I get it. I’m a big movie fan. I read all the articles, I listen to all the podcasts, I love film making. Especially genre film making. So I’m always interested in the next big thing coming down the road. If you’ve read this blog or listened to my podcast with any frequency, you know I love the age of geek friendly entertainment that we’re living in. What used to be confined to comic book stores and conventions has become main stream pop culture.
Since the birth of the internet there websites like Ain’t It Cool News led by people like Harry Knowles that, among others, created the modern template for movie websites, YouTube channels, and podcasts. Sadly, Harry Knowles has lost his way, but that’s another story.
In the late 90’s internet journalists were guys like you and me. Fans who wanted scoops, tidbits, and tastes about what was happening behind the scenes in Hollywood. Specifically genre filmmaking. Since these early days, we’ve lost respect for something important: Spoilers.
In the late 90’s and early 00’s, if an internet journalist somehow got access to the script for one of the new Star Wars films or a Superman movie in development, this was treated with reverence. The details weren’t immediately plastered all over the website. Spoiler warnings were EVERYWHERE. So if you didn’t want to know all the details of Tarantino’s new movie or a complete story breakdown for X-Men 2, you could opt out. You could still get the movie news of the day without getting entire films spoiled for you. You could choose how much you wanted to know about the big new movies coming out that you were looking forward to. (For the record, these are all real examples of info and scoops Ain’t It Cool News and it’s readers had access to back in the day)
In my opinion, Ain’t It Cool News isn’t what it once was. There are still great people who write for that site and there are often some great editorials and movie reviews. But they were pioneers once, they were the model on which the modern geek entertainment websites were built. But back in the day, right up to now, they always respected their readers’ choice to opt out of spoilers. Because, after all, why do they call them spoilers, because they fucking spoil things! Which is why I am so sick of getting unwittingly spoiled by lazy YouTubers and internet journalists.
I bring up the long history of internet journalism and their attempts to get behind the scene scoops because there used to be an etiquette in the industry. In the past year and a half, I’ve had at least a dozen major movie twists, surprises, or plot points ruined in the TITLES of YouTube or other Internet articles. In the FUCKING TITLES! How do you avoid that?
Just a few days ago I’m scrolling through Twitter and a major comic book movie website has tweeted a link to one of their new articles and right there, unmissable in the title, is a MAJOR spoiler for Spider-Man: Homecoming. What. The. FUCK?!!! I was pissed. This is unacceptable and like I said it isn’t the first time it’s happened.
Now, some of you may say by following these sites I’m opening myself up to the possibility of having something spoiled for me. But if I’m reading an article or browsing a spoiler-heavy website and there’s a spoiler, that’s on me. But I should not have to worry about YouTube videos, Tweets, and article titles dropping major spoilers on me without ANY chance to avoid them. Trailers give away so much of the goddamn movie already, I don’t need any other sources to spoil the surprises in my entertainment.
So, to all you YouTubers, Tweeters, and online journalists out there… LOCK YOUR FUCKING SHIT UP! Show some professionalism and have some respect for your audience.

As always thanks for reading… and be careful of those fucking spoilers out there!

-Paul