The Fragmented State of Spoilers in the Brony Fandom · 5:01am May 28th, 2018
TL;DR: Me complaining about spoilers and how it makes discussion harder
A few months back, I put up a poll on Reddit asking what people’s spoiler policies were when it came to the huge leak that had gone down.
The replies really sum up how fragmented the fandom is when it comes to spoilers:
Spoiler philosophies are split relatively evenly across the fandom. With about a quarter of the fandom avoiding any and all spoilers. Another quarter ready to dive in and see absolutely everything, and another half on the fence willing to look at some content but not really sure where to draw the line.
It's been discussed at length how terrible this is for a fandom, but it really bears repeating how fragmented this situation has become. Having all these leaks and a fragmented fanbase with different philosophies towards spoilers means that it's just a lot more difficult to discuss ponies with others. It's impossible to tell at a glance who knows what and when. Even the fact that spoilers exist, is in itself a spoiler.
Case in point, the episode that officially aired recently where Spike gets his wings. By some miracle, there were people that did not know that was coming, and I have to say how envious I am of them. While it's not "CMC get their cutie marks" level spoiler territory, the sheer effort it takes to avoid spoilers means walling off which part of the fandom to participate in and what's "safe" to click on. And even that's not enough—we're all just one YouTube thumbnail away from massive spoilers.
What makes this so annoying is that a weekly television cartoon series is one of the few mediums in which fandoms could stay on the same page when it comes to spoilers.
Let's compare to other fandoms. For example, the anime fandom has always been divided between the manga readers who know everything in advance, and the anime watchers.
Book series fare slightly better, with simultaneous launches of large titles every few years that allow for some amount of shared spoilering. However, due to the length it’s never safe to assume a fan of your particular book series will be up to date with everything. Someone can be a Stormlight Archive fan and still not be caught up with the latest half a million word book.
Movie fandoms have gone the way of most anime. Any existing fandom for the movie is there because the source material, comic book, novel, etc. formed the basis for why the fandom exists in the first place. Which means there's usually a part of the fandom that already knows what's going to happen.
The weekly serialized show—with it's bite sized chunks of content—has the possibility of attracting the highest amount of fandom discussion as episodes come out week by week. And the Brony fandom got to (mostly) experience that for years. In my opinion, it's one of the many reasons the show has been so successful.
Except we don't have that anymore! I still am not fully aware of everything in the leaks—please don't enlighten me—but it seems like the rest of the show has been spoiled.
We're in the middle of a new age of the Brony fandom, where no one knows what others know and it's safer just to not to discuss at all. And what discussion is had is walled off behind spoilered discussion that not everyone joins in, creating conversations that are only a fraction of what they could be without leaks and different viewing schedules.
As much as I want to declare from the rooftops for: "Everyone just pick a side and be consistent!" that's not the way people work.
The recent episode was another example of what it's going to be like the rest of the series. Most of the fandom knew Spike was going to get wings. A truly momentous occasion marred by not as high of fanfare as it could have been. It's like someone having a birthday party spread out over several months in different spots when there could have been one giant party all at once with everyone.
I suppose the biggest issue I have with this is what side I personally should be on when it comes to spoilers. During previous seasons, I was usually gung ho about looking at everything, but I switched my strategy this time to try to avoid spoilers and it was maddeningly difficult to the point I am probably just going to spoil myself in the future because it's just not worth the mental effort to avoid looking at a YouTube thumbnail. Or worse—not be able to see all the conversations as they happen.
Gah. Leaks and early episode releases in different countries suck.
But you know what? SPIKE GOT WINGS! My favorite character gets to grow up and that is frickin' awesome and a cause for celebration. Cheers for Spike guys! 
*Shrugs* Eh its the same with every fandom Chill.
Cheers!
4871439
*sigh*
You're right. Every fandom does have these problems, and it's a silly unsolvable problem to complain about. It's like complaining about the weather.
Feels good to complain about though.
Though you bring up a good point. There is ONE fandom that I think is the exception towards the spoilers: sports fandoms. By their nature, sports are meant to be watched live. And when the whole fandom is watching live that means it's possible to simultaneously experience what others are experiencing in the fandom. It takes a lot of coordination, but it is possible.
4871440
MAH BOI SPIKE IS GROWING UP!
4871442
Oh come Chill you have known me for awhile to bring up stuff like this on Hindsight. So yes some fandom's go nuts some go insane and some become trekkies.
I'm one of the lucky ones that didn't get spoiled regarding that, which only makes me think about how restricted my interactions with the pony fandom are nowadays – essentially perusing EQDs image posts, following the music scene, and reading fanfiction and the occasional blog.
Which makes me thing of what you said about the anime fandom. I am having a blast this season following the two great anime-original shows currently airing, Darling in the FranXX and Megalobox. It is really fun being able to join in speculation, reacting to situations as they occur, and having to wait a full week to see what comes next. Even Dragon Ball Super, for all its flaws, was fun to follow due to the lack of already published source material to give you spoilers. I compare it to something like Boku no Hero Academia, which is midway through what is shaping up to be the best 1-cour of any Shounen ever, but since I read the Manga I am just waiting for things I already know to be animated.
And even sports suffer from that, specially when they are played on a global scale. It is really hard to stay up for a tournament happening in east Asia (like a lot of the Dota tournaments I follow), so you have to rely on recorded matches. I imagine that things will be even worse for the upcoming World Cup (my first since moving outside of Brazil), where I will need to functionally block all my data feeds, and set aside a good 2 hours before work, if I ever want to watch the matches without spoilers.
As someone who avoided that spoiler... I guess my trick is "don't click for more info on EQD posts unless you're really sure" and "try to watch the episode as close to when it airs as possible".
Granted, we're about to head into major leak time territory, so it's not even gonna be that easy. :/ But avoiding unfiltered content sites -- derpibooru is an especially good example, screenshots pour in minutes after they air anywhere -- seems like a good way to actually avoid stuff.
Even those of us:
Who never visit any Pony sites but this one, EqD, and the RCL can't escape spoilers. Discovery Family themselves ran a promo during the airing of "Grannies Gone Wild" back on April 14th that featured brief clips from upcoming episodes including about three seconds of Spike battling the roc. So I knew it was either a dream sequence or...
Mike
My approach to spoilers is to care more about how things happen rather than exactly what happens. I really care about how the plot and emotions leading to the big events brings things together, so it's hard to really spoil that.
I got spoiled by Fimfic blog posts. Three days after the episode aired. :(
At that point it's 100% on me for not having watched it. But if I'd been spoiled before the episode even went live, I would have been pissed.
Dammit, I hovered over the spoiler tag.
... actually, I have no idea what leak you're talking about...
4871667
I'm going to second this. Knowing what happens is quite a bit less important to me than watching the execution. On that note, it has been a quite a while since I have watched any episodes of MLP because I find the execution less than satisfying.
4873266
I haven't watched any of S9, just read plot synopses and saw the art, because I didn't like the summary of the episodes and decided not to watch something that I probably won't like. Maybe I'll watch the real episodes in a series-long binge once the whole enchilada is on Nutflix.
5116768
Wow, it's been a long time since I posted this comment.
5116816
Just proves that the story (FiM having an absurd amount of leaking content) remains the same and only the characters (S9 leaks instead of S8) are different.