Agreed X 2. How is an entertainment news headline a spoiler? If we’re going to consider a publicized casting choice as a spoiler, what’s next? Cancellations and premiere dates?
If Stoid had posted with the Spader info in a spoiler box, how would that go?
“I hear James Spader might be joining The Office.”
And the next post might then be "Spader! I loved him in the season finale".
Ridiculous.
The issue that people are complaining about is that the spoiler was in the thread title, which has since been edited. Ideally, the thread title would have been something along the lines of “The Office Casting News spoilers” so that people who hadn’t read the news and didn’t want read the news could continue to easily avoid the news, while people who want to know now could see that the info is available. Nobody is saying anyone need bother use spoiler tags within the thread; just don’t put spoilers in thread titles.
Is it really so difficult to err on the side of “don’t be a jerk”?
For the record, I’m not that annoyed by this particular case, but I want to avoid a bad precedent for when someone might post a spoiler for a show I do care about.
How are you supposed to not read it when it is in the title? 
You didn’t read threads about “The Wire” for 5 years, but I bet you still read Cafe Society.
(I hadn’t read it anywhere else, not that it really bothers me cause I don’t care about spoilers for the Office, but it was in the thread title.)
OMG! :rolleyes:
This man gets it. Frankly, most people do but there seem to be a very small minority of selfish gits that just don’t understand the concept of how just because they don’t care it doesn’t mean no one cares.
Thread title:
“Office casting for upcoming season (Spoilers inside)”.
I mean fuck, how difficult is that?
Lucky for you nobody put spoilers for The Wire in thread titles then, isn’t it?
No, what is ridiculous is that you can’t see beyond your own selfishness. You just don’t seem to get the idea that some people would prefer to have not read the information in your thread title and that a spoiler-free thread title would have been piss easy to throw together. I’ve given you examples in this thread.
Learn to think about others. Not everyone reads the same news sources as you. Not everyone is as saturated in these things as you. Not everyone even lives in the same country as you. Start to think beyond your own four walls.
Except that someone did, and on a scale of 1 to 10, it was a 10.
What stoid did wasn’t “selfish”. She was excited and wanted to share the news, and didn’t think anyone would consider it a spoiler. It wasn’t inside information.
Yeah, they did, but in the grand scheme of life it has zero impact on me, unlike some other folks. All this froth and lather over a friggin’ sitcom? Please.
I’d wager a guess that all this “froth and lather” (awesome phrasing by the way) isn’t over a sitcom but instead was caused by the OP’s rather selfish thread title and then her absolutely pissy attitude when she was called on it. It snowballed when others came in to share those sentiments.
“Called on” implies I did something reasonable people would agree was clearly uncool. At the moment, I reject that characterization.
Show me at least 5 examples of other threads that were so careful about casting for other shows, and I might take another look. For right now, no, not buying it.
I am fully prepared to acknowledge and respect the fact that some people may have been planning to close their eyes and stick their fingers in their ears (which is what it would have taken, seeing as how headlines of this announcement were all over and being fed into things like yahoo home page and the like, making it virtually impossible to avoid) and had their plans ruined. And if they’d come into the thread with an attitude that acknowledged that it was their unforseeable-by-others plan to shut out entertainment for this reason and I’d spoiled it by saying something along the lines of
“Rats! Dammit, Stoid, I was hoping the whole issue of cast changes was going to be kept under wraps and I’d be surprised in the fall! Crap!”
I would have readily responded sympathetically.
But so far I’m not seeing any evidence that it was a reasonable expectation of me to know that some people were hoping to avoid such news altogether, *even if the producers of the show made absolutely zero effort to keep their audience in the dark about it, *and therefore my correct action would have been to take care not to reveal it in the thread title.
Oh, and as has been pointed out several times: he’s not going to be taking over as the office manager, he’s going to replace Kathy bates’ role as CEO, making it even LESS of something I might have anticipated people wanted to avoid knowing.
**Stoid **showing a pissy attitude? You jest.
Of course he is. It would take some pretty creative reading to arrive at “pissy attitude” from:
Which is the entirety of my response to being “called on it”.
This isn’t the sort of thing I care about being spoiled or not, but I love The Office and I had no idea that 1) there were plans to replace the Kathy Bates character with someone else or 2) who would be playing this role. And it’s not like I live in a cave or anything. This news was quite possible to avoid even if one wasn’t trying.
I didn’t see the old thread title, but I wouldn’t have used anything that might contain spoilers myself, (and I love posting spoilers). Now that the thread title is changed, let’s not get into this old argument, and let’s talk about the news. I really hope this is going to happen… Jo Bennett was fun, but the Robert California character NEEDS to have some presence on the show.
Agreed. He was hilarious, but he seemed like a “funny in small doses” character. Of course, now that he’s been hired to replaced Jo, that makes me think that Darryl will be the new boss. Spader was really the only one interviewed who doesn’t have any other projects right now. But then again, it wouldn’t surprise me if they just pulled in somebody who didn’t appear in the finale at all.
WAG: They were waiting to see if “Harry’s Law” would be renewed. If it was, she would be too busy to do both roles. And it was.
Don’t wreck it. I want to go into the Spoilies broadcast clean.
-Joe
Just once, I wish someone would explain to me how casting news spoils one’s enjoyment of a show. Yes, it’s information that you previously didn’t have. How is your experience of watching the show ruined now? It’s not a plot point. It’s not like saying “Keyser Soze is [redacted].” THAT information is a plot point, and it significantly changes the way you watch the movie. If you haven’t seen The Usual Suspects and you go into it knowing my self-redacted information, you’re seeing a different movie than you would have otherwise. Your virgin viewing experience has been spoiled.
Now. Generate a comparable explanation for me using the information that James Spader is going to join the show. How will your viewing experience suffer compared to the alternative universe where you didn’t know he was joining the show? You still don’t know who is going to be the Regional Manager next season. That surprise is pristine. All you know is that Kathy Bates is out and Spader is in. You don’t know how much Spader is going to be on the show, what his functional role will be, how much screen time he’ll have, whether any plots will circle around his character, whether his already revealed persona will change (or turn out to be an act or something)… you don’t know anything beyond one fact that Spader will be on the show. What has been spoiled? (N.B. These are not rhetorical questions; I genuinely don’t get it, so please answer them explicitly if you would like).
Absent this information, I propose that we label stoid an informationer, rather than a spoiler, because only two things were spoiled by this thread: fuck and all.
(P.S. More on topic, awesome fucking news. Spader was wicked in his brief cameo, and while I too worry about the character getting played out, I’m way more excited about the possibility for just brilliant writing and acting. At this point, this news more than makes up for the Ferrell debacle.)
(P.P.S. Merijeek–Ha!)