A spoiler is simply revealing something about a show before it has been aired.
Sounds simple enough, but in reality this isn't as simple as it seems. Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel don't air at the same time for each person. Australia is about 3/4 of the way through Season 7. Britain is around the same. Other places may even still be on season 6.
For some of us (like myself) it isn't a big deal if you let something slip. For others it is a BIG DEAL. Huge deal. I cannot stress how big a deal it is.
To be 100% safe don't discuss anything from the current season. Anything at all. Not who is in the show. Not the music. Not the credits. Not the plot. Not the metaphors. Nothing.
If you have to discuss the show, ask this question first:
"How much of Buffy (or Angel) have you seen this season?"
Don't ask:
"Did you see the episode where (open mouth and insert huge spoilery foot here)"
Don't casually assume people have seen what you have seen. And don't assume they want to know what is coming either. Ask someone "Do you want to know?"
Ask twice it always pays to be safe.
why go to all this effort?
Buffy (more than any other show I can even remember) has a strong following on the Internet and people post spoilers all the time. I never saw as many spoilers for any show as I have for Buffy.
That makes infintitely harder to keep the sponteneity and surprise of the show at bay. Some people like it. Others depend on it. The show loses all its thrill if you S-P-O-I-L it.
There are lots of places you can go if you want to spoil yourself. There are discussion boards with much more lax spoiler policies than this one. If you can't contain yourself and feel you must spoil others, sorry, you have to go.
Accidents happen, but be prepared to apologise your ass off.
"I gave up about a year ago trying to keep anything off the Internet," Joss Whedon, the show's creator and executive producer said yesterday."Even if we had alternate endings, eventually you have to put together the one with the real ending and somebody sees it," he says.
"The one, real downside of [the Internet] is the destruction of the surprise. However a lot people don't go on it or deliberately avoid spoilers, so they're the people I'm talking to the most - the ones that want to see it pure. For the rest of them, I've given up the fight," he says.
There are people on LABN who want to "see it pure". As a courtesy we try to accomodate them.
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What is a spoiler and why some people don't like them
The current Buffy episode in the UK:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/buffy/
The Current Buffy Episode in Australia:
http://www.buffydownunder.com/
The Current Buffy in Kuwait:
(Ask Saadia)
What is a spoiler and why some people don't like them
hehe, that will be buffy season 3, ending, and buffy season 6, begining (love the scene when buffy comes to life, the skin coming back on the corpse that was buffy...COOL!!!), angel season 3 begining.....
however i catch up on my lastest angel and buffy epi's on the internet through transcripts, so its almost as good. I mean i read all the dialogues and imagine the facila expressions and stuff. Ok so its not as good, but desperate times called for desperate measures....
What is a spoiler and why some people don't like them
Apparently Heather isn't the only person who has this problem:
