The Thing About Internet Spoilers

I've been meaning to talk about this for a while now, but didn't really have a good example to springboard the topic. The best example in the past few weeks I can think of is probably the "Royal Wedding" on Game of Thrones. People lost their shit about the ending and set Twitter on FIRE. It's a pretty well known fact that Twitter knows no chill even on its slow days, but this was an especially HILARIOUS night to bear witness to.

In fact, this is such a special spoiler, I'm not even going to talk about it until after the jump.

Joffrey's death was so unbelievably satisfying, people started the #twitpicyourjoffreydeathreaction trend....I shit you not.

@OmarHolmon spoilers!!!
— Ify Nwadiwe (@ifysnotfunny) April 14, 2014

Not too long after, you had a significant amount of nigh-obligatory whiners on Facebook AND Twitter (the whining is much worse on Facebook) about evil people and their stupidhead internets posting spoilers. As you can probably tell, I don't have a great deal of sympathy for these people. I agree that some amount of protection from spoilers is appropriate....but the shit has gone too far. In the digital age where there a lot more leeway to catch a show or a movie whenever we feel like it, this "I'll see it eventually/someday" attitude has brought spoilerphobia to heights that border on psychotic where we're all sitting silent in proverbial corners, afraid to talk about the cool thing we saw the other day.

Here's where spoiler-phobia is understandable: If you're at work or wherever and it's a couple of days after whatever it is you've watched, I can understand wanting a degree of radio silence. After all, technology has ensured that "I'll see it eventually" and that we can do other things if we so wish because Life. With that said, "no spoiler" policies are reasonable (in my book, at least) when your intent to watch your show comes with a 48 hour turnaround. Movies...two weeks is logical if someone is passionate enough about to go see it. After that, you're on your own until the dvd releases.

Here's where spoiler-phobia is PSYCHOTIC:  So...the internet. It's fair to say that, at this juncture, social media has evolved to a point where it's basically a microcosm of real life. Have you ever been at an outdoor concert and seen someone recording it with their camera phone running around urging people to shut up because he intends to watch this later? More than likely, the answer is "no" because that would be insane (arguably, you could compare this to comments on Youtube that complain about people cheering during live performances....which is stupid because that's what you're supposed to do at a live show) and possibly narcissistic because they would be making Big Popular Public Thing entirely about themselves. That's what you're doing when you whine and threaten unfollows/unfriends on Facebook and Twitter: You're running around telling 500+ people to shut up....just for you.

SideNote: Game of Thrones is based on a series of somewhat popular books that have been around (and ongoing) since George W. Bush was a sitting President. So was Gladiator, The Matrix trilogy and the Star Wars prequels yet nobody seems to be so fanatical about those.

Yeah, it sucks because a lot of people like social media and want to use social media. But that's also where the "tough shit" factor comes in. It's up to the individual to decide whether they love the art enough to exert self-control for an amount of time or whether they love the internet to a point where they're willing to risk the experience of the art being lessened because JUST HAVE TO BE ON IT RIGHT NOW

Moral of the Story: The ONLY sure-fire way to avoid spoilers on the internet is to NOT BE ON THE INTERNET.