Umm, you complain about having to read subtle and not so subtle spoilers, and then you perpetrate a huge one of your own... :D

Please remember it might be some people who hasn't watched BSG yet. ;)

If you paid attention to the installer of one of the Agatha Christie games one of the filenames copied reveals who the murderer is.

When Amazon advertised the new Kindle they did it with the first page of next book of The Hunger Games - that reveals the end of the latest movie that wasn't even out then.

Wow, that brings back memories. I remember that! The internet was filled with tons of spoiler info from that soundtrack release. The Walking Dead did that a couple of years ago with one of the DVD releases... Amazon had info on 'the last moments' of a certain character we all loved to hate. Fans went nuts. Perhaps people in the pre-production of DVDs and soundtracks might use a bit more discretion when tagging their labels and track titles with such obvious spoiler material.

That or, you know, wait until a damn movie or tv show is out before flooding the market with endless waves of merchandise. Remember the old days when we'd become fans of something AND THEN go buy the merchandise? Yeah, I know. Too old fashioned.

I contemplated denoting that as a spoiler, but decided against it since its only a matter of personal taste and it is practically a given that someone doesn't like a story for any given series. Its debatable though, so to play it safe I'll indicate it as such (edit: removed it to be safe)...

Actually this fits the thread title pretty well. Building hype, spin-doctoring... paid trolls, fake user reviews, bought product testers, "viral marketing" - be it merchantile or political, the internet has become very dangerous in terms of finding trustworthy information. It's hard to determine which trends "came up" and which "were made".

In William Gibson's Pattern Recognition there is a pretty girl that earns her living by going to bars and talking to people (guys). While they try to impress her, she en passant drops names of products or brands of her clients - they are thus subconsciously connected with "pretty girl is interested in this" and so become more popular. I wasn't not that much surprised when I found out that this job description is not fiction. And the internet accelerates things like this.

That's kind of what I'm doing, except that I'm going for old and popular series. Hence : x-files! and MacGyver when I'm done with it :)

Sadly, that is not only true, but has become an industry staple tactic by the rich men in suits... the biggest trolls of them all. I actually did an experiment like that in high school. I pinned a bunch of old action figures to my leather jacket, then went to school wearing it and everyone asked me what that was all about. I then told them that it was really cool to be retro with your own child hood... that it was the biggest thing in LA. Yeah, I made it up to see what reactions might happen. Sure enough, a day or two later I saw a few kids wearing little transformers and gijoes on their jackets.

It works. It's sad but true. It is TOO easy to manipulate crowds and social groups. Thankfully I'm not sociopathic enough to become a religious cult leader or politician. Those people are all cut from the same cloth. They make lying and manipulation into a career path. That's another major reason why maintaining individuality and personal critical thinking is so important. Keeping your own wits about you will reveal many a dark path to avoid. Some like to call it a BULLSHIT detector.

I agree with your opinion on the comment you kindly removed, but I recall learning about it years ago, *before* watching the series, and I wasn't exactly thrilled about knowing it in advance. ;)

If you want a bit of real life horror, try reading the book The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains. It does a good a good job at descriping how the internet is rewiring the human brain, for better of worse. The topic sounds a bit paranoid, but the book is actually quite factual and down to earth.

The worst spoiler in my life was when I bought a VHS tape with The Ring. For some odd reason, the surprise ending was casually explained at the back of the cover... Even for a danish release, this was a bit much.

I was expecting Iron Maiden, you evil ...blacksmith ?

I'm fine with avoiding spoilers on the internet, I usually just get up to date on a series or I avoid threads talking about them.

I have been annoyed at some shows that show way too much in their own previews though. As much as I really enjoy Mythbusters, my biggest gripe with it is their synopsis of what's coming up before they go to ads always shows way too much. I have to close my eyes, block my ears and hum loudly just so I'm actually interested in seeing what's after the ads which seems to be the exact opposite response of what they're trying to accomplish with that.

Bruce Willis was Dead the WHOLE TIME!
'Rosebud' was the name of his sledge
etc. etc.

Uhm, I'm afraid to click on that link