How To Do Spoilers On Reddit - MakeUseOf

Spoilers can be a major buzzkill for everyone. Whether it's the ending of a series or a webtoon, revealing major plot points can completely ruin someone's experience.

Thankfully, Reddit is equipped with a spoiler tag that allows you to hide parts of your comment or post, ensuring that people don't accidentally read it. This way, only those who are interested click and read the comment, making the discussion enjoyable for everyone.

But when are you supposed to use spoiler tags? And how do you even do it? Read on to find out!

When to Use the Spoiler Tag on Reddit

Thanks to the spoiler tags on Reddit, you can hide the part of your comment or post that contains spoilers, in addition to adding a visible warning that your post contains spoilers.

No one likes to have a show, movie, or book spoiled, and so as part of Reddit's unwritten etiquette rules, Redditors should use spoiler tags in their comments and posts when needed. This way, no one will accidentally scan through the text and see the spoiler. Since users have to click on the hidden text to read it, if they get spoiled, it's on them.

Not using spoiler tags where you should affects other people's experience and may also cost you Reddit karma points. So use spoiler tags when discussing plot points of shows, movies, and books.

How to Use the Spoiler Tag in Reddit Comments

Here's how you can add a mark or filter over spoilers in your Reddit comment:

1. Open a post and go to the comment section.
2. Type in your comment.
3. Highlight the part that you want to hide in spoiler tags.

   

4. From the toolbar beneath, click on the exclamation mark with the Spoiler tooltip.

   

Once you do this, the highlighted part in your comment will be marked with a dark background to indicate that it's in a spoiler tag. After you make your comment, the bit you put in the spoiler tag will appear black until the reader clicks on it.

Since Reddit uses Markdown, you can also use Markdown to add spoiler tags to your comments. Note that Markdown Mode won't show for you if you're not logged into Reddit, so make sure you're logged in before proceeding. Here's how you can use Markdown for a spoiler warning on Reddit:

1. Click the Markdown Mode button next to Comment.
2. Type in your comment.
3. Put a >! at the very beginning of the part that you want to mark as a spoiler. This will mark the start of the tag. Anything before this won't be marked as a spoiler.
4. Put a !< at the end of the spoiler. This will mark the end of the spoiler tag. The rest of the comment after this point won't be marked as a spoiler.
5. Click the Comment button to publish your comment.

The end product of both methods is the same. It's just a matter of whether you prefer using code.

How to Add the Spoiler Tag to Reddit Posts

Aside from comments, you can also mark an entire post as a spoiler on Reddit. It doesn't matter if your post is an image, a video, or just plain text. Marking the post as a spoiler will blur it on the Reddit feed. Other Redditors can see the content of your post by clicking it.

To use this feature, follow these steps:

1. Go to the Reddit home page.
2. Click the + icon in the top toolbar to create a new post.
3. Select the community where you want to create the post.
4. Type in or upload whatever you want to post.
5. From the bottom bar, click on the Spoiler flair.
6. Once your post is ready, click Post.

The result will be something like the image above. The post will stay blurred until you click on it.

Don’t Spoil the Fun

Reddit is a web forum where people can discuss nearly anything with anyone. Most of the time, this is a good attribute, but sometimes you might also see information that spoils a book, movie, or series for you. In order to keep this from happening, Redditors use the spoiler tag or flair.

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Using the spoiler tag in your comment will hide the selected part of your comment for the reader, until they click it. This is also applicable to posts, where the post will be blurred until the user clicks on it.