You will never be safe from criticism from people who do not want to hear what you have to say on any subject. It is safe to ignore them whenever you get ready. If people do not want to hear spoilers then they should refrain from reading comentary on subjects where this is a concern for them. You are not responsible for offending those who do not have the good sense to refrain from reading that which they do not want to read.
Given how things are digital nowadays, never? At least when dealing with pedantic internet-types. I got screamed at for spoiling Watchmen--book came out when I was five
Well, there will always be some people who haven't gotten to it yet, and so will want to avoid spoilers. (Like me--I've only seen through season 3.) But that's on them, not you, at this point. If you don't want to see spoilers about the Wire, don't read long blog posts discussing the Wire 2 years after it went off the air.
As a general rule, for movies I'd include a spoiler warning until a few months after the DVD is released. For TV shows on netowrks, I'd give it a week or two for folks with DVRs. For a full show on pay channels, like the Wire, I'd say maybe 6 months after the DVD comes out? That's probably an upper bound.
Doug's rules for issuing spoiler warnings sound reasonable, but given how incredibly easy it is to write "SPOILERS" at the top of a post, I don't see why someone wouldn't just do it whenever they discuss some acclaimed work with major plot twists (with something like The Wire, even though it's off the air, I'm sure the world still has plenty of people who genuinely intend to get around to watching it on DVD when they have time).
If someone was so concerned about spoilers, they shouldn't have read the post. Or they could have posted a question in the comments section asking if they should hold off. Easy.
But in a general sense, a few months after a show has ended is plenty of time. For movies, a year after it came out seems fair.
I have never seen the show and have thought about watching it from the begining, so I didn't read much of the post. I could see things were going to be said.
I heard the ending to Sixth Sense on the radio years after it came out, but before I saw it. I wasn't pissed, it was on me to be more timely.
Well season 5 just came out in late August for those of us who follow via DVD.I've been a little busy,So I'm planning to prolly get it for Christmas. So probably by say January it shouldnt be a problem for me.
But in any event I think you can generally discuss what you want whenever you want. A "spolier alert" would be nice though. Personally Ive conditioned myself to sort of skim Wire related post looking for mentions of season 5 before I read in detail. But spoiler alerts would make my job a lot morefool proof.
The Wire has been concluded for just shy of 9 months. I say that is more than fair to say that there's nothing left to spoil at this point.
Two weeks is the longest I would go before I felt no guilt about spoiling someone. The world does not revolve around them; if they want to be surprised they need to put some effort into keeping up. If you aren't concerned enough to watch it when it was fresh, you shouldn't be upset when it gets spoiled.
For movies, my rule is five years, unless the movie was based on a popular book, in which case, feel free to spoil the movie and the book, if the book is over five years old. So you can spoil Kill Bill: Volume One now, but not Kill Bill: Volume Two.
For broadcast TV, after the episode airs nationwide.
I have never much cared about spoilers because individual elements of a plot have very little to do with my reasons for liking or not liking a piece of fiction. Its the way a story is told, the way it develops, the character development and interaction, etc. that make or break things for me. In other words, its not what happens but how you get there that I find interesting. Of course, it is possible to "spoil" that experience as well but it is not something someone could do with an inadvertant comment weeks after the story.
As the person who got spoiled on, can't you just put a disclaimer at the top of your posts saying that you're going to reveal pertinent info and if you don't want it to be spoiled don't read? I've read other of your Wire posts that were good and relevant that didn't reveal plot details so thought it would be OK to read this one too. And in my defense, it was a pretty big plot detail! I mean, Omar dying?!?! Come on, that's a big one!
I know this is WAY off topic and I am not trying to thread jack, but has anybody heard anything abouut Clarence Thomas recommending that the rest of the SCOTUS justices hear the Obama birth certificate cases? Yes I am being serious.
If you know you're late to the scene, expect any discussion to spoil one thing or another. Your other option is watch the damn thing already, or don't read anything on said show. And whatever you do, don't watch a premium cable show in syndication on regular cable. For example, The Sopranos on A&E ain't the same Sopranos.
Seriously, it has been several months. The statute of limitations is in effect. Episodes have been aired AND the DVDs have been released. Spoiler tags are for things just or not released to the general public.
And five years for movies? Really? Either it was important to you to watch it before the 5 years or it wasn't, which in that case the "spoilers" shouldn't matter.
