I wanted to write about this last week, but I was afraid. Like many fans, I was waiting for the final Harry Potter book to be released, so that I could see how J. K. Rowling's series ended, hopefully answering questions such as where Snape's real loyalties lay, and what, of course, would happen to Harry in the final pages. And perhaps responding to such common fears, a few days before the book was released, curious messages started appearing on game chat boards around the Internet, warning users about posting spoilers, such as this message on the Allakhazam boards for FFXI: "depending on the severity of your spoiler, your post count, and account status, posting a spoiler on this board will result in a punishment ranging from a 72 hour mute to a complete banning from the site". What we appeared to have was the incursion of one virtual world and its secrets, into the realm of another, or many others. Or maybe it was an acknowledgment that our various worlds, realms, etc, are hopeless intermixed and confused these days. So much for magic circles?
Going back to my lead, I was afraid, like many others, that my pleasure for the book would be spoiled. My friends and I joked that we were going to cut ourselves off from Internet access from the moment the book came out until we finished reading. And for my part, I did so. No email, no web browsing, by god no games forums, and no Facebook. I didn't want a spare comment, innocent or otherwise, spoiling my surprise.
I've written elsewhere about why gamers cheat in games, and one of the reasons that many *don't* is because it can ruin the surprise in a game--the unexpected turn of events, the ending, great dialogue, etc. Fair enough- I was always the person who didn't want to peek at her Christmas gifts early. I appreciate the surprise. But what was significant with this book release was how difficult it would be to keep that element of surprise intact.
I couldn't merely indicate to my family and nearby friends that I didn't want to know what happened to Harry and Hermione et al. I couldn't be sure that merely skimming email subject lines wouldn't be problematic. Facebook friends' status might give something away. Hanging around in Bree in Lord of the Rings Online might result in some random /ooc or /advice comment about the book's plot. I had no social contract with such a wide group of people to prevent random information slipping through. The innocent or malicious could equally broadcast to a large group with ease.
Tying this to virtual worlds, I believe we've hit a point (or probably long since driven past it) where we can no longer claim separation between our various worlds. There is no "space apart" unless it's a space shared by perhaps 3 friends cut off from the rest of the planet. We have networked ourself to share, to communicate, and when we wish to *stop* the communication, for whatever reason, we discover just how difficult and messy and intertwined our channels have become. So while it's easy for us to celebrate the 'new connectedness' I think we also need to acknowledge when connectedness can become a problem, in both trivial and nontrivial matters.
That doesn't mean necessarily mean doom or gloom, or alternately a bright and shiny future. It just means an altered form of connectedness (I refuse to say a web 2.0 future). If I call in sick I don't just need to stay home anymore- I should probably also stay off IM, forums, etc. So, other thoughts on what this all means? It certainly doesn't mean bad things for Harry--sales of Deathly Hallows are the highest yet for the series.
I'm wondering if Blizzard has already got there. I seem blind to most of the pop references in WoW but they are blinding when pointed out.
O'Reely?
Yarley!
Are their already Potter ones I wonder?
Posted by: Ren Reynolds | Jul 24, 2007 at 15:44
Heh, I also cut myself off from network contact until I had finished the book. Away messages, Facebook status updates, and email subject lines would be the non-malicious ways in which people might spoil the book for me. Others might try to do so purposefully. I wasn't going to chance a news item about a worm tearing through Windows computers that posted pages from the book or some newspaper reporter or blogger giving away spoilers just because he/she could. Even spam subject lines could have been a problem!
And when I did cut myself off, I realized that I needed to cut myself off from everything. I couldn't just ignore one website or close one application. Just using the computer meant being in contact with someone, which was too much of a possible security breach.
Luckily, I tore through the book and was finished within the next day. I didn't have to be cut off from the webs for too long.
But it was scary. B-)
Posted by: GBGames | Jul 24, 2007 at 15:48
Um call in sick I understand. Too connected I understand. I am worried that my various blogs become connected and then connected to me. Not trivial consequences has me worried. But the main worry I can't share I don't read Potter stories. It is strange because for me all I heard was the mass media, not the Internet much on Potter. Um I should try cutting myself off more. I have gone 13 years with Internet use less than 2 or 3 days off at any one time. Thanks I now know Potter was not your main point.
Posted by: Peter T. | Jul 25, 2007 at 00:28
Try a roleplaying server?
Switch off "ooc" chat channels?
Did WoW ever have a magic circle?
