When is it okay to spoil a movie? When does trolling become art? One artist asked these questions by spoiling the ending of Looper to anyone who happened to drive by. SPOILERS AHEAD (duh)
Seriously, many spoilers. DO NOT READ the next paragraph if you care about how the movie resolves the central crisis.
The message reading "LOOPER/SPOILER ALERT/BRUCE WILLIS DIES" was put up on a "hacked" road sign as part of a one-night installation called "Troll." The installation was just a remotely-programmed road sign in Castleberry Hill, Atlanta.
Rather than warn drivers of impending zombie attacks, artists put trollish messages up on the board and "mimic the incendiary remarks put forth by internet pranksters," as the event's web page describes. The installation asks us why we, ourselves troll.
What does it say about us, that given the opportunities the web provides of a perceived audience and anonymity that we can so easily transform into altered and ill-mannered versions of ourselves? Why are so many of us engaging in and enjoying this form of identity deception and how does this affect the online space we all share?
Truth be told, knowing that Bruce Willis dies at the end of Looper isn't that big of a spoiler. It'd be much more of a spoiler to say that the movie spends just as much time on time travel as it does on a telekinetic toddler who can explode people's chests with his mind. It's not like anyone's spoiling The Sixth Sense here, or shouting out that Snape kills Dumbledore.
The question remains if this installation was pointlessly provocative, or if its question about trolling was worthwhile?
Photo Credit: mattbuchanan/instagram