Beth is a HUGE Harry Potter fan. She makes costumes, she collects the souvenirs and she is passionate about the books like I am about bottoms. Beth’s plan for the last Harry Potter book coming out this friday at midnight is simple: she’s locking herself in her room, avoiding the internet and reading the damn thing straight through before anyone can spoil it for her.
Alas, her plan failed. She read a spoiler on a fan site. Apparently in Germany, they have the book already and someone posted pictures and a damn death count list of who dies. Beth was devastated.
I investigated. I am not that big of a Potter fan. Let’s leave it at that and all be friends, okay? I decided to go brave the scary internet and see if in fact, Beth’s spoilers were true. What I found were fascinating examples of how people are more interesting than fiction.
The first spoiler I came across was apparently from a Leet Hacker for Christ who was spoiling the book as a blow against Neo-Paganism. Let that roll around in your head for a moment. Imagine what the counter-strike would be: Potter fans spoiling the Bible on the Internet.
OMG, Jesus DIESSSSS!!! But its cool yo because Jesus gets back up and is fine three days later. Judas dies though.
Anyhoo, Leet Hacker for Christ says Hermione dies. You know what? The cynical non-Potter fan in me got really sad when I read that. I didn’t want it to be true. Not the girl. Kill the other friend, Ron. It’ll make him famous, but leave my geeky girl alone.
So with heavy heart, I went looking to see if anyone has debunked Leet Hacker for Christ. Lo and behold, what I found was another spoiler from another source! Holy crap, the forces of evil are working over time. Strangely enough, these people leaked what seemed to be another book as this time, Ron dies.
Whew.
Wait a minute . . .
I found a few other spoilers too, but they ran along the same theme. Ron dies, or Hermione dies. Quite frankly that’s a given, isn’t it? I mean that’s like spoiling that tomorrow will be sunny. It stands a good chance of it, but that doesn’t mean you have inside knowledge. It’s like a giant guessing game except some people put in way too much work into faking their evidence.
For me, I get fascinated by what motivates people to even come up with imaginary spoilers. Some people are assholes, and probably hoped they made a few people like beth really upset. I can almost understand that mentality but dude, there is something really sad about how much work asshole put into making someone else cry. I came across a 250 odd page fake excerpt. At that point, making a fangirl cry just makes you the bigger nerd.
Part of me wonders how much of the spoiling drive is for net traffic. Think about it. You could raise massive traffic with your fake story and get people who would never come by in a million years to check out your site. In a way, I wonder if you could piggyback someone else’s success by faking spoilers to their success.
In that same vein, could you maliciously hurt another company that way? Let’s say I was launching my new book, ‘Mary Sue and Magic MacGuffin’ that same week, and I wanted to kick my main competitor in the nuts. Would a company engage in a little spoiler attack to hurt enthusiasm. Goddess, it makes me wish I was still writing ‘Thigh Vs Thigh’. That would be hilarious.
Amy would totally be a Hermione fan, while Bethany would identify with Cho. Otto of course would be hot for McGonagall.
Ahem.
I love hoaxes. It is the ultimate form of fiction making, to create a lie believable enough for people to suspend disbelief enough to think it is true. I just can’t wrap my head around doing a hoax that is going to be disproven literally in three days.
For the record, this is my spoiler thought- Harry will not die but I bet he gets depowered. If he loses his ability to make magic then you have a nice metaphor about how growing up removes you from the magic of childhood. That’s how I would do it, which if Hollywood has taught me anything, it is that what will actually happen is Harry will die, Hermione will die and Ron will whine about how unfair it is that he doesn’t get a heroic death.