Séamas O'Reilly: Spoiler alert - spoilers don't detract from the art of cinema and telly

"Knowing, or even suspecting, what was going to happen in that Succession episode was mildly annoying, sure, but that feeling left me the second my mental faculties adjusted to focusing on how it was done..."

Actor Brian Cox as Logan Roy, head of the fictional conglomerate Waystar RoyCo in Succession. No spoilers.

I had the third episode of Succession’s fourth season spoiled for me last week. Not fully, and not in so many words, but rather by a single online image of a certain character with a caption that heavily, but not quite, suggested a significant plot point. If you have seen that episode, you’ll know what I mean, and if you haven’t, well, I apologise for making you read what must be one of the most garbled and inscrutable paragraphs you’ve ever read. 

So, from here on out, I promise that this is not a column about Succession or its plot, but on the strange psychological capture that spoiling has made of our brains.