Tags and Spoilers

[wrabbit]

So I have noticed some fans saying that they prefer to ignore or not read the tags on AO3 because they might find them spoilery. As someone who doesn't consider many things spoilers I found this intriguing. I would like to pose a few questions to everyone:

1) Do you typically read tags? How often do you search by tag?

2) What kinds of tags do you find spoilery and why?

3) What do you want to know about the content of a story before you read? Why?

4) What do you not want to know about the content of a story before you read? Why?

5) Would whether you consider any tags to be spoilery or not be affected if the author wrote the content indicated by the tags creatively or in an atypical way?

Comments

[sophia_sol]

I'm an edge case for a lot of these questions, probably! I am as far in the opposite direction from a spoilerphobe as it's possible to get.

1) I always at least skim through the tags of a fic I'm about to read. I don't search by tag super often but I am always very grateful to be able to when I am in the mood to.

2) I'm the sort of person who prefers to go into any given narrative with full knowledge of what to expect, so I like having spoilers given to me in tags/summary/wherever. This means that I don't have a good sense of what is and isn't considered a "spoiler" because I personally want to know everything.

3) Whether it has a happy ending (and what the author considers to be a happy ending...), what plot twists to expect, what tropes to expect, what endgame pairings to expect, etc. I find narratives stressful when I don't know what to expect so I am much happier reading a story when I know what's going to happen in it - then it's about the experience of the narrative instead of worrying about what might or might not happen next.

4) I can't think of anything I wouldn't want to know before going in. If it's something someone might be wary of sharing because it might "spoil" the story then I want to know.

5) If the content indicated by the tags is done in an atypical way, I would want to know that going in too!

[turlough]

I find narratives stressful when I don't know what to expect so I am much happier reading a story when I know what's going to happen in it - then it's about the experience of the narrative instead of worrying about what might or might not happen next.

I pretty much agree with everything in this comment but particularly with this. And it's not just the narrative, roughly knowing what will happen makes it possible for me to enjoy the craftmanship of the writer in a way I wouldn't be able to if I were focused on worrying what would happen next. In other words, it's the journey itself that interests me, not the goal.