Less than a week after Nintendo released the new Punch-Out!! game for the Wii, the folks at GoNintendo spoiled it on their weekly podcast. This aggravated me to no end; the staff had taken care not to spoil it in all of their coverage leading up to the game’s release, and then some douchebag on the podcast drops the spoiler right at the beginning, with no warning whatsoever! (Note: I realize that Punch-Out!! isn’t exactly heavy on story, but the spoiler in question dealt with a hidden character that I would’ve preferred to discover the identity of on my own.)

This latest incident reminds me just how much I fucking hate spoilers. Movies, games, books, television shows…it doesn’t matter. If I haven’t seen/read/played it yet, I don’t want to know. In the Information Age, I do understand they’re sometimes unavoidable. I also understand that if I didn’t see a movie that came out many months ago, I can’t reasonably expect people on my favorite podcasts and such to remain silent. However, spoiler warnings aren’t too much to ask. The GoNintendo incident reported above was recorded and released a matter of days after the game’s release. That’s completely unacceptable, and someone needs to go to their room and think about what they’ve done.

The same thing happened years ago when Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince came out. (The novel, not the film.) Some toolbox on LiveJournal spilled the beans on a major event at the end of the book. I (and many others reading the thread) were understandably furious, especially since the thread in question had no warnings of any kind; in fact, I don’t think the thread itself was even about the books to begin with! Perhaps the spoiler-poster’s intent was not malevolent, but that’s not the point: if you know people haven’t read the book yet, shut the fuck up!

I seem to be in the minority on this issue; most people I know love to seek out spoilers and other advance details on their favorite television shows and whatnot. I prefer to remain in the dark, as it makes the piece of entertainment much more…well, entertaining. And isn’t that the intent? (Hey, at least one other person in the blogosphere agrees with me.) I successfully avoided all Lost spoilers for years, and when I finally watched the first four seasons last summer, I was immediately hooked. I doubt that would’ve happened had I known plot specifics in advance! The final season’s coming up next year, but I don’t want to see or hear a damned thing until the premiere in January.

If your friends spoil things for you, feel free to hit them as hard as you like in a sensitive place. If you spoil stuff, your friends have carte blanche to beat the shit out of you.