In A World Of Spoilers, Social Media Is The Danger


SPOILER ALERT — This blog post does NOT include a spoiler. So there!

Heisenberg's Goorin hatMonday was a bad day to be a “Breaking Bad” fan on the internet if, like me, you didn’t have time to watch the first of what AMC is billing as “The Final Episodes.”

What would become of TV’s current most-favorite anti-hero, his DEA agent brother-in-law and his snappy-dressing, bus-bench lawyer?

I cannot wait to find out. On my and my DVR’s own time.

But it seems the internet has different plans for me.

After a self-imposed social media blackout Sunday night, I thought I had made it, but boy was I wrong.

Opening Facebook revealed a long string of posts from friends and pages alike — everything from analyses of the episode to a breakdown of Nielsen ratings to a debunk of the science behind the series to a post about Heisenberg’s trademark pork pie hat.

If you are a social media community manager, it seems you must have found some sort of “Breaking Bad” connection to your brand Monday, no matter how tenuous.

All this made Facebook off limits for another 24 hours. Twitter too. BuzzFeed was for sure not a safe zone, but neither were the New York Times or Google News. For someone whose job necessitates that he spends time on the internet, it was impossible to avoid references at every turn.

In the office, on the other hand, there wasn’t a peep about the show — at least not that I heard.

No, it seems discussion about national moments has gone all online.

And, yes, in the fragmented media world we live in, this may be the closest thing we have to a national moment.

Today, I predict, still won’t be completely safe with more stories, blog posts and brand posts trickling out, and if I successfully avoid all spoilers, I will be surprised. But I guess that is what I get for trying to live at my own pace in a digital lifestyle.

And I guess if I have made it this long without having the “Lost” finale spoiled for me, maybe I just have a chance.