The possibility of having a TV show spoiled for you has completely changed the way we live. Who hasn't avoided the Internet for days just so you wouldn't have the latest episode of Game of Thrones spoiled for you?
Apparently, the act of spoiling a show for someone else tells us a lot more about social interaction than we thought. In fact, spoilers are all about power.
Netflix enlisted cultural anthropologist Grant McCracken to perform ethnographic research about how spoilers have impacted society. He found that social norms for spoiling TV shows have developed due to the proliferation of on-demand viewing and binge-watching in our culture. "To know about a show that you don't know about is to have power," McCracken told The New York Times. "I live in the future that you are about to occupy."
The streaming service is using McCracken's research to provide content for a promotional website dedicated to understanding how spoilers fit into our TV-watching and social habits. Right now you can find out which "Spoiler Profile" you fall into (Do you use spoilers as a manipulative social tool as a "Power Spoiler," or do you unknowingly reveal spoilers as a "Clueless Spoiler"?) and vote on which spoilers are so old that they shouldn't even be considered spoilers anymore. So far users think Cool Runnings, The Crying Game and The Graduate are the top three films whose spoilers should be in the public domain.
Although there is a big social stigma attached to revealing spoilers, they actually don't bother Americans that much, relatively. McCracken found that 76 percent of Americans believe spoilers are just a part of our everyday lives. This is compared to 24 percent of British Netflix users. Less than 4 percent of Brits agree that it's all right to spoil a TV show for someone else, and 58 percent feel guilty when they spoil a plot twist for others. In line with their lackadaisical attitude toward spoilers, only 37 percent of Americans feel guilty when they reveal spoilers.
This research into spoilers is part of Netflix's ongoing analysis of how the TV-watching experience has changed in modern society. McCracken told The New York Times that he first started noticing outrage over spoilers around the beginning of the Millennium when TV shows such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer and The Wire strayed from traditional TV plots and had more complicated storylines. The more complex plotlines made people less inclined to want to hear about a show before they viewed it. However, McCracken said that good TV is becoming increasingly "spoiler-proof."
Hopefully, that means fewer relationships will be torn a part because someone accidentally let what happened on the season finale of Downton Abbey slip. You know who you are.
