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palpablenotion · 7 years

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How to Avoid Spoilers and Spoiler Etiquette for Tagging

Did you miss this weeks episode? Have you missed this season’s episodes in general? But you still intend to watch it and don’t want spoilers?

There are a few things you can do. Most of them means you need something like Tumblr Savior or XKIT. Basically none of this works on mobile.

1- Blacklist the show.

This seems obvious but a lot of people still need to be told to do this. I sometimes will get angry that someone posted something without tagg- ... oh look I forgot to blacklist this tag, nevermind my bad. Seriously. Did it just last night. I was about to be pissed when I realized that the post was tagged. I, for some reason, hadn’t bothered to tag for the show nor the show’s spoiler tags.

Get preemptive with this shit. Most people are reactionary with their tagging. I blacklisted this show because something already got spoiled, but I should have known to blacklist it before.

If you’re just a week behind, you can just blacklist the spoiler tags. For instance, I have “supernatural spoilers” and “spn spoilers” blacklisted all the time, unless I’m 100% up to date and usually the season needs to be over. Right now I’m a season behind so I have “supernatural” and “spn” also blacklisted.

2 - Blacklist your main ships/fav characters.

If you’re like me, you probably end up following a bunch of people that either post exclusively about the show, your ship, or your character, or they at least post some good content along those lines. Well, just to be safe, especially if you don’t want spoilers for those ships/characters specifically, blacklist them until you catch up.

Unfortunately, a lot of people think tagging ships or characters is mutually exclusive from tagging the show. Back to my supernatural example: I follow someone that posts a lot of destiel, but they don’t always tag destiel posts as “spn” or “supernatural.” They do almost always tag those posts as “destiel,” however. So the ship gets blacklisted.

There is also this notion being pushed in a lot of corners of fandom that you shouldn’t tag a ship or character, especially if they’re very, very popular, with the media name because it “floods” the tag. That’s bullshit. A huge reason to tag is to allow for blacklisting. At the very least, tag it with the spoiler tags. This keeps it out of the main show tag (kind of, not really, tumblr is garbage) but still makes it easy to blacklist with one or two tags, instead of needing tags for each character and ship.

3 - Unfollow people.

This is one that works on mobile. It’s also the least favorite one. Some people try to tag for spoilers. Some people just keep forgetting to tag when, for instance, they live blog. Or they’re reblogging and they don’t tag anything. Maybe their on mobile and can’t be bothered to tag/tag “excessively.” Maybe they don’t give a fuck.

I used to follow a lot of people that seemed to have zero regard for other people when it came to spoilers. A huge reveal from the flash was spoiled by some jackass (read: really nice person who didn’t think before posting) that saw gifs of the reveal, felt strong emotions from the reveal, and reblogged without a single fucking tag. At the time, I had everything blacklisted. “the flash,” “the flash spoilers,” “flash,” “flash spoilers,” several ships, a few characters (including the character the reveal was about). But all the blacklisting in the world won’t help if they don’t fucking tag it...

4 - Blacklist the blog.

... unless you blacklist the blog itself.

Sometimes you don’t want to unfollow. Sometimes, you’re emotionally attached to the blog or you want it there for when you catch up. But they don’t tag. They never tag. I follow several blogs that are predominantly shadowhunters material. And let me tell you, very few actually tag the show “shadowhunters.” They don’t tag “malec,” they don’t tag “sh spoilers,” they don’t tag “sh cast.” Which is sooooooooooooo frustrating.

Some blogs have said they don’t need to tag because you’re following them and you should know that’s all they post. I followed a coldflash blog that refused to tag coldflash for just that reason. However, a general trend, when blogs refuse to tag because everything would be tagged that way... they tend not to tag anything actively useful. In my experience, these blogs are less likely to tag for triggers, very rarely tag spoilers, don’t tag for cast posts... If they’re a gen blog, some tag for ships and characters, but if they’re a ship blog, that’s unlikely.

So if you follow a blog that doesn’t respect spoiler rules of etiquette, blacklist them. You aren’t unfollowing them, they’ll be there when you’re ready, but you can now control your experience with them, where previously you were unable to.

