Goddammit, that SCREEN SHOT is a spoiler. One that I’d successfully avoided before now. (I’m not reading the article or any further discussion of it.)
Edit: The new screen shot is less spoiler-y, but now I know what everyone is wearing to dinner.
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Fair enough. However your picture is of Joffrey with blood trailing from his nose, so it’s pretty hard not to be spoiled just by looking at your main page!
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If you’re gonna be such a douche about it, go ahead and delete my commenting account while you’re at it. You guys have developed some really above-it-all attitudes lately, and it’s become a serious drag.
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Then how will you complain when we spoil Tyrion’s death in a few weeks?
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I’ve read the books—I’m just thinking about other people here. You should try it sometime.
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Articles explicitly about Game of Thrones killings are no place for spoiler weenies – or precious concern for their delicate feelings.
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My weenie-whine wasn’t in objection to the article (which I have no intention of reading just yet), it was to the earlier screen shot on the front page that showed which character died. I do give you credit for changing it though.
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I especially like that you mock people for complaining about spoilers while simultaneously changing the cover image and adding spoiler warning. I guess you can have it both ways!
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We didn’t add a spoiler warning, it was always there.
The thumbnail was changed to get “gore” off the homepage, a complaint I usually find silly enough but one that does get our attention. Sorry, JeffK, you’re still stuck in spoilertown 
Really? It wasn’t to deal with the giant spoiler?
I agree that it’s a pretty jerk move. The occasional slip-up may be unintentional, but at least have the grace to say “oops, sorry.” That was a huge spoiled reveal, and not one that could be avoided by not clicking on the link. Unless you want to put a big tag at the top of main Boing Boing page, and say “don’t both coming to Boing Boing at all, if you don’t want spoilers of all your shows.”
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He’s right, you are being a real douche about this. I was looking out for others who hadn’t seen the show yet, and your main page post was the spoiler in and of itself, clicking through to the article was not necessary. At least you guys did change the main page image, perhaps my complaint had something to do with that? even though you deleted my comment for some reason?
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But the head line and front page picture are no place for HEAVY SPOILERS.
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You’ve had nearly a week to watch it, guys!
I’m not telling you to stop, or that your feelings aren’t valid, I’m just making it as clear as possible that we are not going to have particularly strict spoiler policies here beyond the most casual warnings, and that complaints about it will generally not stay up.
We have this thread every week on every GoT recap anyway and a certain impassive attitude does set in. It’s hard to separate genuinely-felt frustration from handwringing and trolling.
Rather than just ream out the spoiler complaints on every GoT post (censorship!), from now on they’ll all just get moved here.
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Obviously this is hyperbole, but there is a lot of instant spoiler TV coverage now, so it’s not too far from the truth.
With the painting and the word poisoning, this post on the main page has already spoiled it for me. Thanks.
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Simple answer to that is don’t spoil one of the most watched tv programs ever on the main page of your website
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Speaking as somebody who has already read the book and watched the episode, I would have been pretty bummed out if I’d seen this post on the main page before I’d done either of the above.
Spoil away all you want within posts, but posting massive spoiler images above the fold lowers Boing Boing itself to troll level. Not a cool move, and not at all what I’d expect from this site.
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I admit my original comment may have been a bit ‘whiney’, and for that I apologize. At the same time, a simple “yeah, that’s a bit spoiler-heavy for the front page, we’ve made an adjustment in the image” would have gone a long way.
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Can I ask something of the “spoiler” brigade, because this kind of fascinates me. Is your enjoyment of the book/movie/tv show really shallow (like potato chips entertainment value)? Why watch something if it can be spoiled just by knowing what happens?
I’m honestly kind of always confused by this whole phenomenon. Like are there people who would be like “NO don’t tell me what happens to Hamlet!!!”
Consider, that this is coming from some one who is an obsessive type. If I like something I will watch or read it 150 times to figure out all of the things I like.Or until I get sick of it. Whichever happens first. So it’s just totally a different headspace to me.
I normally like to know all of what is happening so that I’m not distracted by anxiety or too agitated. Thus I sometimes don’t like something until the second time around because I’m less distracted by negative emotions. (Explaining because I’m actually not just trying to troll or tick people off. I really don’t get it.)
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Really? Do you honestly believe that there is no place for surprise, or plot twists, in literature or it’s visual-equivalents?
Do you think there’s any reason that authors don’t simply list all the relevant facts at the start of the book or movie? How would your enjoyment of The Usual Suspects have changed if Keyser Soze had been shown and introduced at the very beginning? Would Planet of the Apes have been better if we had seen the ship coming in for a landing over a recognizable United States? How about if all mystery novels simply announced who dun it at the start?
Authors make an explicit choice what they want to reveal and when. If you think there’s a reason Arthur Conan Doyle doesn’t just tell us who did it in at the start of a Sherlock Holmes novel, how can you say that we are experiencing the book the way we should be experiencing it when someone comes up and says “oh, it’s the butler, you know.”
Sure, many plots are enjoyable even a second time. Romeo and Juliet is no worse just because we (now) know ahead of time that they’ll both die at the end. But that’s in part because we can call on our earlier experience of not knowing it, and in part because we can re-watch with different eyes an enjoy the way the author foreshadowed (or mislead you about) the end.
Really, all I can say is, “really?” To suggest you derive no additional enjoyment from the surprise of an unexpected event seems to me to just be saying that you are reading or watching all events dispassionately, with no emotional investment in their outcome. The reason we get on the edge of our seats when a character might live or die is because we care. To remove that feeling of being on the edge of your seat is to remove much of the intent of the piece of work.
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