Posted by: Ace Albion | Jul 25, 2007 at 03:55
Mia - I have terranova on my reading list through various links. But today I found your pce through facebook where I was made into a Zombie a while ago by someone...
Anyway I agree with Peter - I have seen much more about Potter on mass media and face to face and offline group contexts and of course as usual I dont know what they are talking about.- but then I dont subscribe to lists or blogs that are Potter focused either (havent read one - and I cant even say its generational...).
Regarding being connected - when I am visiting family in India or travelling to other places in the US or Europe, I dont connect much to the "web 2.0" elements (not because the speed of connection or hardware support does not exist but because my communities of conversation offline are much more fun...) since I am busy socially networking offline and having much more fun doing that. But when I am back in Ohio and working - it seems there is no other way but to connect constantly. For me the option of dis-connecting does not exist when I have deadlines (and you know we have those all the time) and since the house is wirelessly wired - the connection follows me around.
No not doom or gloom - but I'd say work and play habits?
Posted by: Radhika Gajjala | Jul 25, 2007 at 06:47
Funny. I posted about this the other day too but your post is far more eloquent.
The only way to read the book with pleasure was to get it as quickly as possible and then to totally isolate myself until it was finished.
Having said that, it's a great read and a fitting, if comfortable, end to the saga.
Posted by: justgraham | Jul 25, 2007 at 07:29
There's a flipside to this as well. We know we live in an interconnected world. It is our responsibility to be sensitive to this fact in what we ourselves talk about in public spaces where people may unexpectedly come upon what we should realize is something they do not want to hear; the Harry Potter ending is a great example. A responsible user of public spaces of any sort, be those spaces virtual or real, will keep subjects that should go through private messages private and not put it on Facebook, srsly, whoever does that is either intentionally an ass or completely oblivious.
Posted by: Turning | Jul 25, 2007 at 07:42
Thankfully there are still *physical* places you can go to get away from it all. Order of the Phoenix came out on the day I was off on holiday to North Cyprus, and read it while I was away.
Posted by: NoJags Neil | Jul 25, 2007 at 09:49
Is there anywhere we can go to avoid hearing people talk about where they went to avoid hearing the Harry Potter plot?
Richard
Posted by: Richard Bartle | Jul 25, 2007 at 11:20
This is a good segue into a lot of other discussion. Two things I've been lamenting over are the realizations that:
1. I can no longer use game playing as an escapist move... or more precisely I can but I'm not really alone anymore even when I play single-player games. I now share the experience with a ton of others whose opinions I might encounter in everyday life (surfing forums or whatnot) that'll affect how I see the games I play. This saddens me because sometimes I want to turn off all the overhead of dealing with people and their opinions which usually ends with me feeling angry enough to post something which leaves me anxious about my post.
2. The more our worlds collide.. well more like blur rather than collide in some cases.. or maybe converge? Anyway, the more it happens, the more I become depressed and pessimistic that, no, in fact, we aren't actually all participants affecting structural change. We might represent little pockets of emergent culture but we're hardly representative of mass social and political change. Kind of a Marxist (or whoever) view I suppose, that the bigger structure is continually dictated by an elite made up largely by corporations and that we are fooling ourselves to think we can prevent the perpetuation of dominant capitalist (in the bad sense, not the good sense, and yes it does have a good sense, too) culture in our "new" world.
Posted by: Mark Chen | Jul 25, 2007 at 11:57
Right now I'm not sure if I wish i had cut myself off. I ran into one spoiler on facebook, but it turned out to be made up. None the less, believing this spoiler (where several main characters died) to be the case, every time I ran into them I was wondering is this the last of them? It actually heightened the book for me.
Just my two cents.
Posted by: one lucky kid | Jul 25, 2007 at 12:13
Concerning spoilers, personally i don't care about knowing what happens from other people. Reading a novel is about the reading experience, not about knowing facts about the plot such as, for example, 'Harry dies' or 'Hermione Leaves'. Surely people want to know 'How' it happens and how the story evolves and want to experience it for themselves, and not just whether it happens or not. A plot element is not the whole story.
Posted by: Bob13 | Jul 25, 2007 at 12:17
My friends and I agreed to stay away from each other for 24 hours and reject all media use until we finished the book to avoid spoilers.
Posted by: | Jul 25, 2007 at 12:29
I personally bought the book in the early hours in the UK and made sure I read it all before I left the house.
I found waiting in the queue scary in case someone decided to blurt out something for a "laugh".
Posted by: Nije | Jul 25, 2007 at 14:33
So.. was it worth it?
