The modern TV landscape is nothing like it was 20 years ago. Everything is recorded digitally now, programming isn't tethered to linear networks anymore, and there are seemingly more places to watch stuff than there were things to watch back in 1997. One of the biggest changes/problems affecting modern small screen viewing is the prevalence of plot-revealing spoilers out there, with much of it on social media. And while some people plainly advise others not to tread where spoilers run wild, Twitter is here to save the day with a new option to filter those spoilers out.
Okay, so maybe Twitter wasn't aiming specifically at people who want to watch The Walking Dead on Monday mornings without the rest of the free world's Sunday-night reactions clogging all feeds. The service has provided users with options for "Advanced Muting" so that specific words and phrases can be excised from one's Twitter news, should they be words that reveal what happened between Alex and Jo on Grey's Anatomy, or what character got burned to a crisp on Game of Thrones.
In order to hush the loudmouths who cannot stop talking about who got eliminated from The Voice before you even watched the first battle rounds, all you have to do is add any particular words, phrases or names to a list of things to mute. Once that's done, your feed will be free from mentions of Designated Survivor and The Blacklist or whatever else you want to hide your mind from. And that means both normal mentions for The Blacklist, as well as any hashtags with those words in it, are stricken from the record for as long as you want. According to Twitter itself, the default setting is "Forever," so don't go forgetting about what you added in there, in case you want to talk about it later.
You can even add emoji to the mute list, though that side of things almost definitely strays outside the TV realm. I mean, you technically can spoil a big TV moment through emoji, but I'm not sure that it could possibly be as big a problem as actual words. Watch out for big spoilers for Sony's EmojiMovie though.
Twitter's feature update obviously isn't tethered just to TV spoilers, obviously. Anyone who doesn't want to hear about anything about the Golden State Warriors, the Samsung Galaxy 8 or Devin Nunes can throw those names and words into the mix as well. But avoiding unwanted news stories is quite different from avoiding last night's biggest TV shocks and twists.
To see what spoiler-filled shows will be debuting and returning in the near future, look no further than our midseason premiere schedule and our summer TV guide.
