But don’t worry—I shan’t commit the same unspeakable crime. As you can see above, I’ve redacted the offending words that disclose elements of the plot that, you know, you may not have gotten to yet.
But apparently Esquire doesn’t know what a spoiler is. They didn’t even give me a chance to shield myself from their careless fact-spewing. I was innocently scrolling through my Facebook feed, minding my own business, when the mistake of recently “liking” Esquire’s page slapped me in the face. They didn’t even preface the title of the post with “SPOILER:” which is a very well known and widely practiced convention of warning your audience that you’re about to release a cat from a bag many would rather remain sealed.
“What the hell,” I said, in pissed-off disbelief, as my brain comprehended an article title that gave away something of the story I suspected would eventually happen, but was waiting for the show to show me how. The post was only two minutes old, but there were already over twenty comments, all of them angry.
It’s true that lots of people binge-watch shows on Netflix, and “House of Cards” is especially hard to resist in that regard, but some of us like to savor the things we love. You wouldn’t chug your favorite bottle of Pinot Noir, would you? I didn’t think so.
The funny thing is, I almost had a premonition that this would happen. My girlfriend and I were lying in bed (eating dinner) when she asked me what I wanted to watch. “Game of Thrones, or House of Cards?” she asked me. I began to weigh my interests. One the one hand, I told her, “House of Cards” needs to be watched because every day we don’t, it increases the odds that we’ll be exposed to spoilers, because everyone will have seen it and want to talk about it. But on the other hand, I do like what “Game of Thrones” is providing us—a means of tempering the desire to string episodes of “House of Cards” together that doesn’t seem forced. And there’s the fact that I’m behind on “Game of Thrones,” and she wants me to be caught up to the fourth season by the time of its release this April (can’t wait!).
It’s not like I’m not going to delight in the cutthroat and conniving schemes Frank Underwood devises anymore. But now knowing what I know, I have that almost empty feeling you experience when you’ve been struggling to unlock some achievement in a video game only to discover later that your roommate used a cheat-code in your stead. Enjoyment is enhanced when we believe we’ve earned it.
Earlier on in this piece, I was going to quote for you guys some of the upset comments people left on the Esquire spoiler post, but when I navigated to their page I found that they had deleted the original and put up this new one, this time without moronically ruining the show. (For the first one they had carelessly written some other word where it now more ambiguously reads “Apology.”) This new post has only three comments, and none of them are worth quoting. I guess they learned their lesson.