Spoiler Alert: You Ruin Everything

Now you know what it feels like

Moments ago I was doing a little research on a movie I’d never seen before and was checking out the trailer on YouTube. Appeared to be the typical cheesy romance and I started to peruse the comments to see if others felt the same. Quite the contrary. Everyone was raving about it, including straight males who admitted to crying at the end. Everyone praised the “twist ending.” Okay, I was intrigued and figured I would give it a go sometime…until I scrolled to the last comment on the page which totally gave away the ending. There was no spoiler alert tag, no warning.

This is one of the greatest pitfalls of the Internet. Nothing is safe. People ruin everything –movies, television shows, books, and video games. But do I really have to avoid Facebook, Twitter, and literally the entire scope of the Internet until I watch/read something that recently came out? It’s bad enough when a friend lets it slip in conversation, but you have a keyboard. You can type “SPOILER ALERT” to send a warning. Chances are, I’ll see those big letters before my eyes finish reading the sentence. What’s even more frustrating is that when you type up a review on Netflix, you can actually check off a box for spoiler alerts which puts a nice little yield sign above the review. Do you know how many times people have not done that? Do you know how many movies I opted not to see?!

Learn some social skills and keep your thoughts, and the ending, to yourself. If you want to write “OmGz can you believe what happened on Show X last night?! Zoinks!” That’s fine. But don’t write on your feed that a character died! Not all of us can watch or read things the day they come out. Some of us have lives or other things going on. Have some patience. Don’t be that guy who ruins everything. I hope karma comes back to bite you in the ass and someone ruins a movie for you. Maybe then you’ll learn your lesson.