Television, time zones, and Twitter
If there’s one major sticking point of social networks, it’s spoiling your favorite TV show or movie because people in one time zone feel they have to blurt out what happened as soon as it happens, as if they’re sitting in a virtual living room with all their friends talking about it with them. “DID YOU SEE THAT?” Uh, no.
Unfortunately, the laws of time and space don’t apply to Lost, despite the magic that happens on that show. In reality, the Earth still needs to rotate once every day, and that means we still have time zones to contend with when watching television. Whether it’s Jack Shephard or Jack Bauer, eventually someone’s going to spoil your favorite show if you’re not watching it as it’s premiering. For American television shows, if you’re not on the east coast, chances are you’re going to have to either avoid social networks altogether, or try to train yourself to not read anything from your east coast friends. It’s especially hard on west coast Americans and people in other countries that might not get the show for hours or days later.
Twitter and other social media tools don’t have the code in place to help you mute what people are saying until the time in which you watch the show, and no third party apps can help either. People are trying to hashtag #lost and #24 responsibly, but sometimes something slips through and you wind up reading a reaction such as “yeah, when ____ fell through the ____ and ____…”, you feel that you’ve been beaten by the Time Zone Monster.
One solution is to shut down your social media networks altogether. It’s not the best solution, especially when you’re very busy and can’t watch your DVR for a few days. or you need to use social media because you’re commuting or in a position where it’s your only entertainment, but shutting down the only way to guarantee that you won’t see anything. That is, unless someone gets a text message spoiler to your phone.
Solutions for social media apps can be done, but nobody has implemented them yet. Listed below are some suggestions for third party app writers.
It would be nice if you could mute by time zone somehow. I don’t know any Twitter clients that can do this, and I’m sure Facebook can’t. You could tell your client to “mute everything east of me until 11pm PST” which would probably clear most of your spoiler traffic since everyone in your time zone and west can’t watch it, unless they react to something seen from someone they follow in the east of your location. It’s not foolproof, but it could help.
Twitter's time zone setting
With the current Twitter tools, the only other way to avoid spoilers would be to hashtag responsibly. With all the disruptive ads on shows nowadays, perhaps studios can put what they want the hashtag to be in the bottom of the screen as the show starts. This won’t prevent people from using improper hashtags like #lsot or #omgdidyouseelost, but it can help as well.
One suggestion which I think would work out well, but may be difficult to implement, would be to set up channels. With channels, all your Lost updates can go in the Lost channel, your 24 updates go in the 24 channel, and your updates about whether or not Jeff Probst is wearing short sleeves can go in the Survivor channel. It would take some time for users to set up, but in the long run, not only would it prevent spoilers, but it would lessen the noise to the people that are not interested in the show.
The last suggestion would be to have a word filter. In fact, these filters could be conjured up by the studios themselves. Or, better yet, put all the tweets that match your filter into their own column for viewing later. This way, if the words or phrases “Jack”, “Kate”, “Island”, Smoke Monster”, or “guyliner” come into your feed, they can be filtered into a column you can read later.
Simple astronomy won’t prevent time zones from happening, and people in those time zones want a fair chance to get home at a reasonable, comfortable time to watch their show (8pm ET would be 5pm PT, just as people are leaving work), A pie in the sky solution, the only solution left which people may or may not adapt to, is if the studios broadcast the show at the same time across the country, and let the DVRs play it back when the viewers want. I don’t think this would be popular with advertisers that don’t want you skipping their commercials, so the west coast viewers would be the worst offenders and the ad revenue would take a serious hit. If there could be an unobtrusive way for the ads to get through without compromising the viewing experience, perhaps that solution could work someday.
Category: Entertainment, Social Media
