Overly Concerned By Spoilers?

It’s a question I’ve been asking myself of late. Am I too concerned by spoilers? Speaking from the perspective of being the recipient of spoilers I don’t think so. I’m fairly relaxed about the information I receive. I still happily watch movie and game trailers. I don’t mind discussing gameplay experiences with people further along than I am.

There are limits of course. I don’t mind knowing that a certain type of thing happens, but I most assuredly don’t want to know how it turns out or what further implications it may carry.

It can be difficult to articulate where that line lies, so perhaps by way of example… Let’s say in a book, the protagonist and his party are attacked by trolls on their journey. I’m OK being told that. But I don’t want to know either when it happens or what the outcome of this event is.

I briefly entertained the idea of going in completely blind to Elden Ring but that only lasted until the Network Test rolled around and content creators started milking the opening small section of the game for all it was worth. Then my resolve fell to the wayside and I watched all of it. Alllll of it. That aside, I have been avoiding walkthroughs or lets plays to experience as much of the rest of the game for the first time by my own hands as possible.

Though all that isn’t at all the shape of my question.

The question in full is: Am I being too conservative in my approach to ‘spoilers’ when it comes to the likes of game and book discussion?

I tend to err on the side of respecting perhaps the most extreme end of the spoiler-sensitivity spectrum. But I admit I do find this… quite restrictive. Sometimes, as I did with Final Fantasy XIV Heavensward, I’ll go to the lengths of a non-spoiler post one day and a no holds barred post the next. Whenever spoilers are involved, warnings galore. That goes without saying.

But particularly when it comes to book reviews I find this self-imposed limitation of not talking about the content at all to be very limiting. It is typically considered to be a core part of any good book review to include a concise synopsis of the content and reflecting on the reviews I wrote in the years gone by (e.g., Review of The Black Prism (Lightbringer #1) by Brent Weeks) it seems I was a little more open on this.

I believe catering to the extreme sensitivity to spoiler end of the spectrum is resulting in weaker reviews (and sometimes, posts) — so I suppose to return to my opening question: Am I being overly concerned by spoilers?

While acknowledging it will sometimes be different from ‘thing’ to ‘thing’, where generally do your personal lines lie? Are you on a similar page as me where spoilers are concerned, or somewhere else entirely?