Stephen King and his Twitter feed: it’s just one spoiler after another
The horror writer has lurched from one slip to the next since he started tweeting, writes Alice Vincent
STEPHEN King finally got a Twitter account in December and he has been embroiled in 140-character disaster ever since.
On Sunday last week, the bestselling horror author sparked ire among his 374 000 followers when he tweeted what happened to Game of Thrones’ King Joffrey shortly after the episode aired on the US East Coast.
With millions of viewers awaiting The Purple Wedding on the West Coast, not to mention internationally, this rather gave the game away.
King was quick to deny his critics’ claims that he was posting a spoiler, pleading: “Come on guys, it’s been in the books for 15 years or so, and the episode ran tonight,” before retweeting the praise of one Lance Turbes, who wrote: “That is one spoiler I have no issue with reading.”
To illustrate further, King added: “Another spoiler: Romeo and Juliet die in Act 5.”
Some context. Five months ago this appeared on King’s website: “Stephen now has an official Twitter account! We were going for Stephen King Author but it was too many letters. Tweets may not be frequent as he still believes you’d rather read books than tweets so he’ll be spending more time writing the books.”
@StephenKing gathered more than 172 000 in three days and opened his account in the time-honoured way: a slightly daunted “I’m on Twitter” announcement: “My first tweet. No longer a virgin. Be gentle!”
King’s subsequent 194 updates (at the time of writing) suggest that rather than penning the next Carrie , he has been watching a lot of TV and films. We know this because he has spoilt most of them. It started innocuously enough with The Returned. King tweeted about the “scary and sexy” French vampire series with the subtle spoiler: “That kid Victor’s giving me nightmares.” So far, so forgivable. But King gave his followers a hint of the spoiler fest to come with this festive Christmas Eve snippet: “The year’s most annoying TV promo: ‘This is the episode that will change everything!’ Only it never f. . . does.” Oh. From here on in, King was on a downward spiral of spoilers, from the bizarre: “Scully kills Mulder when her flimsy wall of denial finally crumbles. Is committed to an asylum with Hannibal Lecter. I smell a sequel,” to the banal: “Ever notice that characters in TV shows hardly ever watch TV shows? Their lives are too exciting, I guess.”
So many of King’s tweets contained spoilers that the author began to capitalise the film, TV show and books he was exposing: “If you read Alex Marwood’s THE
Come on guys, it’s been in the books for 15 years or so
WICKED GIRLS, her new one — THE KILLER NEXT DOOR — is even better. Scary as hell. Great characters.” or, “ORANGE IS THE NEW BLACK: I was dubious at first, but it sort of hits its stride when Piper’s hunting for the chicken.”
There was even a moment in March when King appeared to be parodying his own actions: “Glad I watched the TRUE DETECTIVE finale on ‘regular’ TV. Spoiler: It was awesome.”
And yet, the spoilers keep coming. Since then, King has said too much about The Secret Place by Tana French, The Accident by Chris Pavone, Crisis, In Country, Oculus, The Raid 2 and, even after his Purple Wedding mishap, Doing Harm by Kelly Parsons.
King’s Twitter account has got him in trouble aside from spoilers — he dismissed Dylan Farrow’s sexual abuse allegations about Woody Allen as “palpable bitchery”.
He apologised at length on his website, but put the precis version on Twitter: “Still learning my way around this thing [Twitter]. Mercy, please.”
It is true that, even in internet time, King is still a Twitter infant. So a single tip, Stephen: follow a few more people — although you follow a group of erudite Twitter pros, Neil Gaiman and Margaret Atwood among them, they number 19 in total. You will learn more by multiplying that by 10.
In the meantime, try to keep the spoilers down. As one of your own followers pointed out: How would you have felt if someone had tweeted the ending to a Stephen King novel? — ©