Against social media trolls. Leshu Torchin, in Wednesday's Souciant.
To me, this skirts a bigger issue - it's not like you're a captive audience to Facebook of all things. I'm seasons behind on Breaking Bad. Moderate a sub where 4chan trolls regularly post spoilers to whatever's hot, which we then have to delete. Which means we then have to read prior to deletion. Which means in many ways I'm a lot closer to ol'Alex up there than these very people the author is talking about whom I, too, have observed. When did we stop being stewards of our own information? If you don't want to read something, don't read it. If you're watching Mad Men a few episodes behind and you see the start of a sentence about Don Draper, don't finish the sentence. I've got nine fricking tabs open right now and if Walter White himself popped his head up in this one I could hide myself from knowledge I didn't want without even looking away. And looking away is a good thing to do every ten minutes or so. Prevents eyestrain. Is it "ownership" of your feed or something? Do you think those words on your screen somehow belong to you? And the spoiler is like a gopher in your garden? Dunno. There's some weird behavior prompted by Facebook.
For some reason, I give not a shit about spoilers. I'm known for reading summaries of books, series, and movies before watching them or while in the middle of them. Sometimes I do this because I want to know what will happen and I'm afraid the author is going to take the story somewhere I don't want it to go, and I want to be prepared for that. Sometimes I'm just curious. I guess I don't like surprises. So spoilers away. If you let knowledge of what's going to happen ruin your show-watching experience then I guess you don't like anything else about a show: the actual acting, the dialogue, the scene-setting, the costuming, all of that. On the other hand I guess spoilers prevent you from getting close to characters if they are going to die. But, like...so what? I just get a little less emotionally involved with a book or series in that case. Is that a bad thing?
I'm pretty much the same way. If something gets "spoiled" for me, my mindset changes from "what's going to happen" to "how did it happen", and I still enjoy whatever it is that got spoiled just fine. There are a few exceptions for me. Persona 4 (because it's consumed my life, I'm sorry I keep talking about it) is a murder mystery, for example. Definitely wouldn't want that kind of thing spoiled for me. I like to guess at who might be the killer, and the chase with its twists and turns is a part of the fun for me.