Show of Hands: Who Wants to See Star Wars? All of You are Why I’m Planning a Social Media Blackout for Myself
Ha! Fooled you! I can’t even see your hands.
The “hooray for Star Wars” mob is one that I have no qualms about joining. If I were the jamming type, I might say “Star Wars is my jam.” But since that sort of makes no sense as a sentence even if I were the jamming type, I shall instead say this:
I am rather looking forward to Star Wars.
I shall let your imagination scale up the excitement.
My heart doth so judder…
In the majority of people looking forward to Star Wars, I also belong to what I think must be a significant minority:
I’m not interested in seeing it on opening weekend.
Which will be a problem because…
Human Beings are Rude
And when I say human beings…you know who you are.
Before I get accused of, I don’t know, being un-American or something, here’s the deal:
I like Star Wars as literature far more than I like it as a cultural phenomenon.
Star Wars has had this huge impact on culture. It’s been described over and over, and I shan’t make an attempt to do that subject justice. I respect and appreciate that cultural milieu, so I understand and respect every single person interested in participating — in being able to say, “I was there.” That makes perfect sense to me.
Thing is, though, I have a personal relationship with Star Wars too. On the plinth of literary accomplishments that formed me as a creator, sitting right in the most honorable place, are J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit, and Star Wars.
That has a lot to do with timing. I don’t need to tell you about my whole childhood; suffice to say that I absorbed Star Wars at exactly the right age. The first round of the digitally remastered special editions of the movies came out when I was about ten or eleven. As a promotion of those editions, they ran the special editions in theaters near me. It just so happened that they’d recently built this madly huge movie theater in my neighborhood, and as an obsessive home schooled kid who was already into Star Wars I had done the math to do things like figure out how big a) an X-Wing fighter was, and b) the movie screen was. When you’re eleven or twelve, or whatever, and you know that you’re looking at a life-sized X-Wing fighter… It felt cool. Let’s put it that way. It just feels cool.
Sorry, waxing nostalgic there fore a second.
Got off Topic: People are Rude. Right. Back on Track.
Star Wars is important to me. Not as a cultural phenomenon, but as a personal piece of literature.
So I don’t want to see it on opening weekend. Not because I’m antisocial, and not because it feels like that’s the “it” thing and I have to make myself special by avoiding the “it” thing. I am perfectly happy to go with friends, and I am so stoked by the idea of the hullabaloo that’ll come because of the openings. It’ll be a circus in the most noble and wondrous way. I’m thinking I might find where my buddies are going to see the movie and visit them while they’re in line, just so I can go see the event. It’ll be cool.
No, I don’t really feel badly about all that… That’s not it.
Know when I want to see Star Wars?
Midweek, maybe around lunch time.
The reason I want this is for the same reason that, when you finally get that book you’ve been waiting for, that sequel to the amazing book that you’ve been counting the days till it gets released…that book that just makes you smile…that one you for which you’ve stocked up on your favorite tea…that book for which you’ve prepared your favorite sitting spot. You want to immerse yourself in it. You want this to be between you and the book.
That’s how I feel about Star Wars.
Oh, and People are Rude.
I keep getting off topic. Or on topic. Not sure which. Anyway, here’s the problem:
Spoilerverse. That’s what they should rename the world right now.
By people, by the way, I don’t mean individuals. I mean the species.
People are rude. They’re not malicious, fortunately. Just eager. They’re eager to share all their observations and excitement. They’re eager to find other people with similar interests. They’re eager for human contact. We all know that within moments of the first viewing of Star Wars finishing that the interwebz/spoilerversenet will flood with all the usual mystifying fuzz. All the fan theories. All the highlighted flaws. Hundreds and thousands of reviews; from the tweets to the novel-length analyses, they will be there, manifestations of big, SAT words: inexorable, saturated, exhaustive, predictive. All produced through eagerness. People are good at eagerness.
They’re also bad at politeness.
In most instances.
I had a conversation with a buddy about this. We shifted quickly to talking about Harry Potter. Star Wars and Harry Potter have similar degrees of cultural impact, so the subjects fit together. We made the observation that, quite amazingly, people were polite about the end of Harry Potter — by and large. You could clear a room by shouting out that you were going to talk about Harry Potter with someone else who’d finished the book. That part was entertaining. But it was also immensely heart-warming to realize that people were inclined to warn people they’d be talking about that.
And, furthermore, the internet sort of…I don’t know, to my memory, you didn’t have to worry about spoilers falling on you from every side when you got onto the interwebz/spoilerversenets.
I don’t know if we’ve changed, or if the internet has changed, or if “’cause books,” but for whatever reason I’m concerned that it’ll be maddeningly annoying to live through the broiling mess of spoilerverse for even a day or two after opening weekend till I go see it myself.
I’d really like to send out a memo to everyone in the world and tell them to hush about the movie for a couple weeks. Not everyone is seeing it opening weekend. So shut the cuss up.
I can’t change the world, so I’m going to change my habits. Change starts at lunchtime, they say. (I think that’s what they say.)
Finally Said How People are Rude. Now, What I’m Going to Do about It.
I plan to go into a social media black-out for the time after opening weekend until I see Star Wars myself.
This will require several stages of preparation.
First Stage: Informing My Loved Ones to Treat Me as Dead for about a Week
The idea of seeing Star Wars after opening weekend isn’t the most popular one with my family. My siblings are all seeing it at the earliest possible moment. My friends are mostly seeing it opening weekend too. I’ll have to prepare a memo to send to family and friends, respectfully asking them to pretend like I’m dead for a while. I’ve considered less extreme memos to send. I could ask them to cease contact except in emergencies, but their emergencies might be things like, “what’s this piece of Star Wars trivia?” Which, because I’m bright, will include spoilers. So instead, they’ll be told that I am temporarily dead, and I would appreciate it if they would respect my repose.
Second Stage: Figure out How to Deactivate Every Single Social Media In- or Outlet that I Have Access to
If I need to, I’ll be uninstalling every social media app from my phone. Hopefully I can set notifications to silent for a week or so. Not sure which will be more important. I will probably be asking my girlfriend to hide my laptop too.
This stage is obviously important. I am on tumblr, and, let’s face it, they really ought to rename that shit “spoilr,” and get it over with.
Third Stage: Self-discipline
Okay, my plan, because of this stage, is probably doomed. I am quite clever. If all of my electronics are disabled, sabotaged, or confiscated, I will probably still know of three or four ways of getting media updates. I’ve been cursed with the resourcefulness of a spy.
And I work in an office with internet access.
Grim prospect. Self-discipline is difficult.
All that Said…
Anyone Want to See Star Wars Midweek after Opening Weekend Sometime? That’s where I’ll be.