Sunday night’s “Good Wife” shocker proves that you absolutely must avoid Twitter if you want to avoid spoilers.
We’ll avoid them ourselves, but suffice to say that if you didn’t watch the show but you did look at your Twitter feed, you were spoiled. Reactions to the shocker were immediate and plentiful.

Media outlets such as TVLine, Deadline and Variety all had stories up explaining the showrunners’ and actor’s reasons behind the move very quickly after the episode aired. If you did watch the episode and want to know more, here’s the official take from showrunners Robert and Michelle King.

The speedy social reaction shows how Twitter has become TV programmers’ best friend. Social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter force fans to watch their favorite shows when they air—as opposed to storing them up on their DVRs—if they want to avoid spoilers. It’s either that or bury their heads in the digital sand until they can get around to watching.

Social media also is a dream for TV marketers. Fan-fueled shows such as CBS’ “The Good Wife,” ABC’s “Scandal,” HBO’s “True Detective,” PBS’ “Downton Abbey,” and many others gain engagement and popularity via Twitter and Facebook. Fans watch, tweet and post, and entice other people to do the same, creating communities around these programs. While marketers are certainly working to turn Twitter to their purposes—turning the cast of “Scandal” loose to tweet or having a social-media team on standby during A&E’s always quotable “Duck Dynasty,” for example—much of what happens on social media happens organically.

That can be a pro or a con for a show, but when it works, it’s like a free marketing campaign. Of course, marketers would love to get their heads around social media so they can control and direct it, but much of social media’s value comes from its authenticity - it reflects how fans really feel. Perhaps instead of controlling social media, marketers’ best choice is just to encourage it.

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