Spoilers (contains no actual spoilers)

[major_clanger]

Watching this clip of the exchange of jokes at a fundraiser between Mitt Rombney and Barack Obama, I wonder when the term 'spoiler' became so mainstream that the President of the USA can casually drop it into a joke?

Wikipedia suggests that the term in that context dates from at least 1971, and more recently from an article by Roger Ebert in 2005. It was certainly current on Usenet 20 years ago (especially in the rec.arts.sf.babylon5 groups!) but I remember being slightly surprised to hear it being used on Doctor Who in 2008 ("Spoilers, sweetie!") although that may have been a shout-out to the fans.

Comments

[ias.livejournal.com]

The Mail Online uses it in their headlines when doing articles re Downton Abbey etc.

[brixtonbrood.livejournal.com]

I assumed that "Spoilers sweetie" was the point at which the term entered into the UK's wider popular consciousness, so I wouldn't be surprised to see Cameron using it, but am slightly surprised to see Obama using it - maybe it was due to the particular event which was for an in-jokey, presumably we-literate audience.

[andrewducker]

Obama is a massive geek:
http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2009/09/is-president-obama-a-real-alien/

I agree with you about Dr Who making it mainstream - but it was creeping out before that. SFX had SpoilerZone a long while back, so it was definitely all over mainstream geekiness.

[beamjockey.livejournal.com]

The spoiler warning seems to have been invented in 1980 on ARPANET's SF-LOVERS by its moderator, Roger Duffey.

In response to a complaint by Dan Brotsky, Duffey wrote:

[ It is difficult to discuss a book or movie without giving away
something of the plot or story. Say too much and a great deal
of the enjoyment of the work is lost. Do not say enough and you
have not given someone enough to decide whether they want to see
the work or not. What I will try to do, is isolate plot spoilers
in a section at the end of the digest. This will let everyone
decide whether they want to read them or not, and also will let
us continue to discuss works that many of us hold in common.
It would also be very helpful in organizing the messages this
way if you included an explicit spoiler warnings within your
messages. -- RDD ]

See SF-LOVERS AM Digest, Vol. 1, Issue 83, 21 April 1980.

A conflicting account associates the dawn of spoiler warnings with discussion of Star Trek: The Motion Picture in December 1979, but the April 1980 message is the earliest appearance of the word "spoiler" I find in the list archive. (Though the outburst of ST:TMP traffic did lead Duffey to invent the ARPANET digest. )

I cannot comment on the usage of "spoiler" in oral discourse, if any, before that time.

[doubtingmichael.livejournal.com]

The Batman comics had a character called Spoiler, introduced in 1992 (she later went on to become Batgirl, as it happens). Her M.O. was giving Batman and the police clues about what a criminal was doing, so it's the same meaning. I presume the term was well-understood by comics readers then.

Hello

[diziet (from livejournal.com)]

Hi; it's Ian here and you said I should leave you a comment so you have an icon to click on ....