We discussed this awhile back when dealing with Steve Carell leaving the office. We had a slew of posts about Will Ferrell guesting(at the time, possibly replacing) Carell. People considered that spoilers and we tried to decide what constituted spoilers.
For next week’s Supernatural, I spoiled that(and I’ll spoiler-code it here):
James Marsters and Charisma Carpenter will appear together
My opinion is that I don’t think guest starts are necessarily spoilers, but I don’t think it hurts to spoiler tag the info. I wouldn’t call you silly or paranoid.
On a more general note, when it comes to “next time on…” - I generally go out of my way *not * to watch those on shows I like, so I definitely wouldn’t consider info contained in them to be “not spoilers” just by virtue of being aired. YMMV.
There’s no hard and fast rules about what’s a spoiler and what’s not. One person’s spoiler is another person’s tuna salad sammich. We all do our best to avoid obvious spoilers but people who interpret “spoiler” more broadly should avoid reading threads about shows they don’t want spoiled.
I would say it depends. Saying that the guest star who plays a recurring character is coming back could be a spoiler for sure. If it’s a one-off thing and you don’t reveal who the actor is playing, that’s not much of a spoiler. But spoilering the info doesn’t cost you much of anything.
I don’t understand why everybody can’t just be polite and spoiler everything (for upcoming shows/movies). Some people like to know everything they can about an upcoming show. Me, I hate even getting a glimpse. i like it to be all new to me. I admit I lean to the spoiler side, but I think it’s just politeness.
That being said, I avoid those threads like the plague, if I think I will be spoiled on something I don’t want.
It’s TBG, not TBD, and a guest star is only a spoiler if it gives away a plot point in an episode.
Someone who’s never been on the show before, playing a new, never before seen (or talked about) character, NOT A SPOILER
Someone who used to be on the show but was killed off 3 seasons ago, SPOILER
because it’s [/spoiler] annoying to have to keep clicking spoiler boxes over and over just to follow a discussion [spoiler] where you aren’t even spoiling anything.