NOTE: This can work in other areas too. Is a blog taking a turn in tone? Maybe blacklist them for a while and see if it reverts back later. Is the blogger going through something that makes a lot of their posts upset you? It’s okay to blacklist them and cut yourself off from that, you don’t owe them anything. Do you really like the blogger but suddenly their posts, which you’ve always enjoyed before, are weighing on you or pulling you down? Blacklist them for now. That’s okay.

5 - Take a step back from tumblr.

This also works for mobile /s. I’ve taken a step back from tumblr for a lot of reasons. I left the site for about 6-8 months a year or so ago, because I was becoming obsessed with needing to see every post on my dash. I’ve gone off for a week or so because I got pissed off at spoilers. And sometimes, when I know there’s going to be a lot of content that everyone’s talking about and I can’t avoid, I’ll bunker down.

Bunker down, in this case, refers to remaining on the site but only accessing your own activity page. You can see who interacts with you, directly, but you don’t have to see what everyone is saying independent of your posts. This can be a preemptive form of control on your experience.*

This is sort of like the “abstinence” form of avoiding spoilers, with bunkering down being sort of like the 2nd base of fandom interaction.

You can still message people and reply to asks, with this tactic. The goal is to stay off your dash and out of browsing. Control your input by just interacting with reactions to your posts or direct conversations with bloggers.

* Note: This can work really well if you are being overwhelmed by a trend on your dash/the site, as well. If you’re following discourse blogs, for instance. Sometimes things get to heavy and bunkering down can allow you to temporarily escape that and still feel like you’re involved.

If anyone has any other suggestions, please feel free to message me or send in an ask.

Now let’s get into spoiler etiquette. Here are some suggestions for keeping your blog free of spoilers and making it a safe place for fans that miss episodes.

1 - TAG YOUR POSTS!

I know this seems obvious but I like to think I already demonstrated how blogs fail to tag. If you are a shipper that keeps tagging the ship and not the show, tag the show. Especially if you post during/immediately after new episodes. Your ship might be what the post is about but there can be spoilers for unrelated matters included. The same goes for character posts.

If you’re a blog that is 100% show/character/ship, still, TAG YOUR POSTS. Does it get tedious tagging every post if you’re posting a lot? Sure. But still do it. If you don’t care about the spoiler thing (kind of douchey but whatever), do it for the spreading of your blog, as your posts will not be included in tag searches.

If it’s simply that you don’t feel like tagging every post, get Auto-tagger on XKIT (I don’t know if there are similar features on other extensions). Auto-tagger let’s you set up words/phrases to always tag with. You can control this based on post type, where the post originated, etc. I use this feature to keep the tags from the person I’m reblogging it from - I can erase their specific, commenting tags and keep their pertinent ones without having to type it all in. If you’re a blog that ONLY posts malec, for instance, set it up to tag malec on every post (and “shadowhunters” or “sh”).

If you’re a live blogger, set it up before the episode to tag all your posts with the spoiler tags. Or give your live blogging a specific tag and warn your followers. Be consistent week to week so your followers can block a single tag. Remember that your followers see your last post before the earlier ones, so it’s easy to miss the post where you say what your tag is. Make it well known.

2 - Put things under cuts.

When a huge reveal happens, consider putting posts related to that under a cut, at the very least the night of the airing. This is also considerate of mobile users. If your follower is then curious and opens the post, it’s their own damn fault that it’s been spoiled.

This can also prevent your loyal followers from spoiling things as well. That huge flash spoiler I discussed from earlier? That was from a misc blog. Someone’s personal tumblr that they posted all their fandom shit on, their life stories, their selfies and interesting bugs they found walking to work, etc. They just jump the gun on posting and are inconsistent with tagging, particularly in the frenzy of postings and reblogging after a new episode. Had the big reveal been under a cut, I wouldn’t have cared that they reblogged without tags. I wouldn’t have clicked the keep reading.

3 - Get XKIT.

In case you brushed off #1, because you don’t tag your shit and you don’t want to tag every fucking post, let me be clear.

You can get a plugin on XKIT that auto tags all your posts. All of them. You don’t do anything. You can set it to tag all your picture posts as “pics,” you can set it to tag all your reblogs as “not my shit,” you can set it to tag your posts with the blog names you reblogged from. Whatever. You can do near anything with it.

Not wanting to tag because “it’s too much work” is you being willfully ignorant that actually it doesn’t have to be.

4 - Tag *in* post.

A lot of people complain that they’re mobile users and so tagging is a lot of work and also they can’t get XKIT, blah blah blah.

