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

[gehayi]

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

All the time. I also check tags before I post to AO3 to see if a tag like the concept I'm thinking of already exists.

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

Something that tells me explicitly who dies and/or how. Or something that tells me who gets raped/hurt/possessed...you get the idea.

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

I want to know the fandom, the characters and whether or not it involves sex, because aside from a very few writers, I tend not to read stories that get explicit. The same goes for kinks.

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

How it ends. Why bother reading the story if I can tell what happens and how it ends from the tags?

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?

Not really. I mean, I get that some people are triggered by harm or death to characters so writers announce the harm/death in tags...but that doesn't make the harm or death more interesting to me as a reader. Knowing about it just tells me that I don't have to read the story.