There’s a lot of stuff like this:
[normaltext]I agree with you totally.[/normaltext]
You’re a gigantic asshole.
Oh, that’s not cool at all. :( I’d like to think we’re better than that, but as a whole I dunno…
I’m on plenty of forums that use spoiler tags and they work fine. The general rule is if you are unsure whether its a spoiler, just toss it in a spoiler tag to be safe.
Rarely it will be used for the occasional joke like posted above, but that’s the exception.
That’s what I’d love to see here, and I’d like to think the level of maturity here would, on the whole, avoid abuse.
Yeah, that spoiler is what switched me from being a casual reader of Harry Potter to one of those “buy the book on launch day” wankers.
It reminds me of when I was 13 and spent all day standing in line to see Empire Strikes Back on release day. As we’re walking out of the theater and snaking past the long lines of people still waiting to see the movie, a couple of guys ahead of us yell out “I CAN’T BELIEVE DARTH VADER IS LUKE’S FATHER!”. Turns out douchebaggery predated the internet.
In my world, those people would get shot on sight for such grievous fuckery.
Yeah, he said it DOES feature naked women. You probably misread it.
While I tried to ‘unspoil’ the GOT thread (my intentions were good, even though in hindsight I should have just stayed out), I think there’s a basic disconnect with your premise.
For example, I have not and will not click on ‘The Killing’ thread until I am completely caught up with the series. And even then, I click on it with eyes wide open that I may be spoiled because it is based on another show. And I consider it a calculated risk of my desire to discuss the series online.
For example, the winner of Top Chef All Stars I learned here, not on the show. Ah well.
So just don’t go into threads talking about it even though one is DYING to talk about it, and sit out the whole season?
I mean I think it makes sense in some instances, like if you’re coming to a show late, you avoid the thread until you’re all caught up. I did that with Justified and Community, for example.
But GoT is ongoing NOW, and I don’t wanna bite my tongue for months waiting to talk about it with the good people here just because some fucks can’t keep their knowledge of the books to themselves and talk about it in a thread wherein only folks who’ve read the book can gab away. Spoiling shit for those of us who’ve not read the books is just lazy and inconsiderate, IMO.
I’ve been treating the original GoT thread as a spoiler thread since there is a thread specifically designated as a non-spoiler thread. Any spoilers I revealed were certainly not done so to ruin anything for anyone else. I really did think that the original thread was an agreed upon spoiler zone.
You know, I have no idea if this is true. Does he? All I know is he dies at some point. My kids told me that much.
Don’t tell me. Maybe I’ll read the books someday.
I think the other problem with GoT in particular is that if you go to the spoiler thread to discuss, with spoilers, the episodes of the show that have already aired, you’re still bombarded with stuff you didn’t know about that’s upcoming in the next hundred or so episodes, which should really just be in one of the threads about the books.
Certainly at this point I don’t see any harm in posting spoilers in the original thread. Perhaps at the beginning there was some attempt to mark out spoilers, but that’s pretty pointless now. Besides, the people who’ve read the books need someplace to talk as well.
I’m pretty sure the ‘no spoilers’ thread is to prevent spoilers from the books. If you want to avoid spoilers from aired episodes of the TV show, you should stay away from both threads until you’ve caught up (like like any other show thread).
You just can’t read anything at all about it, then, and that’s all there is to it. I simply don’t trust other people’s ability to even determine what a spoiler is, because you’ll get people who say things like “Man, I can’t believe what happened in the last five pages, that really came out of nowhere” and think it’s not a spoiler because they didn’t say what happened.
The HBO thread has long veered into spoiler territory, that’s why I made a new thread for non spoilers, but people have still posted spoilers there.
Yeah, I know. I don’t know what it is about reading books before they’re adapted into a TV series, but apparently it renders some people completely incapable of not spoiling it for the people who are just watching the show.
It’s also impossible to avoid. When someone says “Oh, Character X is so obviously an asshole,” and you know that they save 18 kittens from dying and become the hero of the series, you really can’t respond to that in any non-spoily way, even if you’re trying to hold your tongue. And people who’ve read the books want to talk about the show, too.
Whenever you’re watching an adaptation of a book, you pretty much just have to suck it up and realize that discussion of the adaptation will include people who’ve read the books and know how it’s going to end, and that even if everyone involved were spoiler saints, even their silences in response to things people have said would be spoilery.
My take is that there’s a thread for people who want to discuss the show who’ve read the books (and the book thread is not a substitute for that). Then there’s a thread for people who want to discuss the show who haven’t read the books. The best policy for people who have read the books is to just not post in that thread, because, as you say, it’s very hard to post without potentially implying something by what you say.
Spoiler alert!
you really can’t respond to that in any non-spoily way, even if you’re trying to hold your tongue. And people who’ve read the books want to talk about the show, too.
Then they can talk about it with other people who’ve also read the books or they can just abstain from posting about stuff that they just can’t bring themselves to say word one about without giving away the store. This is really not difficult.
Whenever you’re watching an adaptation of a book, you pretty much just have to suck it up and realize that discussion of the adaptation will include people who’ve read the books and know how it’s going to end, and that even if everyone involved were spoiler saints, even their silences in response to things people have said would be spoilery.
Tell you what: I’ll go on record right now that I will never consider a lack of a post from someone to be a spoiler. From now on, if you people that have read books that are being adapted are reading the thread about the series and don’t post in it, I’ll just go ahead and not extrapolate a spoiler from that, so you don’t have to feel bad about it anymore. Does that make it easier?