on opening night. Sadly, however, Sony Pictures decided to spoil these very same cameos in the marketing for the home video release of the film, preventing anyone waiting to watch the movie at home from experiencing the same sense of surprise and wonder as theatergoers.

These spoilers are certainly annoying, but are they morally wrong? This is a question taken up by Richard Greene in his recent book Spoiler Alert!, and previously touched upon by fellow Prindle Post author A.G. Holdier. Here, however, I want to argue not only that spoilers are morally wrong, but that the reason for this is that they are inherently classist and ableist.

Spoilers are classist because certain barriers exist to immediately consuming entertainment upon release, and these barriers are more easily overcome by those of a higher socio-economic status.

Take, for example, the premiere episodes of Obi-Wan Kenobi. If you wanted to completely remove the risk of being spoiled for these episodes — and lived on the East Coast of the USA — you’d need to be up at 3am on Friday morning to watch them. Many people — including lower- to middle-income earners working a standard 9-to-5 job — are simply unable to do this. There are financial barriers, too. Going to the cinema isn’t cheap. The average cost of a movie ticket is $9.16, meaning that a family of four will pay more than $35.00 to see the latest release on the big screen (ridiculously expensive popcorn not included). This means that for many families, waiting for the home video release (where a movie can be rented for less than five dollars) is the only financially viable way of enjoying new movies.

Spoilers are ableist for similar reasons. While cinemas strive to provide better accessibility for those with mobility issues and audio and visual impairments, there are still many people for whom the theatergoing experience is unattainable. Those who are neurodiverse, have an intellectual disability, are immunocompromised, or suffer from ADHD are often unable to enjoy films during their theatrical run, and must wait for these movies to finally come to home video. Spoilers strip these less-able individuals of their ability to enjoy the very same surprises as those who can attend theaters.

The current pandemic provides yet another reason why someone may avoid the theatre. Released on December 17th 2021, Spider Man: No Way Home arrived just as the Omicron variant was beginning to spread through the U.S. — ultimately leading to the highest ever COVID daily case count just a few weeks later. For many people, seeing a movie in the cinema simply wasn’t worth the risk of spreading an infection that could greatly harm — and possibly even kill — their fellow attendees. Yet these individuals — those who sacrificed their own enjoyment in order to keep others safe — are those who suffer the most when a company like Sony Pictures releases home video trailers spoiling some of the biggest cameos of the film.

As we’ve seen, spoilers disproportionately affect those who are less well-off, less-able, and those who are simply trying to do what’s right in the midst of a global pandemic.

But are spoilers really all that harmful? It would seem so. Studios clearly understand the entertainment value of surprise. It’s why they fiercely guard plot details and issue watertight non-disclosure agreements to cast and crew. And we can appreciate the reasons for this. There’s nothing quite like the unanticipated return of a favorite character, or a delicious plot-twist that — despite your countless speculations — you never saw coming. Further, as Holdier previously noted, spoilers prevent us from taking part in a shared community experience — and may cause us to feel socially excluded as a result.

We might justify this harm on Consequentialist grounds if there was some greater good to be achieved. But there isn’t. It’s not entirely clear why entertainment sites or YouTube reviewers feel the need to wantonly spoil details of a new show or movie. While there’s obviously a financial motive in gaining clicks and views, it’s unclear how sharing spoilerific details in a headline or thumbnail furthers this end (especially since burying such details in the middle of an article or video would surely force people to click or view more).

Some might claim that they prefer to know plot details in advance — and there’s even evidence suggesting that spoilers might cause certain people to enjoy some stories more. But here’s the thing: you only get one chance to enjoy a story spoiler-free, and we should let people make this choice for themselves. The kinds of spoilers discussed here — those thrust to the top of a newsfeed, or to the main page of YouTube, or aired on network television — are unavoidable. They don’t give people a choice. What’s more, these spoilers disproportionately harm the underprivileged — and it’s the inherent classism and ableism of these spoilers that makes them so morally wrong.

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Why Don’t People Cheat at Wordle?

photograph of Wordle being played on phone

By now, you’ve probably encountered Wordle, the colorful daily brainteaser that gives you six attempts to guess a five-letter word. Created in 2020 by Josh Wardle, the minimalistic website has gone viral in recent weeks as players have peppered their social media feeds with the game’s green-and-yellow boxes. To some, the Wordle craze is but the latest passing fad capturing people’s attention mid-pandemic; to others, it’s a window into a more thoughtful conversation about the often social nature of art and play.