Anyone who gets upset over spoilers is a herb. I remember a lady I worked with got all upset when I was about to drop the dime on the ending of Star Wars: Episode III. (Get this...Anakin becomes DARTH VADER. OMG!)
While I understand wanting to be surprised by the plot, it just follows that the best books, movies, shows, etc, stand up on a REPEAT VIEWING. The Greeks understood this. Why can't the geeks?
Spoiler alerts also shouldn't apply to movies about historical events, such as the Tom Cruise movie Valkrye. However, I will provide one as a courtesty
I know this is WAY off topic and I am not trying to thread jack, but has anybody heard anything abouut Clarence Thomas recommending that the rest of the SCOTUS justices hear the Obama birth certificate cases? Yes I am being serious
Had not heard that, but I guarantee it's BS. A case has to go through the trial court and the court of appeals before the Supremes can even think about hearing it.
My opinion is that any such case is due to get thrown out very quickly because, under decisions 30+ years old, nobody in the country (except John McCain!) has "standing to sue." A decision dismissing the case for that reason could (theoretically) make its way to the S.Ct., but if that happened, the court would be deciding whether to change its standing rules. If it did, then we would get to find out if Obama was born in Kenya (or wherever the nutcases think it was).
Evidently it has already gone all of those routes. I am not familiar with this website but here is the story. Judge for yourself, I am confident that Obama is a citizen so for me its not about the Supreme Court hearing the case, for me its all about Clarence Thomas.
5) Fonzie survives his jump over the sharks.
Literally, if not figuratively.
There is no good guideline, and I certainly can't be bothered to keep track of how many years its been since a show or movie aired. And everyone knows Rosebud is the sled even though a lot of us have never seen Citizen Kane--at some point, as with Luke's father, it becomes cultural knowledge even if you never read/watched the original source.
I'd suggest spoiler warnings for any film you clearly remember seeing in the theater, and tv shows of one week. How many years since Veronica Mars ended? I love the show and can't remember.
I have never much cared about spoilers because individual elements of a plot have very little to do with my reasons for liking or not liking a piece of fiction. Its the way a story is told, the way it develops, the character development and interaction, etc. that make or break things for me. In other words, its not what happens but how you get there that I find interesting. Of course, it is possible to "spoil" that experience as well but it is not something someone could do with an inadvertant comment weeks after the story.
Quoted for truth. If a film or tv show or book loses its oomph because you learn something out of order, then it's not as strong as it should be, and won't bear a second or third take.
How many years since Veronica Mars ended? I love the show and can't remember.
2007, probably in May.
It's pretty easy for the writer to put up some kind of spoiler notification -- at the minimum, put it somewhere in the body of the post in all caps -- without creating undue hassle for readers. But in the end, it's really up to the reader to know well enough when to (t)read carefully when it comes to narratives that they haven't seen.
In the end, it's Ron and Hermione, Harry and Ginny, and their kids all go to Hogwarts.
Meanwhile, our household plan is to start "The Wire" at the beginning and march right through, pausing for work, sleep, Stewart, and Colbert--except we can't start until February. We know full well we won't get the experience of folks who started when the show did.
As one with the most "to lose" from spoilers, I think people should just go ahead and discuss the whole series.
As the person who got spoiled on, can't you just put a disclaimer at the top of your posts saying that you're going to reveal pertinent info and if you don't want it to be spoiled don't read? I've read other of your Wire posts that were good and relevant that didn't reveal plot details so thought it would be OK to read this one too. And in my defense, it was a pretty big plot detail! I mean, Omar dying?!?! Come on, that's a big one!
The Wire's been over for a while now. People were talking about it as it aired, too. "Spoiler" used to mean secret or surprising information about a show that hadn't yet aired, like a leak from a set, with some wiggle room for surprise endings on recently aired stuff not "make sure every person who watches a show has a pristine experience."
For what it's worth, I was a latecomer, I knew that Omar died, and it doesn't actually spoil a thing. I figure for TV, it's about a week (give people time to watch TiVo), and for movies, once they're out of the theaters.
They guys who just say put spoiler alert in the title are missing the point. The question is what qualifies as a spoiler, not what to do about it when it is.
