Why we must start a culture of spoiler-shaming

A headline or a tweet or a status update should not, in a civil world, be allowed to contain a spoiler, rants Raja Sen.

Like in Game Of Thrones, nobody's innocent.

We've all casually -- or intentionally -- let out details about what someone else may not have seen or read.

Sometimes it's purely inadvertent, like when an intern once called me up, found out I was watching Top Gun and asked "ooh, is Goose dead yet?" Understandable given I was watching an all-time blockbuster decades after it had come out -- but a memory that stings, to this day.

Sometimes it's vindictive, like the popcorn-seller a friend's father dismissed while watching Jewel Thief back in the 1970s, only to have him snarl "Ashok Kumar villain hai" during the interval and ruin said gent's evening.

Sometimes it's friendly, the desperate urge to high-five over a shocking twist.

Sometimes, in the zeal to describe or recommend a film, we reviewers go too far and tell more than we ought -- this is a tricky line, indeed -- and I remember a daft film where, since nothing made sense at all, I took matters into my own hands and started the review off by revealing the preposterous climax in the hope that readers could perhaps watch the film with the end in mind and, as I explain here, find their own puzzle-solving entertainment.

The fact is that spoilers happen and that we've all been guilty -- to varying degree -- of spilling what we shouldn't.

Or, at the very least, what we ought to be more careful with.

Our behavorial approach to spoilers is outdated.

It's convenient to endorse a caveat emptor method -- Let The One Who Watches Later Beware -- to say it's your fault you didn't watch the baskeball game live and now you've exiled yourself to a day without newspapers and sports channels with your fingers crossed, but the fact is that in these over-communicated times, the Sensory Deprivator 5000 (external link) just doesn't cut it anymore.

It's time we started being more considerate.

Exactly one week ago, on the Game Of Thrones season finale, shocking things happened and people died.

That could well be a summary for every episode of the show based on George RR Martin's sprawling fantasy series where leading characters routinely get poleaxed, but this time -- more than any other television event I remember -- the Internet went freakin' nuts.

Last whole week, there have been spoilers everywhere. Twitter, Facebook statuses, even bloody newspaper headlines, all going out of their way to give away huge revelations. Everyone appeared out to punish the viewer who has a day-job and thus didn't watch the episode at the crack of dawn Monday morning (the first telecast in India happens simultaneous with HBO in the US, at 6:30 am our time) and all those who thought they could savour a finale on their own time.

No way.

Current social networking behaviour seems to be 'You didn't watch it? Boo hoo, now let me rub these GIFs into your face.'

But must we all be such Ramsay Boltons? Is that who we've become?

There is something deeply obnoxious about the need to crow about being the first person to have watched a show, seen a film, read a bestseller. We all have the Internet, we all watch stuff, and seeing it first does not equip us with any greater understanding; the head-start isn't a real head-start.

This, by itself, isn't as problematic, despite the hollow bragging: the main issue lies with the sadistic way we flaunt our latest discoveries instead of letting people discover them on their own.

A television drama is not a sports broadcast and the plot of a movie isn't a news story; there is just no need to fire up our keyboards to report on fiction as if it's freshly emerging fact.

There is a lot to be learnt from readers of George RR Martin's novel, who experienced the death we are all gasping about now in the books four years ago, and yet they have been considerate enough to not rain on our parade but instead let us stagger for ourselves, when our time came.

Do I want to write about the finale, throw in my theories, discuss it with my geekdom? Sure.

But I need to write it somewhere two-clicks away where you can come choose to read me -- after a clickbaity "You Won't Believe Which Character Didn't Really Die" headline, if need be -- and I cannot, should not, must not thrust a spoiler in your face, without warning, like an unsolicited d**k pic.

And yes, that d**k pic -- the worst kind of online trollery and harassment -- is what I compare the thoughtless spoiler to.

As a critic who has routinely been threatened and abused and harassed online for 11 years -- before Facebook opened its doors and well before Twitter existed -- I know what I'm talking about here.

Blankly and ignorantly hurled abuse can hurt, can disconcert, can depress -- but it can (and must) also be shrugged off.

The worst thing about spoilers is that they come from within the little social substreams we've curated for ourselves, they come from 'our people,' and -- really -- do we want to believe that even the little corners of the Internet we make our own are just as obnoxious as say, the commentators on YouTube videos?

There are no rules about this sort of thing.

I can file a complaint about a nameless troll harassing me on Twitter, but I can't call the cops on a smartass making a weak pun about a character's death and ruining the fact that I was saving up a half-dozen episodes to bingewatch over a weekend.

It's not a crime to give away a spoiler, but it is a rotten thing to do, and I feel we need to police ourselves. Let's not just groan and move on to the next book or show, in the hopes that this time we'll watch and read faster.

We shouldn't have to.

Why can't we all realise that while we really want to discuss something really cool/shocking/unbelievable with someone, there are other people in the room? This is the Internet. There are always other people in the room.

Share what you want to on a forum, behind spoiler-warnings, with those who choose to read it and react and have awesome conversations with you about it. Don't screw up someone else's day just because you can.

This, then, is a clarion call to start a culture of spoiler-shaming.

We can start by identifying the jerks who are flippantly giving things away, calling them out in public, telling them they're being jerks -- honestly, most of them (us) don't even know. Often it's just eagerness to share, to make a worthy GIF, to take our thoughts to the world, to be witty about something that matters to many of us.

But this is when the rest of us need to tap a person -- or, indeed, a publication -- on the shoulder, and tell them they need to take a post down or delete a tweet or change a headline. We need to inform them that they need to, at the very least, word their thoughts differently because it stings to have something you enjoy ruined for you, and social media does so en masse.

A headline or a tweet or a status update should not, in a civil world, be allowed to contain a spoiler.

It's plain rude.

Therefore, I apologise for any such indiscretions on my part in the past, and promise to be far more careful in the future. Like I said, this sickening boorishness might not be intentional, but that is no reason to let it continue unchecked. The rulebook is in our hands, and I say we start by calling out the offenders -- and letting them know how offensive they are.