Philosopher of games C. Thi Nguyen has argued that a hallmark feature of games is their ability to crystallize players’ decision-making processes, making their willful (and reflexive) choices plain to others; to Nguyen, this makes games a “unique art form because they work in the medium of agency.” I can appreciate the tactical cleverness of a game of chess or football, the skillful execution of a basketball jump shot or video game speedrun, or the imaginative deployment of unusual forms of rationality towards disposable ends (as when we praise players for successfully deceiving their opponents in a game of poker or Mafia/Werewolf, despite generally thinking that deception is unethical) precisely because the game’s structure allows me to see how the players are successfully (and artistically) navigating the game’s artificial constraints on their agency. In the case of Wordle, the line-by-line, color-coded record of each guess offers a neatly packaged, easily interpretable transcript of a player’s engagement with the daily puzzle: as Nguyen explains, “When you glance at another player’s grid you can grasp the emotional journey they took, from struggle to likely victory, in one tiny bit of their day.”

So, why don’t people cheat at Wordle?

Surely, the first response here is to simply reject the premise of the question: it is almost certainly the case that some people do cheat at Wordle in various ways or, furthermore, lie about or manipulate their grids before sharing them on social media. How common such misrepresentations are online is almost impossible to say.

But two facets of Wordle’s virality on social media suggest an important reason for thinking that many players have strong reasons to authentically engage with the vocabulary game; I have in mind here:

  1. the felt pressure against “spoiling” the daily puzzle’s solution, and
  2. the visceral disdain felt by non-players at the ubiquity of Wordle grids on their feeds.

In the first case, despite no formal warning presented by the game itself (and, presumably, no “official” statement from either Wordle’s creator or players), there exists a generally unspoken agreement online to avoid giving away puzzle answers. Clever sorts of innuendo and insinuation are frequent among players who have discovered the day’s word, as are meta-level commentaries on the mechanics or difficulty-level of the latest puzzle, but a natural taboo has arisen against straightforwardly announcing Wordle words to one’s followers (in a manner akin to the taboo against spoiling long-awaited movie or television show plots). In the second case, social media users not caught up in Wordle’s grid have frequently expressed their annoyance at the many posts filled with green-and-yellow boxes flying across their feeds.

Both of these features seem to be grounded in the social nature of Wordle’s phenomenology: it is one thing to simply play the game, but it is another thing entirely to share that play with others. While I could enjoy solving Wordle puzzles privately without discussing the experience with my friends, Wordle has become an online phenomenon precisely because people have fun doing the opposite: publicly sharing their grids and making what Nguyen calls a “steady stream of small communions” with other players via the colorful record of our agential experiences. It might well be that the most fun part of Wordle is not simply the experience of cleverly solving the vocab puzzle, but of commiserating with fellow players about their experiences as well; that is to say, Wordle might be more akin to fishing than to solving a Rubik’s cube — it’s the story and its sharing that we ultimately really care about. Spoiling the day’s word doesn’t simply solve the puzzle for somebody, but ruins their chance to engage with the story (and the community of players that day); similarly, the grids might frustrate non-players for the same reason that inside jokes annoy those not privy to the punchline — they underline the person’s status as an outsider.

So, this suggests one key reason why people might not want to cheat at Wordle: it would entail not simply fudging the arbitrary rule set of an agency-structuring word game, but would also require the player to violate the very participation conditions of the community that the player is seeking to enjoy in the first place. That is to say, if the fun of Wordle is sharing one’s real experiences with others, then cheating at Wordle is ultimately self-undermining — it gives you the right answer without any real story to share.

Notice one last point: I haven’t said anything here about whether or not it’s unethical to cheat at Wordle. In general, you’ll probably think that your obligations to tell the truth and avoid misrepresentation will apply to your Wordle habits in roughly the same way that they apply elsewhere (even if you’re not unfairly disadvantaging an opponent by cheating). But my broader point here is that cheating at Wordle doesn’t really make sense — at best, cheating might dishonestly win you some undeserved recognition as a skilled Wordle player, but it’s not really clear why you might care about that, particularly if the Wordle community revolves around communion moreso than competition.

Instead, swapping Wordle grids can offer a tantalizing bit of fun, authentic connection (something we might particularly crave as we enter Pandemic Year Three). So, pick your favorite starting word (mine’s “RATES,” if you want a suggestion) and give today’s puzzle your best shot; maybe we’ll both guess this one in just three tries!

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Game of Thrones, Avengers: Endgame, and the Ethics of Spoilers

photograph of "all men must die" billboard for Game of Thrones

Early on the morning of April 27th, an early-evening moviegoer in Hong Kong was beaten in the cinema parking lot as he walked to his car; though his injuries were not life-threatening, his story nevertheless went viral thanks to how the attack was provoked – reportedly, the man had been spoiling the just-released Avengers: Endgame by loudly sharing plot details for the crowd (who had not yet seen the movie) to hear. As the culmination of nearly two dozen intertwined movies released over the course of more than a decade, as well as the resolution to the heart-wrenching cliffhanger at the end of 2018’s Avengers: Infinity War, Endgame was one of the most greatly-anticipated cinematic events in history and shattered most every financial record kept at the box office (including bringing in over $1 billion worldwide on its opening weekend). According to some fan reactions online, the spoiling victim actually deserved the attack for ruining the fun of the other people in line.

