Too soon?

"Snape kills Dumbledore!" At 11:59 PM, right before the 6th Harry Potter book was going to be sold on the east coast of the US, a guy pulls out a bullhorn and announced that to the long line of people (many of which were children) waiting for the release in a Walmart. Naturally this caused a mighty uproar and caused a lot of kids to cry. The big problem? The book hadn't been released yet and he revealed a major plot point. Soime people considered it illegal, except for one problem: The book had been released five hours earlier in the U.K. where the book was published. (This exact story is hearsay and I couldn't find a news article directly pointing to it, but this story has been around for some time as well as many versions of it.)

I think everyone will agree that 5 hours from release is way too soon for spoilers, whether it's a book, game, movie, whatever. But just how soon is too soon?

The standard fallback of "It varies for everyone" never applies. When one friend of mine was getting ready to watch the 6th movie, I asked "Are you gonna shout 'SNAPE KILLS DUMBLEDORE!' when he kills him?"
He looked at me aghast and said "Dude! Way to ruin the movie!"
"What are you talking about?"
"The movie just came out two days ago! I hadn't seen it yet!"
"... Dude, the book's been out for four years."
"... What book?"
Yeah, I didn't cut him any slack. I had a similar occurrence with the Lord of the Ring movies and had no shame in talking about books that had been out longer than I had been alive while others whined that I was spoiling things.

So I think we can agree as far as a standard goes, 5 hours can generally be too soon and 4 years is more than long enough. But then we have issues with people who honestly haven't experienced something yet.

My girlfriend has never seen the original Wizard of Oz movie. She knows a lot of the references though and doesn't really care to see the movie since she pretty much know what happens. Part of me is aghast as it's a deeply woven part of American culture. Heck, if you say "I don't think we're in Kansas anymore," people not only know what you mean, but where the reference comes from. (For added spice in outer space, use a more local reference. Imagine Luke Skywalker saying "I don't think we're on Tatooine anymore.")

I guess it really does come down to personal consideration. If someone is expressing interest is enjoying something for the first time, don't ruin it. Let them enjoy it in its unfettered beauty.

Except for Snape killing Dumbledore. Everyone already knew that. Have fun!