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[ 26-05-2003 ]
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[ Mass Media ]
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[http://www.canoe.ca/Columnists/jenkinson.html
The Internet has me spoiled
By MICHAEL JENKINSON -- Edmonton Sun
May 26, 2003
The new edition of the reality show The Amazing Race starts this Thursday. And thanks to the Internet, I already have a good idea of which team is the first to be eliminated from the show, and which team ultimately wins the million-dollar prize. In other words, I've been "spoiled" on the show, having looked up "spoilers" on the Net.
Spoiling upcoming movies and TV shows is big controversy on the Internet, with people on Web sites such as Ain't It Cool News (aintitcoolnews.com) jumping to be the first to post any bit of spoiler information revealing something yet to be shown on TV or in a movie, while others criticize them for ruining the experience for those who want to remain "spoiler-free."
For The Amazing Race spoilers, I'm a frequent visitor to the Survivor Sucks message boards , where individuals from all over the world post their spoilers and speculation on all kinds of reality shows. In the case of spoiling The Amazing Race, it was sometimes as simple as people seeing contestants racing through their local airports or noticing the race route-markers in their cities, and then posting the information on the board.
From time to time, spoilers come from folks who claim they have an uncle or an aunt who knows someone who knows someone who met someone on the show, and the stories get passed along that way (although they don't always turn out to be true.)
And once in a while, time zones work to your spoiling advantage. For the Survivor: Amazon finale, I looked up the winner on the Net based on the East Coast airing of the show, which was several hours ahead of it showing in Edmonton.
So, someday, when cultural historians are writing about the impact of the Internet in the early 21st century, I really hope that there's a section on how the Net changed the way we watch television and movies. Or, at least, the way the Net changed the way that the computer-geek subculture watched TV and movies.
Because it's no longer enough to sit down and simply watch TV or a movie like everyone else. For fans of "spoilers," they watch knowing full well in advance what's going to happen. Even as someone who is not opposed to being "spoiled," I'm still not sure what the attraction is. There's far less suspense when a show is spoiled, although, I found when it came to watching The Matrix Reloaded last weekend that having read numerous spoiler-filled reviews of the movie actually helped me follow the plot.
But merely spoiling films and TV shows isn't enough for some Net inhabitants. They also have to nitpick everything they watch to death (and I say that in the nicest way). More politely, it's a "spot the continuity/costuming/production/plot gaffe" game. One of the best Web sites I know chronicling that phenomenon is Movie Mistakes (movie-mistakes.com) which points out, for instance, that in The Matrix Reloaded, "In the car chase scene, when Trinity is driving the Cadillac, the Agent in the cop car slams into the driver's side of Trinity's car and the driver's side mirror is smashed. When Trinity drives the Cadillac onto the exit ramp, the driver's side mirror is back in its normal position."
How someone notices that during the course of a movie is beyond me. But it's hardly unusual. By mid-week last week, the Matrix sequel had logged 49 errors. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, is already up to 127 continuity, costuming or obvious plot-hole errors. (And thanks to that list, I now always see the boom microphone in one particular scene of the movie.) According to the site, the most mistake-filled movie is Titanic, with 165 chronicled goofs.
If I had any deep thoughts on any of this, I'd think that the appeal of both the spoiler and mistake-spotting phenomenon is the same kind of appeal that drives some of us to the journalism profession. It's the desire to have information on something before everyone else and to be able to find new tidbits in widely-circulated materials that no one else can see.
In other words, the "scoop" is alive and well on the Internet, only for some, it's being the first to report that they saw the Spider-Man sequel being shot outside their apartment or were invited to an industry screening of Finding Nemo.
Oh yeah: Darth Vader is Luke Skywalker's father. Sorry if I spoiled it for you.
Michael Jenkinson can be reached by e-mail at mj@the-newsroom.com His homepage is at http://www.the-newsroom.com Letters to the editor should be sent to letters@edm.sunpub.com
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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