DON’T GET HER STARTED... ON SPOILERS
In the week that the CPS directs prosecutors to treat online abuse as seriously as they would in-the-street, face-to-face abuse, my Grazia desk mate Mel and I decide that people who spread internet spoilers should face equally harsh legal redress. ‘At least as harsh,’ Mel says. ‘ At least.’ She is reeling in the wake of having accidentally seen a newsfeed headline that revealed a plot twist on an unscreened episode of Game Of Thrones; an ep which had been hacked by individuals so unscrupulous, so lacking in compassion, just knowing they exist makes me feel more depressed than ever re the state of humanity.
‘I feel violated!’ Mel rages. ‘It didn’t even say SPOILER ALERT! It just said the Thing in five short words, and before I could look away, I had read it, and it is a really big deal!’ After deleting Twitter from my phone lest I fall foul of something similar, then making damn sure Mel was not about to take me down with her by passing the plot spoiler on (Mel says she’d never do such a thing, is saddened I would think her capable), I commiserate heartily. ‘I knew you’d understand,’ Mel says. She seems to have moved from denial, through anger, to the resignation phase of the RPS* (*Recently Plot Spoiled).
‘Of course I understand!’ I say. Mel and I share a terrible passion for Game Of Thrones, a TV show I once described as ‘the single greatest love of my life’. ‘Why: it’s practically a hate crime! No, sorry, it’s a not-very-nice crime.’
Spoiling GOT is an act of wanton aggression against all of us who are now willingly enslaved to its old-school episodic weekly screening schedule. Who don’t mind Mondays any more, because Monday night is GOT night! Who don’t mind Tuesdays either, because Tuesday morning is forensic dissection of the night before’s GOT time! Who understand that the latest plot twists cannot be discussed openly, loudly, and/or carelessly for a fortnight after screening, lest any passing eavesdroppers not be totally up to date. Who feel an instant affinity with a stranger, simply because they breathed the words ‘Kingslayer’. It’s like that manageress of Topshop Oxford Circus said to me, on discovering during casual mid-purchase chit-chat, that I, like her, am utterly obsessed by Game Of Thrones: ‘Fam! You’re Our people.’
‘Why would anyone take that away from us?’ wails Mel. ‘ Why?’ ‘Spoilers gonna spoil,’ I say. ‘People are awful,’ Mel says.