Spoilers! How I HATE Them! Do You Hear Me, IGN?
So, having watched Captain Marvel last night over the 4th of July Holiday here in America, I thought that I was in good straites so as to watch Avengers Endgame when it releases at the end of August for streaming (for the American Labor Day Holiday which is the unofficial end of summer here in the U.S.). Now, this morning I’d just watched a video in which a YouTuber patiently and elegantly described the “Clone Saga” of the mid-90s for the Spider-Man comic book series. It was so good in fact, that it inspired me to watch another Spider-Man video from IGN ranking the Spider-Man movies now that Spider-Man Into the Spiderverse and Far From Home were released. I thought–yes, let me take a look as I’m planning on doing a re-ranking myself because I’m pretty sure Spiderverse will be my new #1 (just need to see it again to be sure).
However, what do I find when I click on the video? A MASSIVE FREAKIN’ SPOILER FOR AVENGERS ENDGAME????!!!!!
Please tell me in what world do I click on a video about Spider-Man and get an AVENGERS ENDGAME spoiler? ARRRGHHHHB!!!!!
IGN Editors, I (mostly) Love You, But You’re Killing Me Here
Okay, so you want to talk about Spider-Man in all his appearances (even though you’re video title suggests that you’re only going to cover his “mainline” movies)–I get it. Spider-Man is popular, so you want to be sure you mention the thing he’s been in most recently, right? While I’m not a fan of that particular logic, I can still relate.
BUT.
And this is a very big “but” (which is why it is in bold/all caps), can we not show A LITTLE DISCRETION and put it at the BLOODY END of the video??????? Why in the world would the FIRST freakin’ thing in a video RANKING SPIDER-MAN MOVIES BE A SPOILER HEAVY RECAP OF AVENGERS?????? That makes absolutely no sense to me? Had the video been entitled: Learn Spider-Man’s Fate in Avengers Infinity War as We Rank His Movies Appearances then I could have understood it. Yes, you say that you “NEED” to mention Endgame, but nowhere in the title do you reference it.
Yes, at the beginning of the video you mention that you (and I emphasize that this actually a want, not a need) to talk about his Avengers appearances and yes, you also put up a Spoiler Warning (which I didn’t see the first time, but saw when I scrubbed through to get time markers), but this does me no good if I’ve been called away from the TV by a phone call and couldn’t see the warning, nor get back to the Apple TV remote in time. If you’re going to spoilers for something that is spoiler-heavy, then:
PLEASE, FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT’S HOLY–PUT IT AT THE FREAKIN’ END OF THE VIDEO.
Give people time to enjoy the content that’s In the title of your video and then allow them the opportunity to click away if they so choose.
Fool Me Once, Shame on You, Fool Me Twice, Shame on Me
I put the blame both on you IGN, but also on myself. This isn’t the first time where poorly placed content has negatively impacted spoilers for me in the past on IGN. Even now, IGN already has a video up discussing the FREAKIN’ ending to Season 3 of Stranger Things which just released yesterday on Netflix. Yesterday. I had to mentally prepared myself to dodge that video (& was considering turning off autoplay for YouTube, or otherwise it was going to pop up in the rotation some time in the near future). However, I’ve now solved that problem in a more permanent way (see below).
Again, I get it. You need to be timely and relevant in order to get clicks and for users to see ads in front of the videos you produce for the money it generates because of YouTube’s unfair algorithms. However, I support (well, now its the past tense, supported) you by NOT skipping the ads even though I could have. The LEAST you could do is to follow the same model as podcasts where they talk about the relevant content FIRST and then keep any Spoilercast discussions until the end, giving their listeners a chance to “keep going” or to “peace out” as they so choose.
I scrubbed back through the video (with the sound off) and found the offending (AVENGERS) spoiler 56 seconds into the video. Now, considering that this is an 8:25 (SPIDER-MAN) video, I take real exception to this.
Unsubscribing to IGN–Hate to Do It, But You Leave Me No Choice
So, I’ve officially Unsubscribed to one of my favorite channels, IGN. I hate to do it and I hate having to call it out, but “spoilers” are anathema to me. I don’t go around spoiling movies, books, and shows for the readers of this blog (nor when I’m out in “real life”), so I have very little tolerance for people, places, and organizations that do this. I just recently blocked (and I do mean blocked) two YouTube channels from my feed: Mr. Spoiler and Mrs. Spoiler (and yes, these are, as I writing this, two legitimate YouTube channels, and I pretty much block anyone these days who post “spoiler” thumbnails in their feed.) And back to IGN for a moment–I already know that there is at least one person who has made it clear that he doesn’t understand why people hate spoilers. While I’m not implying that he had anything to do with the video (I’m pretty sure he didn’t), it just boggles the mind they can’t see the relevance of moving spoilers/spoilery content to the end so that their users can decide how to engage with the content.
In closing, if the blog had a “spoiler tag” which would hide spoilery-content as I’ve seen on many discussion boards’ software AND if I could be 100% sure it worked with all browsers (or at least the ones the VAST majority use with the blog), then I would use spoilers and I could talk more in-depth about the content (give examples/justification for my ideas/scores/etc.), but since I don’t, I’d rather err on the side of caution and NOT risk interfering with someone else’s enjoyment of something they might be looking forward to or might discover quite by accident (or even something they might discover because they found it intriguing because I discussed it without giving too much information away).
The old saying in 80s/90s with VCRs was “Be Kind, Rewind.” With the ’10s/’20s, the new saying should be (some variant of), “Life is all Toil, So Please Don’t Spoil.”
Sidney
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The Independent (Sci-Fi Short-Story)–
3rd Draft of 3 Drafts
Drafting Section 1 (of 3)
Mythic Mag. Deadline = July 31, 2019I, Mage (Fantasy Short Story)
Pre-Production Phase (Planning)
Pre-Writing on Rough Draft & Character Sketch
Mythic Mag. Deadline = January 31, 2020Current Longer Work-in-Progress: Ship of Shadows Graphic Novel
(Sci-Fi) Issue # 2, Currently on Script Page 32
Personal Deadline = September 30, 2019HawkeMoon (upcoming) = Edits turned in to editor 5/31/19
