It does! "Spoiler" phobia has led us to an internet culture in which you can't talk about anything because there's that one doofus out there who has had his whole life to watch the "Godfather" movies and never has but will still get mad if you tell him that Michael has Fredo killed in the end. Now people are demanding spoiler tags for news stories--Robert Durst "confessing" and getting arrested is news. I've seen people wanting sports to be spoilered--folks got mad at news outlets for doing their jobs and reporting on events at the Olympics, and I saw someone in a thread here expressing irritation that the radio station he tuned in to on his way home reported the outcome of a Cardinals game that he was recording. One day we won't be able to talk about World War II for fear of spoiling the fact that Hitler loses.Does it really matter that much to you?
Anyway, here are some pretty good articles about this really dumb controversy.
http://grantland.com/hollywood-prospect ... -the-jinx/
http://www.vulture.com/2015/03/spoiler- ... er_vultureIf you or someone you love has participated in the spoiler “debate” around The Jinx, step back for a second and consider the absurdity of what you’re involved in. There is no debate. The Jinx cannot be spoiled. It isn’t Game of Thrones; it’s a documentary investigation that may have brought about the arrest of a man in the investigation of the killing of a woman. There’s no other side to this conversation, no standard for revealing that information, and it belongs on a CNN scroll and the front page of the Times and in Daily Beast email blasts, insofar as any piece of news related to a high-profile murder investigation belongs in those places....
...There is a tremendous arrogance to the belief that The Jinx can be spoiled. It implies a possessiveness toward the story; it suggests that the consumption of Durst’s narrative belongs to the viewer in some way. It’s a confusion inspired by our relationship to art, which depends on an audience: Without an observer, art (and, more loosely, entertainment) is missing a significant part of its nature. Art requires a viewer to be activated, and its impact doesn’t exist otherwise....
....The Jinx does not need us. If no one ever saw The Jinx, it wouldn’t change the fact that Robert Durst was accused of killing three people. Robert Durst made his possible confession regardless of the number of people watching the television show he “stars” in — speaking of which: Seeing him referred to in news reports as the “star” of The Jinx was … strange — and, though of course the show’s popularity has affected its rejuvenation as an active case, that isn’t the immediate catalyst.
When a famous murder suspect all but confesses, it is news, and the fact that the confession happened within the confines of a television show does not mean that that news becomes subject to the same etiquette as the latest Game of Thrones killing. Because that's fiction, and it doesn't really matter.
