... is the bit where he contends that not everyone feels the same way about spoilers, and that each person approaches them differently. I think that how much it matters also differs from person to person based on what exactly is being spoiled. A fan of a particular thing is likely to care about spoilers much more than someone who only has a casual interest. And that same fan who cared so much about spoilers for Story A might in turn not care at all about spoilers for Story B, which he isn't as interested in.

Essentially my take is that there is no "we" in "we may not mind spoilers as much as we think we do". I think it's very much a case-by-case thing and that any trends -- in either direction of the argument -- are practically unimportant.

It's like taking a group of people and giving half of them oranges and half of them apples. The results may come out that 75% of the people who ate oranges liked them, and only 50% of the people who ate apples liked them. What does that tell us, in practical terms? It certainly doesn't tell us that we should give everyone oranges, because some people don't like oranges. And it doesn't mean we should give everyone apples, because some people didn't like apples. It also doesn't indicate if the people who liked apples might have liked oranges better, or vice versa.

All it really means is that we should let people choose whether they want oranges or apples. People should be able to choose if they want spoilers or not too.

I don't exactly truck with the idea that people who claim to mind spoilers might not actually mind them if they were given them, either. Given the individual and case-by-case nature of spoiler preference, there's no way to ever prove if that's true. All the tests in the world will only show trends that have nothing to do with individual preference.

The only way to tell if a person who claims to mind spoilers for Story A might not actually mind them if the spoilers were given regardless of his/her preference, is to see how much the person enjoys Story A without spoilers, and then erase their memory and see how much the person enjoys Story A with spoilers. But first you'd have to come up with a measurable quantative scale for enjoyment ...

Which is all a lot of words to say that any argument about spoilers is kind of pointless, which makes it funny that I'm arguing so much about it. :p

In the end what I care about is a continuation of the current general status quo regarding the subject, which is to say to each their own, some people juggle geese, mark your spoilers so people can look if they want and can avoid them if they don't want.