A sword in a lake? "I thought I was deaded but then I woked up and it was all a dream"? All the baddies died and all the goodies lived happily ever after *and* married their childhood sweethearts?
It's high time Rowling had an editor...
Posted by: Nonono | Jul 25, 2007 at 14:57
The BBC's Technology page has Mia's blog entry quoted in their "From the Blogosphere" feature.
BBC Tech
Nice!
Posted by: Boone | Jul 25, 2007 at 14:59
I think it would make far less sense if there was no connection - the different realities of the virtual and physical world are merely technological divides - the virtual world remains an expression of physical technology, so what happens in one is bound to express itself in the other. I guess you could even say they are simply two facets of the same single expanded reality. 2c.
Posted by: Brian Turner | Jul 25, 2007 at 15:17
Harry Potter, Who? I guess it is possible to live unconnected these days!!
Posted by: Steve | Jul 25, 2007 at 19:10
I have the same issue when i miss a football (soccer) game and have to download it later. I have to avoid all news sites, any friends that are into football, or know that I am, and I generally post a sign on my monitor which says that I don't know the result to game X vs Y and please don't tell me.
The amazing thing is, that the sites which free me from my geographically caused emptiness of football (the torrent sites I use because no one broadcasts the games in my country) are brilliant about not posting spoilers, to the point where extra time and penalty shootout torrents are labeled as "interviews and post match" and sometimes games which do not go into extra time have 30 mins extra padding so you can't tell just by the file size/length how a game ends up. Very considerate.
Posted by: | Jul 25, 2007 at 19:56
I must be dumb : i still read " Alice in Wonderland " and " Mary Poppins " and " Tom Sawyer " ,again and again, and i swear i have a lot of fun :)
Posted by: Amarilla | Jul 26, 2007 at 00:42
I see even people who've read your post can't help posting spoilers in the comments... I really can't understand the need to ruin the book for everyone else - unless you're building a car that runs on children's tears.
I have the misfortune of working in a newsroom where hundreds of people felt it was necessary to email us with plot details and scans from the book. I managed to avoid them all (with the exception of one minor spoiler on page 54) but, like you, I took the precautionary measure of staying away from facebook, myspace, and even my own website until I'd got through the book.
Lucky I'm a fast reader, I suppose.
Posted by: Mark | Jul 26, 2007 at 03:14
@Richard: perhaps your house is a potter free discussion zone? :)
@Amarilla: I read many fiction books several times over, like you do. As a kid I almost wore out my copies of the Chronicles of Narnia books from my constant re-reading of them. As many have said, the journey is still more important than the destination, but when, for example, Rowling killed off Dumbledore in book 6, I had heard about it beforehand, and it destroyed a small spark of excitement for me about the book. I read with dread- more dread than usual anyway. Maybe it was because it now felt more like a re-read than an initial read?
One thing I forgot to mention in the initial post is that I often have my media students spend 24 hours without any form of media, and then write a paper about it. Invariably they are titled "Worst day of my life" or "I cracked." There's nothing like cutting yourself off from media to see just how easily and completely it saturates our lives.
And yes, the book was worth it, at least to me. :)
Posted by: Mia | Jul 26, 2007 at 15:55
To me too :)
Now, what could we do ....we can't help it , it's too famous, everyone's talking 'bout it ! Nah, it's ok now, just think of when they'll implant all of us those microchips , and Big Bro telling us how the story ends , just for ( his ) fun :)
Posted by: Amarilla | Jul 26, 2007 at 16:56
@Mia: I've only read through Book 5, and hadn't heard that little plot detail about Dumbledore from Book 6 until just now.
Pot. Kettle. Black. Thanks...
Posted by: Andy Havens | Jul 26, 2007 at 18:50
Mia>perhaps your house is a potter free discussion zone?
It was while first daughter #2 then daughter #1 then wife read the book. Then, they talked about it.
I just read the plot summary on Wikipedia.
That said, I was on the train to London yesterday and although the woman sitting next to me was reading the book I resisted the temptation to ask her if she'd got to the part where ...
Richard
Posted by: Richard Bartle | Jul 27, 2007 at 03:39
@Andy: Mea culpa! I actually thought about whether I should mention that or not, but I figured anyone reading this thread wouldn't be doing so if they hadn't finished the entire series (perhaps even done so several times). The Internet has surely been much kinder to you than me.
@Richard: You are a master of restraint....:p
Posted by: Mia | Jul 27, 2007 at 12:31
Cool Site...pics are great. I put one of them on my desktop. 820240247
Posted by: myspace | Aug 01, 2007 at 08:32