![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Spoilers and Unrealistic Expectations
Dec. 13th, 2025 05:01 pm![[syndicated profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/feed.png){kind=small}
twentysidedtale_feedDISCLAIMER: I will not be spoiling anything for anyone in this post. This is a post whining about spoilers and I try not to be THAT big of a hypocrite. So feel free to read without worry.
Recently the first part of the final season of “Stranger Things” came out and I was excited to watch it, but I’ve been sick for a month now. I wanted to enjoy the watch and trying to enjoy a show while I’m mostly deaf from a bad double ear infection and sniffling the whole time kind of takes away from a viewing experience. So I waited. I waited and I waited and I waited until I made a mistake that I make pretty much every day. I got on TikTok. Only this time there were greater consequences than brainrot.
Unlike YouTube, where you can see a title and a thumbnail, TikTok just autoplays each video as you scroll through. That means you don’t really get much chance to avoid spoilers. Because of that limitation, at one point I accidentally happened upon spoilers for the last episode of the new season and I got very very upset. “Stranger Things” isn’t my favorite thing in the world but I think it is a really well done, really interesting show. I had anticipated the final season since the finale of the last season just like every other fan. And now some rando on TikTok posting a video about how excited they were for the last 4 episodes ruined a major plot point for me. I was furious. This happened 2 days ago. The question is, though, “Was it fair for me to even be upset at this point?”
What’s the cut off on spoilers? I had waited 2 weeks for my watch of “Stranger Things” Season 5. Is it really that fair to ask someone to hold off on talking about something they love for the sake of keeping things fresh for strangers? My standard on spoilers is to wait for a year before openly discussing something that has come out. I feel like at that point it can’t be that important to you or you’d have gotten to it already. But even then I like to tip toe around the plot of something to let everyone have their own first experience of a show or movie.
The thing is though, I’m weird about spoilers. I avoid trailers because I love horror movies. Horror movie trailers have a bad track record when it comes to spoiling the best parts of the film. My best example of this is the movie “Abigail.” All I knew about it was that it’s a horror movie about a crew of criminals kidnapping a girl and things get weird. I knew that from a quick little post about the move on The Artist Formerly Known As Twitter. I didn’t watch the trailer. If you haven’t seen it and like weird quirky horror movies, go watch it without spoiling yourself with the trailer because it gives away everything. It’s not a perfect movie but it’s really fun, especially when you go in blind. I also try to avoid watching anime opening montages too closely because spoiler culture in the east is FAR less strict. They don’t really care as much if they know what’s coming.
I’ve since seen the new episodes of “Stanger Things” and really enjoyed them despite knowing some of the plot details ahead of time. The spoilers I saw didn’t have too strong of a negative impact on me this time. However I still don’t really know when enough time is really enough. So honestly, I guess this whole article is one big prompt. What do you consider a long enough amount of time from the release of a media that you feel it’s okay to openly discuss plot elements or character developments? Please refrain from spoilers in your answers. Best practices here are to just avoid examples unless it’s a well known spoiler like the Sixth Sense example.
Don’t worry, we’ve got you!
