Giving a new meaning to the word "spoiler"

What do you do when you see one of these?

When I think of the word "spoiler," my first thought is "Look away!" Then I give myself a second or two to evaluate what has the potential to be spoiled here, and choose to either continue reading or navigate to another site accordingly.


My notion of a "spoiler" is giving away the plot or major secrets from a work of popular culture: a book, movie, TV show, video game, etc. It's something that web users often incorporate into their discussions of such works to warn those who haven't read the book, seen the movie, etc. that major plot points will be revealed in the subsequent text if they continue reading. This preserves the 'first-time experience' for anyone who may be interested in reading the book, seeing the movie, etc. for themselves in the future, without prior knowledge of the outcome.


Jenkins brings up a new notion of a "spoiler" in chapter one of "Convergence Culture" when he discusses the TV show Survivor. He says members of the online spoiling community don't mind having predicted answers circulated, as long as there's a backstory to how those answers were gathered; this allows different users to check these supposed 'answers' and continue the game. 


However, "ChillOne and his allies argued that such [spoiler] warnings were not needed here, since the whole purpose of the group was spoiling, and yet, telling the answers cut off the game that many other group members wanted to play" (55). 


This is a very thin and vaguely defined line - how to spoil without spoiling too much. I don't have the investigative skills to participate in a spoiler community, but even if I did, I would be too wary to join for risk of having too much revealed at once.