{"id":1532,"date":"2010-05-26T12:53:22","date_gmt":"2010-05-26T00:53:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.zeusblog.tetrap.com\/?p=1532"},"modified":"2010-05-27T09:40:03","modified_gmt":"2010-05-26T21:40:03","slug":"resistance-is-useless","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.zeusblog.tetrap.com\/?p=1532","title":{"rendered":"Resistance is Useless!"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"visionedit.jpg\"<\/p>\n

\u00a0
\nAs you may know a recent Fast Return committed an act that outraged and fumigated a regular reader and nearly blinded another. Outraged because apparently this is Zeus Blog’s ‘form’, this blog’s offence – ‘spoiling’ a detail of an upcoming story, as happened back in 2007. Actually the blinding thing is a bit of a worry because we apparently nearly did for the same reader’s vision back then, too. But flippancy aside, we’re back to the subject of fan etiquette and the reality of spoilers. Last week TV reviewer Fiona Rae commented on her very occasional Public Address blog, saying of the just-screened Lost<\/em> finale:<\/p>\n

\nNext week, the internet will not be safe.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\nThe fact of the matter is, spoilers are a modern reality, and we have to live with them. Its not even that they exist and can be easily avoided – they are an essential part of fandom embedded in gossip, pub chat, emails, magazine articles, covers and illustrations, TV listings and of course internet bulletin boards. To make matters worse, we’re really not that good on the self-control stakes here; is it because part of our makeup is an attraction to bragger’s rights that means knowledge of That Which Is To Be gives Those Who Saw It Coming something extra to crow over? When Who<\/em> fandom’s Big Daddy Ian Levine dropped in a distinct mal mot<\/em> about this year’s series finale on Gallifrey Base a month or so back amidst a discussion on (of all things) the recolourisation of The Mind of Evil<\/em> it finally hit me that some people for good or ill have no self control, and in fact Nowhere Is Safe.<\/p>\n

And that’s nowhere – GallifreyBase generously has a spoiler-free board for discussion of the new series, but you’ll still find subject lines in the form of questions about this year’s finale, and as the above example shows, even the non-TV boards are not free of rumour-mongering or indeed speculation which, frankly, can be just as dangerous as actual spoilers.<\/p>\n

So what’s to be done?<\/p>\n

The obvious answer is for one to disengage from fandom – at least online fandom, but be wary of the online realms of non-fans or indeed online non-fan realms which increasingly seem to have a publish-and-be-damned approach to spoilers. News headlines on the Web, screen and page are constructed to tease and draw the attention – ‘entertainment’ editors don’t think as we do – stay well clear! And of course idle chatter and overheard conversations in public spaces – potentially disastrous. A hermit might be able to cope with the new paradigm of an attempted spoiler-free life, but that’s about it. Fandom: you’re in, spoilers and all, or you’re out. And Zeus Blog very much intends to be in.<\/p>\n

But we’ll be playing safer from here on. Promise. <\/p>\n

PA<\/strong><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 As you may know a recent Fast Return committed an act that outraged and fumigated a regular reader and nearly blinded another. Outraged because apparently this is Zeus Blog’s ‘form’, this blog’s offence – ‘spoiling’ a detail of an … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1532","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-editorials"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zeusblog.tetrap.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1532","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zeusblog.tetrap.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zeusblog.tetrap.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zeusblog.tetrap.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zeusblog.tetrap.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1532"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/www.zeusblog.tetrap.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1532\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1545,"href":"https:\/\/www.zeusblog.tetrap.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1532\/revisions\/1545"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zeusblog.tetrap.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1532"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zeusblog.tetrap.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1532"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zeusblog.tetrap.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1532"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}