How much a spoiler matters when it comes to the enjoyment and consumption of a hot new piece of entertainment seems to be the question of our day. Beware Reddit and the news, lest you hear who dies this week on HBO’s “Game of Thrones.” Spoiler alert: Everyone dies eventually. People’s dedication to avoiding these details for fear of “spoiling” their enjoyment is insane. “How I Met Your Mother” makes spoilers the subject of an entire episode, with the gang attempting to avoid learning the outcome of the Super bowl. However, the end result of a story is not what creates our enjoyment. Instead, we find enjoyment in how we reach the end. The journey matters more than the destination.
According to a 2011 study by Nicholas Christenfeld and Jonathan Leavitt at UC San Diego, those who hear the ending or plot twists of a story before personally experiencing it often find the story even more enjoyable. While this seems paradoxical, there is much to be said for forgetting the spoiler alerts and partaking of all news about upcoming pop culture and literature.
Think back to how many times you or someone you know has read a favorite book or how many times you have watched a favorite movie. We love to dedicate ourselves to discovering each facet of the story and universe we find ourselves engrossed in. In many cases we know how a story will turn out long before it is ever released. When we watch a romantic comedy, we can almost guarantee that we know how it will end. The girl will find the guy, the guy will find the girl, they will find themselves — wash, rinse and repeat. Action movies often follow the cycle of Joseph Campbell’s ‘monomyth,’ which he presented in his work, The Hero With A Thousand Faces.
That’s not to say there is nothing original being produced now — far from it. Instead, we have a reason we do not need to be concerned about spoilers — we can already guess the endings of our stories.
We live in a world inundated with tales, many of which follow the same style. Our pleasure comes less from learning the ending of a story and more from the twists and turns which the creators take to finally deliver us that expected ending. In 2013, the top grossing film worldwide was “Iron Man 3.” Given that the Marvel Cinematic Universe is derived at least in part from the comics, the end result of the story was likely known to a large amount of the audience. The 70th-highest grossing film was “Monsters University.” The end result was obvious as soon as the film was announced, yet it still made lots of money. And in many ways, it did so well because the audience already knew how it would end. We loved it because we wanted to see how those familiar characters, already beloved by the audience, would reach that end point we already knew.
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