Last week, the internet vomited a storm of hatred for anyone who posted anything indicating things that might possibly have happened in the final episode of the current series of Game of Thrones.
I don’t watch Game of Thrones and therefore I didn’t care. I do care about wrestling though. On the same day, I had been avoiding the internet until I was able to watch the latest pay per view, Money In the Bank after I’d got back from work.
Initially my thinking was: can’t all the people who are getting upset about Game of Thrones spoilers just stay off the internet for a few hours? I know some people need it for work, but the likelihood is that they are just so attached to checking their phone every 30 seconds that they can’t stay away from it.
At the end of the week, though, I changed my mind.
I found out what happens in the latest episode. I didn’t intend to as I really don’t care. I overhead two people at work discussing it and I discovered who dies. It is so easy for people to spoil things for others and blaming the victim is just as wrong here as it is anywhere else. It is symptomatic of a culture where people aren’t as considerate of others as they could be.
When I’ve been spoilered previously on wrestling sometimes it’s been my own fault because I’ve Googled something such as “How old is the Undertaker” and accidentally brought up headlines about the event I’m watching. Partly it is because of dicks. I intentionally unfollowed all wrestlers on Twitter as they are the most likely to be tweeting about an event before I see it. Then a guy from a band I posted about the result of the main event. Hence my now self-imposed social media blackout on Mondays after a pay per view.
I have also recently finished playing Season One of the excellent Walking Dead video game. Just before I did, I was in the process of recommending it to a friend and I was about to send the link to the Android app when I realised it had a massive spoiler in one of the reviews. Seriously, dude. Do you not think that someone who might want to play the game without knowing what happens might want to read a couple of reviews? I can’t even fathom the mentality of someone like that.
I get the need to talk about things you enjoy. It’s human nature, especially if you want to discuss the art you have experienced. But a bit of consideration is required.
There is also a weird culture of self-spoilering by reading TV guides which tell you who is going to die in Eastenders (or whichever other soap). I always found this confusing. Why would you want to know what’s going to happen in something before you watch it? But then I’m not the sort of person who watches soap. Just the male soap opera that is wrestling. With wrestling, I do sometimes read websites which predict results of Pay Per Views, although this is mostly because I want to see what other people think will happen as I don’t have many people to discuss wrestling with in real life as most of my friends have actually grown up.
I’m wondering if there has been a slight change in the way things have happened recently. Netflix have started releasing entire seasons of shows in one batch, and this perhaps makes people realise that not everyone is watching it at the same stage.
The new series of Orange is the New Black was released a couple of weeks ago but I’ve not seen anyone say anything about it yet. This could be because it’s got weaker since the first series, it could be because not many people have made it all the way through yet or perhaps because it is easy to understand that not everyone would be at the same stage in their viewing due to the way it has been released.
There is though the question of when is it okay to talk about something. I’ve recently been listening to Richard Herring’s Edinburgh Fringe Podcast (or as all the cool kids are calling it, RHEFP) where he was discussing how someone was annoyed at him for giving away something that happens in the 1970s TV series Colditz. The implication is that enough time has passed that if you haven’t seen it now, then you clearly don’t care enough to not get spoilered.
This goes back to the point about understanding that not everyone is at their same stage in viewing something, though. It may well be that someone has just only just discovered a show. The issue is that if we were always avoiding talking about something for fear of spoiling something for someone, then we would never be able to discuss art at all.
I think a balance needs to be struck though, and the situation where two colleagues were discussing Game of Thrones is not quite as I described it. One of them did ask the other first if they had seen the final episode. And herein lies the crux of the matter. You need to understand who you are talking to about the issue and whether and innocent bystanders are likely to get caught in the cross fire.
In a work situation, there are maybe one or two people nearby and you will probably know if any of them care enough for you to need to avoid talking about it around them. This happened in my previous job – you knew that everyone watched The Apprentice (partly because we had a sweepstake on it) so you made sure that everyone in earshot was up to date.
The problem is that the internet is international and social media is a platform that anyone can send stuff to, it is so easy to accidentally see a snippet of information that gives the game away. There is also no possible way for you to ensure that everyone reading your message is up to date with the show you are watching. In fact, it is probable that not everyone is up to date with it, and therefore the best thing to do is to be considerate and not post something that clearly gives away what is going to happen.
A number of people have learnt to be more considerate now, although you will always have people who haven’t themselves been spoilered and learnt the lesson of not telling everyone what happens. Sometimes a website will give away a spoiler and that is exceptionally mean. No websites, that’s a bad websites. I can understand reviewing an episode but not writing stories with big headlines about what happens.
Maybe I’m just over sensitive about this in a way. I’d like to think that I’m not overreacting but then I am the sort of person who avoids watching film trailers as I like to watch a film knowing as little about it as possible. I think though, if you’ve invested a lot of time in something – for example watching five seasons of it – you would be pretty justified in being annoyed at having it spoiled for you.
I guess what I’m trying to say is, wherever possible, try to avoid mentioning when talking about something openly a piece of information which would spoil the enjoyment of someone watching it if they knew that piece of information.
And it might be petty but if if someone does it to you, reply with “Vader is Luke’s father” and they might just change their ways.