Just go with 20 years. Easy.

I don’t know why this is so challenging for people.

In person: Have you seen X? Are you caught up on the latest episode of Y?

Online: Always use spoiler tags to discuss the ending or specific plot details, including any surprises, unless the thread is specifically marked as a spoiler thread. Don’t talk about the fact that something has a twist ending, because revealing that is itself a spoiler. Yes, this applies even for older movies or shows; there’s no way someone has enough time in the day to watch everything they might be interested in. Before the spoiler, indicate what the spoiler is about (“spoiler for the ending to X”). Don’t put spoilers in the titles.

It takes no real effort and is just being considerate.

Hello, feel free to crosspost to !showsandmovies@lemm.ee

None time.

Spoilers affecting the enrolment enjoyment of a movie is exceptionally rare. There’s even been research done into it, if only a little and not reproduced due to lack of interest lol.

Bryant generally, the only time a spoiler is going to change the degree of enjoyment of a movie is when it is both still in the theater and contains an element that is highly unpredictable, or is executed in a very unique way.

Once a movie is out of the theaters, that ability to stun is essentially gone because anyone that didn’t go to see it in the theater already doesn’t care about spoilers at all. They’re fine with knowing the rough outline of a movie. It even helps to have spoilers when it’s a movie they wouldn’t otherwise have watched because the previews and blurbs didn’t interest them.

Surprise endings are much the same. If it hadn’t requires a totally naive viewing to work, chances are that the average viewer just isn’t going to care.

When you add in the fact that folks who go see a movie, read a book, or watch a show that has a surprise ending or twist, is probably going to say something along the lines of “oh you gotta see it, but I don’t want to spoil it for you”; you run into that already breaking the surprise element. The new viewer/reader is going to know there’s a surprise or twist that could be spoiled, so they’re waiting for it . That anticipation is just as good as not knowing it’s coming. And, this is the key so is the anticipation when you know the twist ahead of time.

Seriously, even the small handful of films where the twist is truly unexpected to a naive viewer, or central to the entire premise, you can enjoy them fully when they’re spoiled. You just enjoy it from a different angle.

Test it out. Find a movie where there’s a scene you love. Hype that scene up to someone that hasn’t seen it don’t give word for word quotes, but you can describe it fairly fully. Chances are very high that they’ll enjoy the movie more because of the scene being spoiled.

Now, it is still incredibly fun to share a movie or book or show with a naive viewer/reader. Doing it without spoilers is going to give them an experience closer to the one you had, if you came at it naive. Sharing that experience is awesome in and of itself. But they will likely have enjoyed it equally with spoilers. They likely will enjoy sharing that experience with you more, so it’s fine to preserve someone’s naivete. But you aren’t robbing them of anything.

It’s still good manners to respect someone’s request to not give spoilers though, and it’s pretty much mandatory for discussion based communities that no spoilers be given until a set amount of time passes so that everyone is on the same page (literally or figuratively).

No waiting, but common courtesy on spoiler warnings is 6 months.

If someone isn’t caught up after 6 months, then they aren’t genuinely interested enough to be spoiled.