Carolyn Hax: What's one spoiler between two avid readers?

[cereta]

Dear Carolyn:

My boyfriend and I are both avid readers and he recently finished a book by a well-known author with a very distinct writing style. He decided to read a new book by this same author, which I have already read. When we were sitting down last Sunday to read over coffee, he pulled out his book, to which I said, "That book is wild! I think you are going to like it."

He got upset that I ruined his chance at having an unadulterated first impression while reading it. I replied, "I'm sorry you feel that way, but I really didn't mean to ruin anything, and I don't think I did ruin anything -- this author has a wild writing style." This, in his eyes, was a non-apology, which I admitted it was, and told him I would never say anything about a book ahead of time again.

It led us to a conversation about how beholden the offender ought to be to apologize when they think there has been an overreaction. I know overreaction is totally in the eye of the beholder, but even my boyfriend admitted his reaction was a bit much, especially since I really didn't mean to ruin anything for him; a lot hinges on the descriptive "wild" here.

What do you think? If someone overreacts, can the original offender let them know they think that? Is that unfeeling? Or does it just totally depend on the situation?

-- Wild Readers

If anything, it's the opposite -- it totally depends on the aggregate.

When you take each situation individually, there's always a way to spin it into one person's overreaction, or, from the other side, one person's dismissiveness of the other's feelings. Especially when both of you think you're right, it can be hard to tell who actually is -- and in that little gap of doubt is where so many abusers or potential abusers plant seeds of self-doubt. Maybe I am being too sensitive, you start to think, or maybe I was being thoughtless, and bit by bit you release your grasp of your version of what's true in favor of the other person's.

When you take situations as a group, though, you get a remarkably clear picture of overreactions and how to respond to them.

An example by way of explanation: Let's say an avid-reader friend has one overreaction to one generic comment on one book in one situation. In that case, the apt response forms itself. "[pause, raise eyebrows] "You OK?" Because that's what you tend to wonder when an otherwise reasonable person has utterly taken leave of his or her sense of proportion.

If instead an avid-reader friend overreacts on a fairly regular but also unpredictable basis, rooted in an expectation of mind-reading believed to be legitimate and justified -- to the point where you find yourself trying to choose your words in advance so as to avoid triggering such overreactions, and/or the ensuing accusations of non-apology apologies, and/or follow-up conversations about ways you can be wrong in an argument even when you're right -- then it's time to form a different, equally apt response:

Know manipulation when you see it, and get out as soon as you can.

Comments

[cereta]

I am aware that there are people who don't want to know if other people enjoyed a book/tv episode/movie. I know some of those people. But I am drawing a line in the sand. If a person cannot say, "I think you'll really enjoy it!" about a book/movie/tv show without pissing someone off, then the term "spoiler" has lost all meaning. What else is a spoiler? That something is the first book in a trilogy? That new episodes are coming out this week? That the show got renewed for another season? I understand that in the days of streaming video, DVRs, and binge-watching, the question of when someone can reasonably expect to experience a text spoiler-free has gotten more complicated (I am still happy that my daughter got to hear, "No, Luke: I am your father" unspoiled, but generally speaking, I think the cat's out of the bag on that one). But are we now at a point where we can't, say, recommend something to someone, because that means we think they'll like it, and that's a spoiler?

[redbird]

That attitude to "spoilers" is also unusual enough that, if that's how LW's boyfriend generally feels about hearing anything at all about a book, he has to know he's unusual. That in turn means that if he wants to avoid being "spoiled" even in that sense, he should have asked them not to tell him anything about any book as soon as they got to know each other, rather than waiting until something happened. (They've known each other long enough to be reading together over coffee, and for LW to be using the word "boyfriend"--this wasn't a first-date conversation.)

There's nothing wrong with being at one end of a bell curve, on many many things; there is something wrong with being at one end of a bell curve, having enough experience that if you're paying any attention at all you know you're unusual, but expecting everyone else to magically know and cater to your atypical needs without being told.

A reasonable person, with boyfriend's preferences, would have said something like "please stop there. I don't like knowing anything about a book before I start, even a brief comment about the author's style." This is one where I agree with Carolyn: the problem isn't what counts as a spoiler, it's the weird discussion of how much the "offender" "ought" to feel obliged to apologize.

[cereta]

Yes, thank you, you expressed it better than I did. Okay, so you want to have no information about a book before you start it. That's something to communicate to the people in your life who are most likely to tell you their reaction to it.

[sathari]

Agreeing with the previous comments--- this breaks down into two issues: the content of the argument (what constitutes a spoiler) and the process piece of apology-versus-overreaction. Because I'm wondering how well the boyfriend would take it if the LW had what he thought was an over-the-top reaction to something he did and required a sufficiently "contrite" apology for it... or if this is one of those "lovely" (quote-tags of sarcasm) situations where boyfriend wants to define what is acceptable unilaterally--- to set his reactions as the default for "reasonable" and expect contrition for anything that distresses him. (This is especially weird in the context of the boyfriend admitting to overreacting... but still apparently thinking LW should perform contrition for evoking it?)

And I also really, really love cereta's point above about the nature of what's a "spoiler" needing some line in the sand; I mean, you have to know something about a work to decide if you're going to engage with it, even if it's just something like the genre or the author or whether it's part of a series (and what you think of the series), unless you just randomly wander through life picking up stray books and ambling into movie theaters and flipping channels at random. (I am being more than a little sarcastic here, as I am generally someone who wants all the spoilers, especially for the two most commonly-warned for spoilers [after graphic sexual or violent content of various types], namely character death and shipping. I enjoy my entertainment media more if I can manage my expectations going in and enjoy the story and the characters for what they are rather than being displeased that I didn't get a completely different story and characters--- for example, I really would not have enjoyed Rogue One as much as I did and do if I hadn't gone in spoiled for the ending. And in the age of the internet I can meet that need in the general case--- though I am still trying to find out what the actual ending of Hungry Hearts is so I can decide if I want to see it!--- but growing up pre-internet it was like pulling teeth to get my friends to tell me enough about things they wanted me to try. "Oh, but I don't want to spoil it for you!" "But I don't know enough to want to read/see it!" Note that my younger self was not able to articulate the piece of "I want to enjoy the story for what it is and not for what I want it to be," though I don't know if that would have helped.)