How to avoid spoilers online in 2023
Sunday evening there was a big event in a well-attended TV show. I’m not going to say more because a) that’s not what this post is about, and b) the internet is getting pretty heated about other people discussing it on social media. Instead, this opens the door to an important conversation we should have together: How to avoid spoilers online in the year 2023.
Listen, I get it. You don’t always have time to watch the watercooler TV show the night the episode airs, and sometimes there’s an entire work day (or more than one!) between you and when you get to watch it. But there’s a nifty trick to keep you from getting spoiled before you’re ready.
Just log out. Just log out!
Think about the different parts of the internet where such a topic is discussed (social media, news websites, app push notifications), and don’t go there!
Twitter isn’t what it used to be, and one of the few remaining valuable and fun aspects of the site is people reacting at lightning speed to a major televised event. The Red Wedding wouldn’t be the cultural touchstone it is without thousands of people crying on Twitter when it happened. We saw it more recently with The last of usAnd House of the Dragonboth of which were much more fun because it felt like everyone was watching it at the same time.
Sports fans have experienced this for years and have had to come up with their own methods and solutions to avoid scores when they watch later. I can’t stop laughing at the idea of dozens of people insisting that everyone else shouldn’t be tweeting about the incredible final at bat of the World Baseball Classic simply because they hadn’t seen it yet. Watching people react together in real time is a joy, and it makes TV (and Twitter) a shared experience.
Although the Internet has complicated business, this is not a new solution. There are episodes of scrubs And How I met your mother devoted entirely to characters trying not to find out what happened on a TV show they recorded. (Steven Soderberghs Logan Lucky has the best so far about this subject). Even before the internet, if you wanted to stay in the dark, it was up to you to avoid the places where you could be spoiled (the water cooler, the newspaper, chatty friends who watch the same thing, etc.).
That doesn’t mean it’s fair game for people to just yell spoilers at you, but that’s not (usually) what’s happening here. Twitter is a platform where people discuss TV shows (among other things) as they happen, much like entertainment websites discuss shows and movies as they happen. I promise you’ll be fine without Twitter, or even the entire internet, for a while (unless your job requires you to be in those places, in which case: I sympathize!).
Even if you come across a plot point beforehand, there’s no reason to ruin the show or movie you’re about to watch. The art itself is the art, not a Wikipedia record of events, and How things are depicted is even more important than What is depicted – even though surprises and twists are always fun. If knowing something that happens means you stop enjoying the show… maybe it wasn’t so good to begin with?
In fact, while it feels bad to be spoiled with something you’ve been looking forward to, it’s not fair to insist that other people stop talking about it because your schedule is different. You’re not the main character of the internet, and the rest of online doesn’t owe it to you to be a mom about anything just because you haven’t caught up yet. It is your responsibility to keep yourself spoiler-free, not everyone else’s.