Well blacklisting works for shit in the posts too. So hit that post with a taglist at the end: “sh, sh spoilers, shadowhunters, shadowhunters spoilers, liveblogging,” whatever. If you’re posting a lot, copy the tags you should be using. It’ll save you time and it’s not difficult.

5 - Don’t tag with JUST the word “spoiler(s).”

This one always gets me. A blog tries to be courteous. Maybe not all their followers have seen the new episode. So they tag it. But they tag it as “spoiler.”

...

That doesn’t do me any good. If I blacklisted the word “spoiler(s),” then I’d be blacklisting every single post that might be a spoiler. If I specifically don’t want to see spoilers for teen wolf, so I blacklist the term “spoiler” itself, now I don’t get most of the posts about the dceu. About mcu and infinity war. About other shows/movies/books just coming out. About meta specifically about the nature of spoilers (like this).

When something is blacklisted, you can choose to still see posts on a case by case basis, but if they’re just wrapped up in a “spoiler” ribbon, how will I know if it’s one of the safe spoilers (i.e., not specifically the show I was targeting with my blacklist) or the actual spoilers?

If you’re going to tag, thank you. Seriously. Thank you. But please, tag specifically.

6 - Don’t use ambiguous tags/tags used for other things.

Speaking of specific tagging, hey, be specific. Actually make sure your short hand can’t be confused with something else/is used only (or nearly exclusively) by your show.

If you did a search on tumblr right now for “spn,” nearly every post and blog is about the cw show supernatural. However, let’s look at teen wolf and game of thrones.

The traditional shorthand for game of thrones is “got.” See a problem? If I blacklist “got” then I blacklist everything that uses those three letters/that word. Someone says, “I just got the new pokemon!” ... blacklisted.

Then you have teen wolf, which gets referred to as “tw” a lot in conversation. Understandable. However “tw” IS NOT a good tag for tagging the show. I just did a tumblr search on “tw” as a tag. While all of the “related” tags were from the show, of the first six featured blogs, one was about the show teen wolf. Two were about eating disorders, one was about self harm, one was an asian porn blog, and one was actually a supernatural trigger blog. Because supernatural is always relevant.

A good chunk of the posts seem to be about teen wolf. A good chunk are also about eating disorders and self harm. This is because, while “tw” is technically the initials of the show, it is predominantly used on this site to refer to “trigger warnings.” If I blow “tw” then I am blocking absolutely every post marked “tw” for trigger purposes (tw self harm, tw food, tw incest, etc). If I want to block that trigger, I will. There are a lot of triggers that don’t bother me and it’d be annoying having them blocked.

Recently over at @autism-asks we had to switch our referencing and tagging of “special interests” from “si” to “spin.” This is because “si” is widely already used to refer to and tag “self injury.” We want people to be able to tag for what’s relevant to their needs, so we adjusted accordingly and asked our followers to do the same.

So before using short hand, maybe do a tumblr search. It works best if it’s without blocking explicit content. If you decide, for instance, you wish to tag posts about “billy joel” as “bj”... well, you might be surprised at what that actually encompasses on tumblr. There might be words you aren’t familiar with, multiple acronyms might exist, or other communities might already have adopted that tag. “st” can stand for either star trek, stranger things, or numerous other things (I found star wars posts, photography, steven universe, spirit tracks, and porn because there’s always porn).

If you insist on using an abbreviation, consider using a modifier. “tw mtv” or “tw tv” for instance. The flash fandom often tags things “flash cw” and most (considerate) sherlock fans use “bbc sherlock.” This prevents posts about something like adobe flash, flash fic, flash big bangs, etc from being blocked, or from other shows with characters of the same name (sherlock from elementary or the rdj sherlock movies or the original books) from being blocked when you’re only trying to block a single show.

Probably the most effective thing, though, is something only @staff can do. So tumblr @staff, maybe work blacklists into the site itself so everyone can use it. So that blacklists can be tied to the account itself. You know how useless ns/fw tags are if you’re actually using mobile, a public computer, a work computer? I can’t implement XKIT on every public computer I use. The block feature is great, it is, but blacklisting isn’t the same as blocking. Most users don’t want to block every blog they might need to blacklist tags for. So please work that into the site.

#spoiler etiquette #blacklisting #fandom

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