I have been seeing quite a few people not marking things as spoilers that I would absolutely consider spoilers lately, and it made me wonder, what do people consider a spoiler? Am I too strict in my views? I also know there is a FAQ post about this, but I am more so curious about the overall user base's opinions rather than the website's stance.

To me, nearly anything that could give away the content of the book is a spoiler. I spoiler pretty much every post I make just in case. I also see a lot of people making titles along the lines of "Thoughts from chapter 9: I'm so sad 😭" which to me is a spoiler, because now someone will know that something sad happens at that point in the story. Even if they don't know what, it still affects their reading experience in a way that may ruin it.

I also find tropes to often be spoilers. If you tell me a book is enemies to lovers, and the romance isn't really advertised as an inevitability anywhere in the description of the book (like if the book isn't a romance book, if it's speculative fiction for example), I will now be spoiled that two enemies will become lovers. I have even seen tropes that fully spoil huge plot points, I saw one person describe a book as having a "double-agent trope" when the character being a double agent is a HUGE reveal in the latter half of the book. Even things like "betrayal" give so much away, to me I would hesitate to describe a book with them unless specifically asked.

Now, things I DON'T consider spoilers are anything that either is already in the description of the book OR is revealed within the first like five pages. Like, if the description of the book doesn't mention that the main character can see ghosts, but it's revealed within a few pages as backstory, I wouldn't personally call that a spoiler (although I would probably still spoiler tag it just in case lol.) Also, anything that is broad enough as to not give anything away. Calling a book dark is different than saying the ending is dark, especially if there are many dark scenes in the book. Saying you loved a character doesn't give away anything about the character, because plenty of people love characters that do bad things, it doesn't give away anything about them other than "I think they were a quality character that I enjoyed reading about." Saying that you think the characters got satisfying endings, or didn't get satisfying endings, doesn't give away anything about the endings because satisfying to you isn't necessarily satisfying to anyone else.

Am I too strict in what I consider a spoiler? Also to be clear, I would never yell at someone or anything if I did see a post that could be considered a spoiler, I just report them for review if I've read the book and know that it spoils something. This is moreso a post made out of curiosity not to call anyone out!