awesome. read it

"The following includes major spoilers for Game of Thrones (seriously), Twin Peaks, The Sopranos, Citizen Kane, The Crying Game, and The Empire Strikes Back."

Oh man. Just knowing they have spoilers IS a spoiler.

This is truly an excellent point:

Now, every morning is a “morning after” for someone, and front-page headlines emerge from every nook and cranny of the Internet. Spoilers aren’t just something you randomly stumble across in articles about Fantasy Island — they’re something you must actively avoid. And no show has to tread this line more carefully than Game of Thrones, HBO’s hit adaptation of the epic fantasy novel series A Song of Ice and Fire by George R. R. Martin.

There are currently five A Song of Ice and Fire novels and counting dating back to the summer of ’96; functionally, that means several thousand pages of “spoilers” for everything that’s happened on the show so far, plus tons of stuff it hasn’t even gotten to yet. Many viewers came into the show fresh, then went back and read the books, while others are still blissfully unaware of the horrors to come.

It’s the one show where the wide range of knowledge levels among fans mirrors the wide range of ways to experience and discuss the show itself, making Game of Thrones a unique window into the ongoing negotiations between shows, their fans, their critics, and websites to establish community norms regarding spoilers.

I usually post stuff right after it airs because Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr are all talking about it.

Jared is there a spoiler policy you believe in, in an internet with oversharing everywhere?

I cannot admit to having thought about it much.  I think mild spoiler warnings in certain cases make sense. But you should not be reading about a topic unless you are up to date or do not care.  I also am not big into watching TV/movie/sports and tweeting about it, so I miss that often.  

There is another type of spoiler for even those who are caught up but have not picked up on the subtle clues.  When something is not necessarily explicitly stated, but it is known.  Games of Thrones, book and TV, have a lot of that.  So I could *spoil* someone's understanding of that world by talking to them and they could do the same for me just by being a better reader/detail watcher.  Is that spoiling when we both just watched the same episode.  (I am talking to you, episode 1 season 3)

That's not spoiling -- it's giving us better understanding!

Season 3 episode 1 was a lot of setup. Nothing to spoil!

have you read the books?

Skimmed but not read.

One day I'll go back and read them all.

But I'm the kind of person who enjoys knowing what happens so I can read for details of foreshadow.

Rather than try to guess what's happening and spend energy on that, thereby missing details.