It takes real heart to wander into a thread discussing a defunct show on a site where the owner and his readers are KNOWN 'stans' of the show, and then get upset because they had had the unmitigated gall to 'spoil' it for YOU.
I mean that takes real sack.
And BTW - Thelma decides not to marry Ebay, and the Evans' family eventually makes it out of Cabrini Green. Oh, and James died before that.
... my view is that the spoiler obsession, born of the Internet's fan-geek culture, is the enemy of real criticism, real discussion and maybe even real thought ...
I think that says it all. People who get upset about spoilers are infantile in their approach to culture and narrative, as if the pay-off of a story were just the "a-ha", like it's just a jack-in-the-box. It's idiotic.
I don't think The Wire was about the big reveal and the plot twist. That show was all execution. When it was on BET, my wife didn't want to jump in on the middle of it, and I just told her: "Don't worry about who anybody is, or their backstory, or what's going on. Just watch and marvel how each scene is shot and how well it's written and acted. To me, the show was about how well it was made all the way through. Except maybe the newspaper arc in the last season.
I just finished season 3, but really, you can't complain about spoilers two years after something went off the air.
My rule of thumb is this: it is fine to talk about a show without doing "spoiler alert" either once the new season has started airing (ie, you can then talk about the previous season without warnings) or 6 months after a show has gone off the air for good.
Once upon a time there was a whole Seinfeld episode about how impossible it was for Jerry to avoid spoilers about a Mets game he'd taped earlier in the day.
While I understand wanting to be surprised by the plot, it just follows that the best books, movies, shows, etc, stand up on a REPEAT VIEWING. The Greeks understood this. Why can't the geeks?
You got it. Once it's aired, it's fair game, as far as I'm concerned. Now, that doesn't mean that, say, the day after Sixth Sense came out you should put in the top of your post, "So, Bruce Willis was dead all along!" That's just common courtesy. But, as we've said above, if you're discussing a show that ended six months ago and it's clear you're doing so, you should be ready to be spoiled.
Sometimes I think the Internet is the beginning of the end of common sense, but then I remember it wasn't that common to begin with.
This particular issue really pissed me off: Entertainment Weekly spoiled Omar's death in that dumbass bullseye gimmick they have, the week after it aired.
Not in a story, not covered by a "Spoiler" tag, not after the fact entered common knowledge. Just out there in some cheesy gimmick. I think anyone can agree that was inappropriate, especially in this era of time-shifting.
I was hoarding episodes on Tivo to watch after I finished the Season 4 DVDs (latecomer to The Wire), and I was really pissed. EW ignored my bitchy email, and neglected to cancel my subscription.
That's a good question. I got irked when you made a post about a spoiler in Mad Men and titled that post with the very shocking incident itself, but that was because it was right after it aired. If I'd read that plot point about The Wire, I wouldn't have minded because it's my own fault for not getting around to watching it. I think that if it's been a whole season or if it's been off the air for a while, then it's fair game and you can't be held responsible for people choosing not to be up to date with a show. After a while, it naturally becomes a part of referential pop culture and people have to be willing to let go of their (often) irrational need for a spoiler alert.
I don't understand the hate for people who don't like to be spoiled. For some shows/movies/books, I want to get caught up in the experience and not already know what's coming. The characters don't know what's coming, after all, so to me it feels more immersive not to be spoiled. I also like to analyze, discuss the work with others, and watch/read more than once to catch things I might have missed the first time. These aren't mutually exclusive.
I'm not commenting on the "how long till it's not a spoiler" question, because I don't really know. If I get spoiled for something that's been out a few years, I pretty much blame myself.
One DVD version of The Usual Suspects plays a montage when the main menu is displayed. If you take more than just a few seconds to make a selection (such as "play"), one of the clips you see is Verbal Kint's feet as he's walking away from the police station. It's not just a snippet of that shot, either. It plays all the way from "limp. limp. less limp?" to "holy crap, less limp!" to "OMFG HE'S KEYSER SOZE!" If you've seen the movie, you know that the entire thing hinges on that shot -- ruined literally before you hit play. If you haven't seen it: this evening's special is schadenfreude with a twist of booyah, clearly.
Catherine, with all due respect, it's not fair to put the burden on other people this late in the game. Yeah, all one has to do in any given case is say "spoiler alert." But when does something stop being being a surprise? If you just received Thirteen Days from Netflix, and happen to read a post about how we don't get nuked by Cuba at the end of the day -- who's fault is that?