Contrast this reaction to the events of April 28th, when the third episode of Game of Thrones’ final season aired on HBO: within minutes, fans were actively spoiling each scene as they live-tweeted their ways through the show together, sending over 8 million tweets out into cyberspace and setting the top nineteen worldwide-trending topics on Twitter. By the time the Battle of Winterfell was over, the internet was swimming with jokes and memes about the story to a degree that even Time Magazine reported on the phenomenon. And this is not an unusual occurrence: each episode of the show’s eighth season has captured the Internet’s attention on the Sunday nights when they air. While HBO has taken great pains to keep the details of the season under wraps, there has been no #DontSpoilTheEndgame-type campaign for Game of Thrones as there has been from Marvel for Avengers: Endgame – what should we make of this?

While ‘the ethics of spoilers’ is far from the most existentially threatening moral question to consider in 2019, it is an issue with a strange pedigree. Spoiler Alert!, Richard Greene’s recent book on the philosophy of spoilers, argues that the notion began with Agatha Christie’s 1952 play The Mousetrap, which ended with an exhortation to the audience to keep the ending a secret. The term itself was coined in a 1971 National Lampoon article where Doug Kenney jokingly ‘saved readers time and money’ by telling them the twist endings to famous stories; according to Greene, it was the moderator of a sci-fi mailing list that first implemented a ‘spoiler warning’ policy in 1979 regarding emails that discussed the plot of the first Star Trek movie (the actual phrase ‘spoiler warning’ wouldn’t be applied until discussions concerning the release of Star Trek II: Wrath of Khan three years later). Skip ahead to 2018 and you’ll find serious reporting about a stabbing in Antarctica being precipitated by the victim habitually ruining the ends of the novels his attacker read; although the story turned out to be groundless, it seemed plausible to enough people to make headlines several continents away.

Why do we care about spoilers? Especially considering that psychologists studying the phenomenon have determined so-called ‘spoiled’ surprises to be consistently more satisfying than ones that remain intact for the audience? And, even more curiously, why don’t we care about spoilers consistently? What gives Game of Thrones spoilers a pass while Endgame spoilers ‘deserve’ a punch?

Some have argued that it’s largely a feature of the medium itself: despite the ubiquity of contemporary streaming services, we still assume that stories released in a TV format are culturally locked to their particular airtimes – much like the Super Bowl, if someone misses the spectacle, then that’s their loss. However, movies – especially ones at the theater – are designed to explicitly disengage us from our normal experience of time, transporting us to the world of the film for however long it lasts. Similarly, TV shows are crafted to be watched in your living room where your cell phone is near at hand, while movie theaters still remind you to avoid disrupting the cinematic-experience for your fellow patrons by illuminating your screen in the middle of the film. Perhaps the question of format is key, but I think there’s a deeper element at play.

Aristotle tells us that humans are, by nature, “political animals” – by this, he does not mean that we’re biologically required to vote (or something). Rather, Aristotle – and, typically, the rest of the virtue-ethics tradition – sees the good life as something that is only really possible when pursued in community with others. In Book One of the Politics (1253a), Aristotle says that people who can stand to live in isolation “must be either a beast or a god” and in the Nicomachean Ethics, the Philosopher explains at length the importance of friendship for achieving eudaimonia. In short, we need each other, both to care for our practical, physical needs, but also to create a shared experience wherein we all can not only survive, but flourish – and this good community requires both aesthetic and ethical components.

We need each other, and stories are a key part of holding our cultures together; this is true both mythologically (in the sense that stories can define us as sociological groups), but also experientially – think of the phenomenon of an inside joke (and the awkward pain of knowingly being ignorant of one told in front of you). At their worst, spoilers turn stories into essentially the same thing: a reminder that a cultural event has taken place without you. Spoilers exclude you (or underline your exclusion) from the audience – and that exclusion can feel deeply wrong.

Think of why we host watching parties, attend conventions dressed as our favorite characters, and share endless theories about where a story’s direction will go next: it’s not enough for us to simply absorb something from a screen, passively waiting as our minds and muscles atrophy – no, we crave participation in the creation of the event, if not of the narrative itself, then at least of the communal response to it. The nature of online communities (and the relatively-synchronous nature of television broadcasting) facilitate this impulse beyond our physical location; we can share our ideas, our reactions, and our guesses with others, even when we are far apart. The etiquette of the movie theater limits this, but not entirely – even in our silence, we still like to go to movies together (and, quite often, the experience can be anything but quiet!).

So, while Game of Thrones’s finale aired this past weekend, the community it has engendered will live on (and not only because George R.R. Martin still has two more books to write). The experience of a film like Avengers: Endgame may be over in a snap, but the ties we build with each other can withstand the tests of time. Spoilers threaten to undermine these sorts of connections, which may be why we react so strongly to them – when we don’t get to participate. After all, we can’t forget: the night is dark and full of terrors – one more reason to face it together.