Spoilers (no actual spoilers included)

[Aragarthiel]

I missed an episode of a popular show last night and logged on to Facebook earlier to find that the show's page had posted a HUGE spoiler (they had never done this before). In the comments, one person asked the page to stop posting spoilers, and people went off on her, saying "Unfollow the page!" or "Stay off Facebook then!" It was a huge frenzy between those people, and others who hadn't seen the episode (mostly from countries where it hadn't aired yet). The side supporting the spoiler thought it was inconsiderate to ask others to not talk about the show, while those of us who had missed it were trying to figure out why asking a show's page's admins to not post spoilers was so wrong.

What do you guys think? Inconsiderate or totally acceptable?

[s_stabeler]

It depends on how soon it is after the episode. I'd generally give it a week after the episode airs.

[Kheldarson]

Depends on the community too.

[Aragarthiel]

The episode only aired last night. Australia is MONTHS behind on episodes, and the UK is generally 3-4 days behind, so this was a spoiler for most of the world.

[KellyHabersham]

I remember that happening with a Marilyn Manson album, back when the band's website had an official messageboard.......leaks of a then-upcoming album had gotten out, people were downloading them off Napster, and spoiling things for those of us who wanted to wait to actually buy the said album before hearing the music.

Anyhow, I got into a big argument with one of the other messageboard posters who was VERY pro-Napster, and although he later apologized, our online friendship was never really the same.

[Andara Bledin]

For things where the primary viewing locale is months ahead of some markets, it's not reasonable to expect them to not talk about anything that's happened until that last market has caught up. As a special case, you need to be aware of your own needs.

For things where the episode aired just last freaking night, that's just not cool. With the world moving more and more to time shifting their tv viewing, it's unreasonable to expect everybody to be on the same episode by the next day. Hulu watchers will be a day behind, as will nearly all other time-shifters.

Two days later, at least mention that your info is from the latest episode. But once it's no longer the latest episode or a full week has passed, there should be no expectation of events being not spoiled.

[Greenday]

If the page on FB posts a spoiler, have them mark it as so and make you click "Read Full Post" or whatever it is to actually see the spoiler.

Now, if you are going to pull a Walking Dead and post a giant spoiler right after the East Coast has aired and the West Coast is just about to watch the episode, that's messed up.

Anything after a day the episode aired is free game as far as I'm concerned.

[Aragarthiel]

Anything after a day the episode aired is free game as far as I'm concerned.

A day, or 24 hours? The episode in question ended at 10 p.m., so the next day would be only two hours later (or six, if you account for the time it takes for the west coast to see it). The spoiler was posted at about hour 16 after first airing. Meaning, if you DVR'ed the episode because you had to work night shift, then went to sleep the moment you got home, it would be impossible to watch the episode before the spoiler was revealed if you logged on to Facebook first thing in the morning (well, at that point it would be afternoon, but for night shift workers it would be morning).

[Kaylyn]

Grey's Anatomy did this last week for a HUGE spoiler on that episode. Basically they said "blah blah insert spoiler here" as the headline of their FB post immediately after the episode finished airing. I can somewhat forgive something like this 24 hours or so after the episode airs, but for Pete's sake, at LEAST they should have given the Hulu watchers a day to catch up.

[NecCat]

I think it`s inconsiderate to ask people not to talk about the show, just because you or whoever hasn`t seen it yet. The emotional attachment people feel to the show that makes them so upset about posting of spoilers is the same one that makes people who have just seen something new and interesting want to talk about it, process it, work their feelings out about it. While the officials from the show shouldn`t post information about an episode until it has played in the major premiere markets I would still expect the facebook page to be full of ÒMG, Pete quit being a doctor and started Alexandria's first clown college! (Not an actual spoiler to anything)

If a show premiers at 10pm and you don`t plan on watching it until noon the next day, don`t go look on the shows website or facebook page. That`s on you, not the rest of the world.

[Greenday]

A day, or 24 hours?

LIke if the show airs Sunday night, I won't say anything at work until Tuesday if I know people around haven't seen it.

[Aragarthiel]

I think it`s inconsiderate to ask people not to talk about the show, just because you or whoever hasn`t seen it yet.

I think that's where the disconnect was. Fans of the show who hadn't seen an episode know not to click on posts from the page because fans will be discussing the show. We weren't asking everyone not to talk about it, just for the page admins to not post spoilers. It is MUCH harder to avoid an actual post than the comments on said post, because the comments are hidden by default. In order to avoid the spoiler post, you'd have to either hide all posts from the page or unlike the page, and both would require you to know beforehand that the page that doesn't normally post spoilers is going to post a spoiler.

[Kaylyn]

If a show premiers at 10pm and you don`t plan on watching it until noon the next day, don`t go look on the shows website or facebook page. That`s on you, not the rest of the world.

While I agree with you that viewing the Facebook page's comments are a risk you take upon yourself with people discussing the show, my problem was that I had 'liked' the page as part of my interests, therefore the spoiler popped up without warning in my news feed. There's no such thing as a 'spoiler' tag on FB (that I'm aware of) where you can click to view the article that's already in your feed if you've already seen the episode, and this happened within an hour after the episode aired. I think it's upon the administrators of the FB page to keep their posts as spoiler-free (in the huge bold hard-to-miss titles of their FB posts) as possible, at least for the first 24 hours or so, for courtesy's sake.

No, I won't visit the FB page or website directly when I know a big twist is brewing until I've seen the episode because that IS stupid, but sorry, there's a whole list of reasons I wouldn't care to abstain from my own personal FB feed entirely, even for a night, just because a show I have 'liked' on FB is gonna be an ass and spoil a big twist in their headline on their link that's gonna automatically appear in my feed. And while I could have 'unliked' the page temporarily in this particular case because the spoiler had been brewing for a couple of episodes and was pretty easy to guess, what if it had been something out of the blue that I hadn't been expecting? I mean, hell, Game of Thrones appears in my feed just like Grey's, and even THEY have never spoiled an episode (despite me having read the books and knowing what's happening anyway) and they have huge spoiler-worthy events every other episode.

[NecCat]

I've never had facebook, so I didn't understand that. If whatever the owner of the page posts shows up on yours without your action, then yes the owner of the show shouldn't be posting spoilers until every market has had a chance to see it. Maybe they could post something innocuous like Episode eleven, huge revelations. How will the characters cope? Then they could reply to their own post with the actual essay including what happened, so that people would have to choose to go look at comments to read the actual spoiler.

With that new information, I agree with earlier that it is acceptable to ask the show to stop posting spoilers.

[Andara Bledin]

I've never had facebook, so I didn't understand that. If whatever the owner of the page posts shows up on yours without your action, then yes the owner of the show shouldn't be posting spoilers until every market has had a chance to see it.

Yeah, Facebook is an interesting beast.

Everybody has their own personal (or group) wall where they post things.

Then, the home page is a listing of things that people you are friends with, or pages you've liked, or sometimes places paying for promotion have posted to their own walls. So it's like a community wall.

It's like a one-stop shop for everything that your friends and interests are up to recently. You get up to 7 lines of the post, and then an option to expand it for more, and a list of how many people have liked, commented, or shared it.

In the case of spoilers, someone could post a semi-generic opening post, a warning that there be spoilers ahead, a little dead space, and then they could launch into the spoilers without fear of ruining other people's subsequent viewing experience.