Epic television becomes cultural history fairly immediately. Early screenings aside, spoiler alerts are pure courtesies. That means they are done solely for the benefit of others. It's a limited-time offer though. I'm not drawing a line at any particular day here, but some point after it's been out on DVD for a month or so, you can assume the offer has expired.
The only death in the show that shouldn't be spoiled comes in Season 1. From that point on, if you aren't aware that the show plans to kill your favorite character (either literally or figuratively) you aren't really paying attention.
Here's a piece no one cared about. Meh, whatever, probably the most enjoyable article I did during my stint at TIME. Premiered a month before I got laid-off. The nail in the coffin? Ya think?
Here's me going after Al. I didn't so much have a problem with him, as I had a problem with media acting like this dude was the go-to guy for everything black.
This was my first real story at time. I was writing for the Business section, a real change of direction for me. At any rate, it's about Wal-Mart's attempts to colonize the inner-city. As much as I enjoyed this piece, I mostly enjoyed going out to Chicago, which is a beautiful, beautiful city.
This a piece I did about the cops just outside our nation capitol, in Prince George's County, a few years back. I wanted to offer a counter to the dumb, conventional wisdom that if you paint your police force black, you could eradicate police brutality. In fact, Prince George's--one of the richest, blackest counties in the country--also had one of the most brutal police force's in the country.
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
You will never be safe from criticism from people who do not want to hear what you have to say on any subject. It is safe to ignore them whenever you get ready. If people do not want to hear spoilers then they should refrain from reading comentary on subjects where this is a concern for them. You are not responsible for offending those who do not have the good sense to refrain from reading that which they do not want to read.
Given how things are digital nowadays, never? At least when dealing with pedantic internet-types. I got screamed at for spoiling Watchmen--book came out when I was five
Good question!
Let's do a test!
Here are some spoilers:
1) Romeo and Juliet both die.
2) Greg and Carol Brady don't get divorced and their kids all wind up getting along mostly.
3) Everybody working with Mary Richards and Mary herself gets fired except Ted Baxter.
4) Everybody ends up dying in 6 Feet Under.
5) Fonzie survives his jump over the sharks.
Is anybody upset?
Well, there will always be some people who haven't gotten to it yet, and so will want to avoid spoilers. (Like me--I've only seen through season 3.) But that's on them, not you, at this point. If you don't want to see spoilers about the Wire, don't read long blog posts discussing the Wire 2 years after it went off the air.
As a general rule, for movies I'd include a spoiler warning until a few months after the DVD is released. For TV shows on netowrks, I'd give it a week or two for folks with DVRs. For a full show on pay channels, like the Wire, I'd say maybe 6 months after the DVD comes out? That's probably an upper bound.
3) Everybody working with Mary Richards and Mary herself gets fired except Ted Baxter.
This one is so poorly-written and ambiguous, maybe it doesn't ruin the suspense.
Is anybody upset?
Well, I'll bet Mike isn't too happy that Carol married Greg.
Doug's rules for issuing spoiler warnings sound reasonable, but given how incredibly easy it is to write "SPOILERS" at the top of a post, I don't see why someone wouldn't just do it whenever they discuss some acclaimed work with major plot twists (with something like The Wire, even though it's off the air, I'm sure the world still has plenty of people who genuinely intend to get around to watching it on DVD when they have time).
Dude--season five has been out long enough that there's no need to warn people off with a spoilers tag. Jeez.
If someone was so concerned about spoilers, they shouldn't have read the post. Or they could have posted a question in the comments section asking if they should hold off. Easy.
But in a general sense, a few months after a show has ended is plenty of time. For movies, a year after it came out seems fair.
SPOILER ALERT:
The Da Vinci Code sucked.
Dil, in The Crying Game, is a man.
Now, we'll see how long is long enough.
Well, I'll bet Mike isn't too happy that Carol married Greg.
Well, Pesto, you obviously never saw the last season of The Brady Bunch -- the one after it went off the air.
(seriously, my god, I'm an idiot)
Rosebud was his sled!
Darth Vader is Luke Skywalker's father!
I have never seen the show and have thought about watching it from the begining, so I didn't read much of the post. I could see things were going to be said.
