{"id":201,"date":"2016-05-27T23:40:32","date_gmt":"2016-05-27T23:40:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/13.201.39.237\/?p=201"},"modified":"2016-05-27T23:40:32","modified_gmt":"2016-05-27T23:40:32","slug":"game-of-thrones-got-spoilers-torrents-fans-melodrama","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/13.207.105.184\/?p=201","title":{"rendered":"What Happens When You Just Don\u2019t Get GoT"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

S<\/span>o who died this week? No, wait! Don\u2019t tell me. Who didn\u2019t leave the door open and why the hell not? What happened at that wedding \u2013 you know, tha-at one? Hodor, Hodor, Hodor. Is that other fellow alive or dead? Or is he both alive and dead? Will the TV series finish before the books do? No, wait! Don\u2019t tell me.\n\nLong gone is the\u00a0time when Mondays used to suck just for the regular, average, everyday, ordinary reasons all working people could relate to. Now, there\u2019s also the melodramatic <\/p>Game of Thrones (GOT)<\/em> spectacle to contend with. Maybe I\u2019m spending too much time with all the wrong people, but is it not getting worse with each passing episode?\n\nOne innocuous Monday, sometime last year, this writer made the mistake of stating, with no underhand intentions, that \u201cI know nothing\u201d in a big gathering. Ten people called me Jon Snow \u2013 each one naturally feeling cleverer than the last \u2013 and I smiled in fake acknowledgement until my cheekbones began to crackle. (I got the reference much later, thanks to Google.) Recently, I was almost an unwitting part of a GOT<\/em> episode home screening to be attended by a dozen people, featuring a big hi-res television, mood lighting, popcorn, beer, chips, and lots of tissue paper.\n\nThere are people I know who refuse to log on to the internet all day for fear of spoilers, since they only get time to watch the episode at night. Others get off on either a) disclosing major plot points the second they finish watching an episode, spoiling it for anyone who happens to hear or read them, or b) making up fake spoilers just for kicks. Then there are the ones who bitch and moan for six whole days after each spoiler that comes their way. There\u2019s also an altogether different category of GOT<\/em> users that prefers to wait for the entire season to get over, so they can binge-watch over soggy potato chips and Diet Coke one wasted weekend. (This lot is known as the idiot category.)\n

I should clarify that this is not a cathartic unloading designed to help me deal with the Fear-turned-Reality of Missing Out (FROMO). Sure, feeling left out isn\u2019t great, but social acceptance is only a 400 MB illegal download away.<\/blockquote>\nAfter watching an episode, friends greet each other like old war veterans comparing slain limbs over a bottle of cheap rum, elongating the syllable in \u201cfuck\u201d until hell freezes over (f-aaaaaaaaaaaaa<\/em>…ck). The internet is filled with cryptic one-word status updates on social media; knowing glances are exchanged at the workplace or in trains, cabs, and autos. Wherever you look, people are frantically checking their phones for no apparent reason; they\u2019re sweating and shaking, or just grinning stupidly. I want to discuss the etymology of \u201cthulla\u201d and whether or not it\u2019s pejorative to pigs, but all around me, people are talking about newly exposed breasts, lead actors bumped off, bearded old writers, lead actors reappearing. Soon, the season ends and some \u201cWinter is Coming\u201d (woo-hoo) nonsense takes over the airwaves ad nauseam.\n\nI should clarify that this is not a cathartic unloading designed to help me deal with the Fear-turned-Reality of Missing Out (FROMO). Sure, feeling left out isn\u2019t great, but social acceptance is only a 400 MB illegal download away. In any case, I\u2019ve never been particularly intrigued by the fantasy genre in fiction (what\u2019s a Gollum?), and the one GoT<\/em> episode I tried watching a year ago was SO boring I ended up reading a book instead.\n\nBy all accounts, it\u2019s a good, well-made show (and set of books), even if it does sound a little manipulative and Marilyn Manson shock-rocky to me. (\u201cChalo, production meeting today. Which actor \u2013 female obviously \u2013 will take her clothes off this week? Who are we going to kill next time? How do we keep the masala going \u2013 should we do an item number in June?\u201d) But I concede that I have no right to critically analyse the show, given I\u2019ve seen all of nine minutes of the pilot episode and none since.\n\nWhat\u2019s fascinating is how GOT<\/em>, at least while the season is underway, has become this grand cultural phenomenon \u2013 a beast unto itself. Without fail, each Monday (Sunday evening, US time presumably) is greeted with farcical fanfare. It\u2019s all the more surprising considering we live in the age of zero attention sp-\u2026\n\nPeople forget things mid-sentence (or mid-tweet). There\u2019s a constant search for the next new thing to discuss. Everything is the flavour of the week. Remember how we were all complaining about or saluting Modiji and his good and simple tax? Who cares now? It\u2019s old news; we\u2019ll talk about it next year \u2013 maybe. Everything is a quick fix and a hot-take. The Women\u2019s World Cup\u00a0just concluded, but I\u2019ve already forgotten who won. Maybe that\u2019s a stretch, but I\u2019ve genuinely forgotten who won the last cricket World Cup. Or the name of the most recent Salman Khan\u00a0film \u2013 is it Bulb? Table Lamp? A\/C?\n\nAnd yet, somehow, the first half of the first day of each week unites a (very, very, very vocal) majority of the English-speaking, torrents-using, intellectual property-stealing young women and men of our times in directing their critical gaze toward the latest Game of Thrones<\/em> wonder episode. Even if the tone suggests otherwise, I\u2019m actually quite awestruck by how consistent the show is in evoking such strong reactions. Is there anything else in pop culture that can manage such a feat?\n\nThere isn\u2019t. So, very childishly, the gripe here becomes: Why Game of Thrones<\/em> and not something just marginally less annoying, obnoxious, alienating, and in-your-face? People are obviously capable of focussing for periods longer than seven seconds \u2013 occasionally. So why waste that golden opportunity on recurring deaths, hackneyed online memes, hidden swords\/doors\/flying chariots? (I assume). Unless that stuff is exactly what holds the attention. In that case, I\u2019m happy to live with the FROMO.\n\nThis article\u00a0was published earlier on May 30, 2016.\u00a0<\/em>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How can the fear of spoilers keep you off the internet for a whole day? I simply can\u2019t wrap my head around the Game of Thrones melodrama.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":202,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[82],"tags":[309,310,311,312,313,71,72,314],"class_list":["post-201","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pop-culture","tag-game-of-thrones","tag-game-of-thrones-season-7","tag-got-s7","tag-got-season-7","tag-pop-culture","tag-web-series","tag-web-shows","tag-winter-is-coming"],"yoast_head":"\nWhat Happens When You Just Don\u2019t Get GoT<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"How can the fear of spoilers keep you off the internet for a whole day? 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