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It was spoilers a-hoy all over the internet.
Since its first season, 'Game of Thrones' has become synonymous with 'the shocking plot twist' – usually involving the death of a principal character... or sometimes various characters all at once.
This week, in the second episode of the fourth season, the show did it again, dispatching a central character with ruthless efficiency. We’re going to try and not to ruin who it was, in case you’re waiting for the box set.
However, many news outlets didn’t just publish stories – complete with big ‘spoiler' warnings – about the plot twist. They also put spoilers into their headlines and front pages, meaning readers had no choice but to find out the news.
We think you only have yourself to blame if you find out spoilers on Twitter or Facebook – after all, these social networks are places for like-minded folks to discuss pop culture events like 'Game of Thrones'. So if you don't want to know, you simply avoid social media, right?
But then not every British GoT fan is on Twitter or watches the episodes early online. Should these news outlets know better? Let us know what you think…
*** SPOILERS MIGHT BE AHEAD! (THOUGH WE'VE TRIED TO AVOID THEM) ***
The Guardian
The Guardian published a tribute to the deceased character after the episode aired in the US but before it had been shown in the UK. Not only that, they linked to it from their front page, with the accompanying copy and picture making it pretty clear what had happened in the episode. It was impossible to avoid if you simply went to the Guardian's homepage. Many commenters were absolutely furious.
Mashable
Website Mashable managed to incense show fans with their headline 'Recap: 9 reasons to be sad [description of character] is dead'. Which would have been fine, had it not been accompanied by a sizeable picture of said character. Readers quickly lambasted the site for the gaffe, which also went out on its Twitter feed to four million followers. The tweet was deleted, the headline tweaked to become '9 Reasons to Be Sad Someone Really Important Is Dead', and the picture replaced with one of writer George R.R. Martin. The damage was very much done, however.
The Wrap
US film site The Wrap managed a rather similar, and similarly unforgivable faux pas on its homepage. Though the main 'spoilers contained' review article featured a not-too-subtle picture revealing the twist, there were also accompanying feature articles emblazoned on the homepage included ‘[X’s] Douchiest Moments' and 'Game of Thrones star Natalie Dormer on the show's (wonderful) bad news'. Now why would they be publishing stories like... oh. Oh, thanks very much.
The Daily Telegraph
Rather ironically, last week the Daily Telegraph published a feature called '10 ways to avoid spoilers', in anticipation of the fourth season of 'Game of Thrones'. Someone on the staff obviously failed to heed the paper's own advice. A somewhat revealing headline featured on one article: 'Game of Thrones: Who killed [X]?', along with a list of the prime suspects. It was later changed to 'Game of Thrones becomes a murder mystery'. But once more, after a roasting in the comments section, the damage was done.
Google Auto-Complete
Handy perhaps, but Google Auto-Complete is a spoiler portal par excellence. Let's just say that once the term 'who killed' is popped into the search box, a spoiler-iffic completed phrase isn't far down the list. At all.
Grayling PR
Not a news outlet, but nevertheless, this US PR company was promoting a spoof job ad on the Snagajob website, flagged up with the headline ‘[X] is dead! Apply for the open position on Snagajob'. It then went on to list the job description for said character’s position in the show. All very amusing, but it was then emailed out globally to people who had not yet had the chance to see the episode.
Did any other news outlets ruin Games of Thrones for you? Do you care about TV show spoilers? Have we revealed too much in this article? Let us know in the comments section below.
Ref:yahoo
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