I heard the ending to Sixth Sense on the radio years after it came out, but before I saw it. I wasn't pissed, it was on me to be more timely.
Wait, you're telling me a guy who robs drug dealers for a living gets shot to death in a carry out??
Well season 5 just came out in late August for those of us who follow via DVD.I've been a little busy,So I'm planning to prolly get it for Christmas. So probably by say January it shouldnt be a problem for me.
But in any event I think you can generally discuss what you want whenever you want. A "spolier alert" would be nice though. Personally Ive conditioned myself to sort of skim Wire related post looking for mentions of season 5 before I read in detail. But spoiler alerts would make my job a lot morefool proof.
SPOILER
VADER IS LUKES FATHER.
SPOILER
JR DIDN'T GET SHOT, IT WAS ALL A DREAM.
That's retarded.
The Wire has been concluded for just shy of 9 months. I say that is more than fair to say that there's nothing left to spoil at this point.
Two weeks is the longest I would go before I felt no guilt about spoiling someone. The world does not revolve around them; if they want to be surprised they need to put some effort into keeping up. If you aren't concerned enough to watch it when it was fresh, you shouldn't be upset when it gets spoiled.
For movies, my rule is five years, unless the movie was based on a popular book, in which case, feel free to spoil the movie and the book, if the book is over five years old. So you can spoil Kill Bill: Volume One now, but not Kill Bill: Volume Two.
For broadcast TV, after the episode airs nationwide.
For cable TV, after the DVDs are released.
I have never much cared about spoilers because individual elements of a plot have very little to do with my reasons for liking or not liking a piece of fiction. Its the way a story is told, the way it develops, the character development and interaction, etc. that make or break things for me. In other words, its not what happens but how you get there that I find interesting. Of course, it is possible to "spoil" that experience as well but it is not something someone could do with an inadvertant comment weeks after the story.
Get this -- the king returned.
As the person who got spoiled on, can't you just put a disclaimer at the top of your posts saying that you're going to reveal pertinent info and if you don't want it to be spoiled don't read? I've read other of your Wire posts that were good and relevant that didn't reveal plot details so thought it would be OK to read this one too. And in my defense, it was a pretty big plot detail! I mean, Omar dying?!?! Come on, that's a big one!
I know this is WAY off topic and I am not trying to thread jack, but has anybody heard anything abouut Clarence Thomas recommending that the rest of the SCOTUS justices hear the Obama birth certificate cases? Yes I am being serious.
If you know you're late to the scene, expect any discussion to spoil one thing or another. Your other option is watch the damn thing already, or don't read anything on said show. And whatever you do, don't watch a premium cable show in syndication on regular cable. For example, The Sopranos on A&E ain't the same Sopranos.
Seriously, it has been several months. The statute of limitations is in effect. Episodes have been aired AND the DVDs have been released. Spoiler tags are for things just or not released to the general public.
And five years for movies? Really? Either it was important to you to watch it before the 5 years or it wasn't, which in that case the "spoilers" shouldn't matter.
Keyser Soze is Kevin Spacey.
Anyone who gets upset over spoilers is a herb. I remember a lady I worked with got all upset when I was about to drop the dime on the ending of Star Wars: Episode III. (Get this...Anakin becomes DARTH VADER. OMG!)
While I understand wanting to be surprised by the plot, it just follows that the best books, movies, shows, etc, stand up on a REPEAT VIEWING. The Greeks understood this. Why can't the geeks?
Spoiler alerts also shouldn't apply to movies about historical events, such as the Tom Cruise movie Valkrye. However, I will provide one as a courtesty
SPOILER ALERT
Hitler survived the assasination attempt on him.
I know this is WAY off topic and I am not trying to thread jack, but has anybody heard anything abouut Clarence Thomas recommending that the rest of the SCOTUS justices hear the Obama birth certificate cases? Yes I am being serious
Had not heard that, but I guarantee it's BS. A case has to go through the trial court and the court of appeals before the Supremes can even think about hearing it.
My opinion is that any such case is due to get thrown out very quickly because, under decisions 30+ years old, nobody in the country (except John McCain!) has "standing to sue." A decision dismissing the case for that reason could (theoretically) make its way to the S.Ct., but if that happened, the court would be deciding whether to change its standing rules. If it did, then we would get to find out if Obama was born in Kenya (or wherever the nutcases think it was).
roac
Evidently it has already gone all of those routes. I am not familiar with this website but here is the story. Judge for yourself, I am confident that Obama is a citizen so for me its not about the Supreme Court hearing the case, for me its all about Clarence Thomas.
http://www.afro.com/tabid/456/itemid/2273/Thomas-breaks-custom-forces-court-to-look-at-Obam.aspx
5) Fonzie survives his jump over the sharks.
