As you know, I've been waiting on House of Dynamite to drop for months now, ever since I finished Nuclear War: A Scenario. Now I’ve watched it, and I want to talk to you about it, but specifically I want to talk about the ending, so I won’t (yet) but it got me thinking this week about spoiler warnings and ROT13.
If you are not, like me, a decrepit old lady of the internet, you might not be familiar with the Caesar cypher that was my first experience with spoiler warnings. A Caesar cypher (also called a substitution cypher) is one of the oldest forms of encryption, where you shift the letters of the alphabet a known number of places.
This is now the stuff of kid’s decoder rings, rather than serious encryption for military secrets, but it got a fabulous second life on the early internet. In usenet forums this cypher (specifically ROT13 — or “rotation 13” — moving the letters 13 places) was used to obscure the punchlines of jokes and spoilers.
Using ROT13, each letter in the text is replaced by the letter 13 positions after it in the alphabet. What makes ROT13 special is that applying it twice returns the original text, so it’s symmetrical. This makes it perfect for encoding and decoding online. So, if I want to tell you a joke, and I don’t want you to read the punchline too fast, I can use ROT13:
Why did the chicken cross the road?
Gur ebnq orgenlrq vg svefg.
(don’t worry you don’t need to get out pen and paper, there are any number of sites that will translate this for you)
So, this cypher was perfect when you were posting in text-based forums and wanted to avoid spoilers. Spoiler warnings started (as so many things do) in sci-fi groups, but also in groups dedicated to discussing puzzles. (I was reminded of ROT13 when I jumped into the forums associated with Type Help - the lovely text adventure I recommended to you months back - and the players were using it there). In 1995, the guide to netiquette known as RFC1855 stipulated:
Some groups permit (and some welcome) posts which in other circumstances would be considered to be in questionable taste. Still, there is no guarantee that all people reading the group will appreciate the material as much as you do. Use the Rotate utility (which rotates all the characters in your post by 13 positions in the alphabet) to avoid giving offense.
In groups which discuss movies or books it is considered essential to mark posts which disclose significant content as "Spoilers". Put this word in your Subject: line. You may add blank lines to the beginning of your post to keep content out of sight, or you may Rotate it.
As we moved from text-based platforms to the web, some places made it easy to hide text. Tumblr lets you put more content “behind the cut”, so a user has to click on “keep reading” to see the spoiler.
Reddit’s markdown mode uses >!spoiler!<. Discord uses double pipes ||spoiler||.
It seems like every few years we go back and forth on whether spoiler warnings are good or bad, but as everyone now watches shows and movies on their own time, it becomes a bit up for grabs, taking hold only when there’s a huge moment in an appointment-viewing show.
Still, I have to stay off socials or mute words to avoid seeing sports results, or the Love Island final, or who wins Traitors. The reality is that we live post the death of the monoculture, and so there are fewer and fewer of those moments. And noone can really agree on the rules anyway. Plus, research tells us that we actually prefer getting spoiled.
It is possible that spoilers enhance enjoyment by actually increasing tension. Knowing the ending of Oedipus Rex may heighten the pleasurable tension caused by the disparity in knowledge between the omniscient reader and the character marching to his doom. This notion is consistent with the assertion that stories can be reread with no diminution of suspense.
Regardless of whether they’re good OR bad, I realised this is more of what’s wrong with the current tools we’re using for groups, which we talked about last week. Facebook doesn’t have a spoiler tag. Whatsapp certainly doesn’t. Neither does Slack (though you can thread there I guess to hide content). So, when we get on to building that new infrastructure, we need to accommodate hiding text (for a whole raft of reasons, not just because someone still doesn’t know Bruce Willis is dead in The Sixth Sense).
Healthy online communities respect that noone wants to be ambushed. I still haven’t seen Charlie Kirk’s death, but that’s only through really carefully curating what I see. Giving people clear warnings, putting sensitive visuals behind cuts or spoiler tags, and letting us opt in, not be forced to look, is key. Platforms should make those protections the default: mute lists, keyword filters, sensitive-media blur, time-boxed spoiler tags. So the burden isn’t always on the most vulnerable to build a moat.
Anyway, here’s how I felt about House of Dynamite. Gur zbivr jnf tevccvat ohg GUR RAQVAT??? Vg svavfurf orsber jr xabj vs gur zvffvyr rira ynaqf. Vg jnf UNYS n zbivr. V jnag rirelguvat gung unccraf ARKG. Htu, erznxr Gur Qnl Nsgre.
This newsletter will be coming to you from various airport transit lounges for the next two weeks. If you’re coming to beyond tellerrand or ffconf please reply and let me know! I’d love to give you a hug and/or a sticker. ALSO also I’m coming back through Singapore for a couple of days, so if you’re there shout out.
I was interested to read this issue of PHONE TIME about new attempts at photo-sharing apps (focussing on Locket).
“One of the things our users always tell us is they like it because every piece of content they see, they actually like,” he said. “It’s not like anything crazy, but if it’s someone you actually care about, then just a selfie or a picture of their lunch, anything like that, will actually be pretty fun to see.”
Imagine — seeing content from people you care about on social media? 🫠 - Loved this short documentary (9min!) from 404 Media about the lost art of neon signs:
Tiff from Cyber Celibate is still looking for all of you to draw your own map of the internet, and this is such a fun idea you should do it, right now.
What does your internet look like?
Send me your internet maps!!!!
- Draw the internet as you imagine it to be today
- Indicate where “home” is on the map
- Send your submissions to tiffany@breakfastatmyhouse.com
Take any and all creative liberty with this—submissions close by end of November!
Forward this email to someone who spoiled you.
