A bunch of new Game of Thrones spoilers dropped by my house yesterday for a visit, and since my house is the Internet, you may have heard about them too. It’s a bunch of stuff about the Greyjoys. It’s not particularly interesting. The io9 headline about the stories said that they’re “really game-changers.” Alas, I’m afraid they aren’t. And I’m afraid the site’s sentiment is very common online now, and it’s totally wrecking my love of Game of Thrones.

Game Of Thrones: A Storm Of Spoilers, A Feast For Clickbait

Okay, fine, I’m being hard on io9: The Greyjoy spoilers are actually interesting. In normal circumstances, I would write about them myself. I might yet. But let’s get serious: The Game of Thrones hype machine is now officially way, way out of control. I am as guilty of this as anyone… in fact, probably more than most. Writing about obscure esoterica involving Game of Thrones is a personal pastime. And usually it’s great. But come on. Aren’t we all going a bit too far here?

The meat of Game of Thrones speculation, I believe, should focus on the plot of the books and the television show. Great, timeless subjects like whether The Hound will kill Gregor and when the books will reveal who the Knight of the Laughing Tree really was. Plot stuff. And sure, it’s all speculation… informed insights, if you really want to be generous. Thrones may be all about the plot twists, but it still has a story arc. Interpolating the future based on the past is a worthy pursuit, even if there’s no way to get to the right answer until the book or season comes out. Just think back to the glorious days of wondering about Snape, even though we all sort of knew it already. This is a perfectly valid pastime and way to talk about a book or series.

But I take issue with those who report extensively on what actually happens on set at productions. There’s a huge difference between intuiting whether Balon will show up again in the show, and capturing images from the set that strongly suggest that he, in fact, will be. The former is much more noble, in my view. It certainly takes sneaky skill to ferret out pictures of a production in progress, but there’s no joy in it.

I do not want to find out spoilers from Game of Thrones that aren’t yet meant for my eyes. So I won’t read the Benjen Stark files, and I won’t read production reports that are particularly spoiler-heavy. These aren’t fun spoilers, like we might get from an advance reading of a chapter from Winds of Winter or teases like we’d get from a traveler. They’re just a cavalcade of facts, presented shinily from a dour heart. There’s nothing to them.

I’m going to try to stop reporting on what’s going on with the production of Game of Thrones, at least insofar as it relates to the plot of the season. It’s time to put the fun back into covering the best show on television.