Literally, if not figuratively.
There is no good guideline, and I certainly can't be bothered to keep track of how many years its been since a show or movie aired. And everyone knows Rosebud is the sled even though a lot of us have never seen Citizen Kane--at some point, as with Luke's father, it becomes cultural knowledge even if you never read/watched the original source.
I'd suggest spoiler warnings for any film you clearly remember seeing in the theater, and tv shows of one week. How many years since Veronica Mars ended? I love the show and can't remember.
I have never much cared about spoilers because individual elements of a plot have very little to do with my reasons for liking or not liking a piece of fiction. Its the way a story is told, the way it develops, the character development and interaction, etc. that make or break things for me. In other words, its not what happens but how you get there that I find interesting. Of course, it is possible to "spoil" that experience as well but it is not something someone could do with an inadvertant comment weeks after the story.
Quoted for truth. If a film or tv show or book loses its oomph because you learn something out of order, then it's not as strong as it should be, and won't bear a second or third take.
Fox canceled Firefly after only 13 episodes.
Oh, and Book and Wash both got killed in the movie.
IMHO, the old rules still apply to TV shows: once they've aired on the West Coast, they're fair game.
Movies? Once they're out of the theaters.
Books? Once they're off the bestseller lists. If they were never on the bestseller lists to begin with, then who cares?
Just include "Spoiler Alert" in the post title and your ass is sufficiently covered, imho.
How many years since Veronica Mars ended? I love the show and can't remember.
2007, probably in May.
It's pretty easy for the writer to put up some kind of spoiler notification -- at the minimum, put it somewhere in the body of the post in all caps -- without creating undue hassle for readers. But in the end, it's really up to the reader to know well enough when to (t)read carefully when it comes to narratives that they haven't seen.
In the end, it's Ron and Hermione, Harry and Ginny, and their kids all go to Hogwarts.
Meanwhile, our household plan is to start "The Wire" at the beginning and march right through, pausing for work, sleep, Stewart, and Colbert--except we can't start until February. We know full well we won't get the experience of folks who started when the show did.
As one with the most "to lose" from spoilers, I think people should just go ahead and discuss the whole series.
I'm with most of the others, if it's on DVD spoilers are the reader's worry.
As the person who got spoiled on, can't you just put a disclaimer at the top of your posts saying that you're going to reveal pertinent info and if you don't want it to be spoiled don't read? I've read other of your Wire posts that were good and relevant that didn't reveal plot details so thought it would be OK to read this one too. And in my defense, it was a pretty big plot detail! I mean, Omar dying?!?! Come on, that's a big one!
The Wire's been over for a while now. People were talking about it as it aired, too. "Spoiler" used to mean secret or surprising information about a show that hadn't yet aired, like a leak from a set, with some wiggle room for surprise endings on recently aired stuff not "make sure every person who watches a show has a pristine experience."
For what it's worth, I was a latecomer, I knew that Omar died, and it doesn't actually spoil a thing. I figure for TV, it's about a week (give people time to watch TiVo), and for movies, once they're out of the theaters.
They guys who just say put spoiler alert in the title are missing the point. The question is what qualifies as a spoiler, not what to do about it when it is.
It takes real heart to wander into a thread discussing a defunct show on a site where the owner and his readers are KNOWN 'stans' of the show, and then get upset because they had had the unmitigated gall to 'spoil' it for YOU.
I mean that takes real sack.
And BTW - Thelma decides not to marry Ebay, and the Evans' family eventually makes it out of Cabrini Green. Oh, and James died before that.
From Andrew O'Hehir's review of Steven Soderbergh's Solaris remake:
I think that says it all. People who get upset about spoilers are infantile in their approach to culture and narrative, as if the pay-off of a story were just the "a-ha", like it's just a jack-in-the-box. It's idiotic.
