"spoil it for me": disengaging with media literacy
It was a rite of passage as a millennial on the Internet to watch episodes of television, or even entire movies, in five minute increments—such was the life before streaming services existed so you could pay to watch media on demand. Hell, it was even before you could rent DVDs via mail using Netflix. Sure, we still had libraries and the last struggling gasps of rental stores like Blockbuster, but as a teenager it felt so much easier to leave my laptop buffering for an hour so I could watch a low quality upload of any movie or show that I wanted without having to leave my home.
After bed rotting to my TikTok feed, I found myself perplexed at the familiarity of the practice by accounts with seemingly random usernames and no profile picture to upload short videos in this vein. There were a lot of the same tricks that would be employed by early YouTube such as close cropping a scene or altering the speed to be slightly faster, but it also had its own set of quirks such as mirroring the video back and forth - a practice often mocked in the comments. The videos were also clearly set up not just to work within the time limit constraints of the application with the intent to entice the viewers to watch (often by giving a short, dramatic opening and then jumping back several minutes so you have to wait for context) and net comment engagement demanding the next part.
Stranger to me was the comments that I would often read on said uploads: (1) “spoil it for me” and (2) “what movie is this?” Back in high school and undergrad when I would watch media incrementally in this fashion, there weren’t comments sections for me to review. And when this practice transitioned to being done on YouTube, I rarely looked at what other people had to say so I don’t have any clear recollection of what other people thought about consuming content in such small doses at a time. As someone who has always avoided spoilers like the plague, I found it really odd to see so many people requesting that very practice. Everyone has their own threshold for spoilers, but I’m not sure that I understand the purpose in knowing what is going to happen if you aren’t interested in actually watching more.
While I do come across plenty of movies uploaded in small scenes, it has been far more common for me to be fed clips from TV shows — everything from old reality TV episodes to dramas that are actively airing, which made it very difficult to avoid having season three of Severance immediately spoiled for me. Regardless of what I encounter, people will ask “What movie is this?” Their inquiry will inevitably be followed up with several people clarifying that it’s a TV show. Its understandable that some confusion will happen when the description and tags give no indication of where the clip comes from, often purposefully to encourage people to engage to gain that information. But the presumption that everything must be a movie has been really amusing to observe from a distance and I can’t tell if it has become an app-based meme or if that many people assume that most media must be film. Or maybe it’s like saying Coke in place of a specific soda and film has become the default placeholder for “media?”
Related to these observations, there is another genre of uploads in which an AI voice explains what is happening in a scene or edited sequence of scenes from a show or film. Essentially, it spoils the media for the viewer functioning like a Wikipedia summary of the text. It reminds me of a shorter, lazier version of the “I watched X so you don’t have to” type of video on YouTube; however, even those will usually have at least a little bit of additional commentary from the presenter about the work; this genre of TikTok, however, often describes what happens in a hyper-literal fashion: things you could discern for yourself by just watching the clip.
A couple months ago, I wrote about my frustration with some of the pitfalls that video essayists fall into on YouTube but this particular genre bothers me even more because it so thoroughly discourages any critical thinking on the part of the viewer. The person making the video isn’t even using their own voice, but an uncanny, emotionless narrator reinforcing this atmosphere of not watching or thinking for yourself.
It’s not like this is exclusive to TikTok either. After watching the first season of The White Lotus, I wanted to look up how other people reacted to the finale. Unless I add “reddit” to the end of my search, I’m met with dozens of journalist fluff titled something along the lines of “ENDING TO WHITE LOTUS EXPLAINED.” These aren’t presented as though it is the opinion of the article’s writer who is bringing their own experiences and criticism to the show, but as if it is some definitive commentary — a promise that you’ll “get" it by virtue of reading their 5-10 point list of observations.
I know that some people might shrug this off as “not that deep,” but that’s the thing for me: media is as deep as you want and allow it to be. For me, that’s what makes art fun, engaging, and communal: our capacity to get something different out and to share those observations and feelings with one another. To see media reduced to talking points to be "in the loop" with what others are talking about, saddens me as an aspiring creative.
I'm still forming my thoughts about these various observations, but in general it just makes me long for more outlets where people can dig deeper into their thoughts about all forms of art - even if those thoughts are short, simple, and common. It means more when it comes from your own viewing experience even if you didn't catch all the little Easter egg references.
What do you think? Reach out to me via email.