It ended up being a delightful birthday. My loved ones spoiled me, my friends sent me flowers, and my colleagues made me feel special. When I came home from work, I told my boyfriend how lovely my 30th birthday had been. Everything was OK. Everything was good.

We had dinner and I told him I was excited to watch the season finale of a show he had recommended to me a few weeks earlier. It was a British police drama. I love British police dramas. It’s my favourite genre. They’re cosy, they’re formulaic, and the bad guys are usually blindingly obvious. A perfect end to a stellar day.

He nodded and left the room in a way that one might describe as… quickly. Had I prepared myself with a little Google search, I’d have known that the show’s lead actor of four seasons was 45 minutes away from being killed off in a car crash.

As my manic sobs echoed through the house, my boyfriend slowly re-emerged with a sheepish expression. “I didn’t know how to tell you,” he said, sympathetically. “I knew it was going to happen. I knew it was a bad day for you to watch it, but I couldn’t tell you why without spoiling it.”

Coward.

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But it’s not his fault. It’s mine. I should have been prepared. Had I known something like this was possible, I wouldn’t have been swept away in an emotional tsunami. I might have mentally fortified myself. I could have appreciated what I was about to lose.

Knowing this character was going to die would not have deterred me from watching. I would have just waited a day. This is why I’m a strong advocate for Wikipedia-ing the plot mid-movie or mid-TV show, as long as you know what you’re doing. It’s important to practice safe searching, especially if you’re new to the game.

Tip for beginners: head straight to the plot summary, lest you notice in the cast list that a kindly mentor is conspicuously only in five episodes of a six-episode series. Uh-oh. Bad news for kindly mentor.

There are so many benefits to being spoiled. If you know The Good Guy will be outed as the serial killer in the last 20 minutes of a movie, you can use that information to look for clues. (Why yes, I am active on true crime forums.)

Streaming a movie with your parents? Wouldn’t it be great if you knew the exact moment a sex scene was about to air, so you could strategically leave the room at the right time?

Perhaps you enjoy the feeling of suspense. So do I! But for me, it’s the anticipation that leads to suspense, rather than the thrill of surprise.

I have no intention of watching current water-cooler movie Civil War. If I wanted to be miserable, I’d find a way that didn’t take two hours. But am I going to miss out on conversations about it? No way. I’ve read the plot summary. That’ll see me through.

We tend to treat people who spoil movies as persona non grata. When my classmate proclaimed Dumbledore’s demise, he was treated like a pariah from that moment forward. I was the only one to see him for what he truly was: a genius.

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