I don't think The Wire was about the big reveal and the plot twist. That show was all execution. When it was on BET, my wife didn't want to jump in on the middle of it, and I just told her: "Don't worry about who anybody is, or their backstory, or what's going on. Just watch and marvel how each scene is shot and how well it's written and acted. To me, the show was about how well it was made all the way through. Except maybe the newspaper arc in the last season.
I just finished season 3, but really, you can't complain about spoilers two years after something went off the air.
My rule of thumb is this: it is fine to talk about a show without doing "spoiler alert" either once the new season has started airing (ie, you can then talk about the previous season without warnings) or 6 months after a show has gone off the air for good.
Once upon a time there was a whole Seinfeld episode about how impossible it was for Jerry to avoid spoilers about a Mets game he'd taped earlier in the day.
Two years gets no sympathy from me.
While I understand wanting to be surprised by the plot, it just follows that the best books, movies, shows, etc, stand up on a REPEAT VIEWING. The Greeks understood this. Why can't the geeks?
You got it. Once it's aired, it's fair game, as far as I'm concerned. Now, that doesn't mean that, say, the day after Sixth Sense came out you should put in the top of your post, "So, Bruce Willis was dead all along!" That's just common courtesy. But, as we've said above, if you're discussing a show that ended six months ago and it's clear you're doing so, you should be ready to be spoiled.
Sometimes I think the Internet is the beginning of the end of common sense, but then I remember it wasn't that common to begin with.
Oh, and the Titanic sinks. Sorry to spoil y'all.
This particular issue really pissed me off: Entertainment Weekly spoiled Omar's death in that dumbass bullseye gimmick they have, the week after it aired.
Not in a story, not covered by a "Spoiler" tag, not after the fact entered common knowledge. Just out there in some cheesy gimmick. I think anyone can agree that was inappropriate, especially in this era of time-shifting.
I was hoarding episodes on Tivo to watch after I finished the Season 4 DVDs (latecomer to The Wire), and I was really pissed. EW ignored my bitchy email, and neglected to cancel my subscription.
That's a good question. I got irked when you made a post about a spoiler in Mad Men and titled that post with the very shocking incident itself, but that was because it was right after it aired. If I'd read that plot point about The Wire, I wouldn't have minded because it's my own fault for not getting around to watching it. I think that if it's been a whole season or if it's been off the air for a while, then it's fair game and you can't be held responsible for people choosing not to be up to date with a show. After a while, it naturally becomes a part of referential pop culture and people have to be willing to let go of their (often) irrational need for a spoiler alert.
I don't understand the hate for people who don't like to be spoiled. For some shows/movies/books, I want to get caught up in the experience and not already know what's coming. The characters don't know what's coming, after all, so to me it feels more immersive not to be spoiled. I also like to analyze, discuss the work with others, and watch/read more than once to catch things I might have missed the first time. These aren't mutually exclusive.
I'm not commenting on the "how long till it's not a spoiler" question, because I don't really know. If I get spoiled for something that's been out a few years, I pretty much blame myself.
For real, just get yourself one of these suckers:
http://www.threadless.com/product/844/Spoilt
One DVD version of The Usual Suspects plays a montage when the main menu is displayed. If you take more than just a few seconds to make a selection (such as "play"), one of the clips you see is Verbal Kint's feet as he's walking away from the police station. It's not just a snippet of that shot, either. It plays all the way from "limp. limp. less limp?" to "holy crap, less limp!" to "OMFG HE'S KEYSER SOZE!" If you've seen the movie, you know that the entire thing hinges on that shot -- ruined literally before you hit play. If you haven't seen it: this evening's special is schadenfreude with a twist of booyah, clearly.
Catherine, with all due respect, it's not fair to put the burden on other people this late in the game. Yeah, all one has to do in any given case is say "spoiler alert." But when does something stop being being a surprise? If you just received Thirteen Days from Netflix, and happen to read a post about how we don't get nuked by Cuba at the end of the day -- who's fault is that?
Epic television becomes cultural history fairly immediately. Early screenings aside, spoiler alerts are pure courtesies. That means they are done solely for the benefit of others. It's a limited-time offer though. I'm not drawing a line at any particular day here, but some point after it's been out on DVD for a month or so, you can assume the offer has expired.
The only death in the show that shouldn't be spoiled comes in Season 1. From that point on, if you aren't aware that the show plans to kill your favorite character (either literally or figuratively) you aren't really paying attention.