The creators of HBO’s Westworld have announced a novel plan to combat the perils of online spoiler culture: they’re going to give away all the big secrets from the show’s upcoming second season before a single episode airs. Creators Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy made the announcement today during a Reddit AMA, acknowledging the plan as a “potentially highly controversial decision.” They do say their cast is onboard with the plan.
“If you guys agree, we’re going to post a video that lays out the plot (and twists and turns) of season 2. Everything. The whole sordid thing. Up front,” they wrote. “That way, the members of the community here who want the season spoiled for them can watch ahead, and then protect the rest of the community, and help to distinguish between what’s ‘theory’ and what’s spoiler.”
Westworld was in a unique position during its first season. The show used a number of tricky storytelling devices, including multiple timelines and characters depicted as human, but later revealed as robotic “hosts.” The reveal-heavy nature of the program gave rise to a cottage industry of online speculation and theorizing, particularly in the active Westworld subreddit. There, fans of the show did what they do best, digging through the details and uncovering the show’s biggest surprises well in advance. Given the copious press coverage of those theories, even casual viewers could have the show’s reveals ruined without doing too much digging.
“‘Theories’ can actually be spoilers, and the line between the two is confusing,” the creators wrote. “It’s something we’ve been thinking about since last season. The fans of Game of Thrones, for instance, rallied around and protected the secrets of the narrative in part because they already knew those secrets (through season 5).”
The idea of hewing to the Thrones model led the creators to the idea of the spoiler video, and while it seems counterintuitive as a strategy, there is a logic to it. Those who simply want to know all the secrets can learn them right away, without having to wait — and those that don’t can avoid the video. But the simple act of choosing not to watch the video will almost undoubtedly make a given fan more emotionally invested in the idea of not being spoiled in the first place — and perhaps lead to them going out of their way to avoid any coverage or sites that might toe the line. The release of the video would also make the Westworld subreddit radioactive for fans who don’t want surprises spoiled, perhaps decreasing the number of people who might accidentally stumble upon it and learn a big upcoming secret.
But Nolan and Joy are clearly trying to evoke a sense of goodwill as well. Fans who know the twists could end up feeling like surrogates of the show itself — guardians of its biggest secrets, with a duty to protect fans who don’t want to be spoiled. That also may be counterintuitive, given the often toxic nature of online interaction, but as the creators noted, it did somewhat work for Game of Thrones.
“It’s a new age, and a new world in terms of the relationship between the folks making shows and the community watching them,” Nolan and Joy wrote. It’s certainly the first time a television series — particularly one produced by mystery box master J.J. Abrams — has opted to spoil itself, and it’s a testament to how vital online discourse is to a show like Westworld.
It’s less clear how press outlets will respond. Given the high interest in series like Westworld, publications are incentivized to wring every piece of coverage out of the program that they can, and speculative pieces on fan theories can be a quick and easy way to generate content and traffic. Even if fans decide to do the right thing and not share spoilers, the entertainment press itself could end up giving the game away. But as Game of Thrones has demonstrated, that doesn’t have to be the case, either.
Either way, the release of the spoiler video isn’t a foregone conclusion. As one final gut check, Nolan and Joy left its distribution up to a fan vote: If a thousand people upvote the Reddit post announcing the plan, then they’ll release the video. (As of this writing, the vote count stands at 233.) And in a weird way, that act makes the entire strategy feel like a social experiment that echoes the show itself. Do people really want to know all the secrets, just as some of the show’s characters so stubbornly wanted to know about their own traumatic histories? And if they do learn them — if they make it to the center of the maze, so to speak — then what will fans do with that knowledge?
from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/2qhFUoZ
The Cyber Hacker - website covers tutorials on cyber security, latest tech news, Linux & Ubuntu, programming, internet & computer hacking, how to guides, safety guides, and fixes to every day computer/internet problems. Enjoy Learning with The Cyber Hacker!
ConversionConversion EmoticonEmoticon