Spoiler alert: If you haven't seen the mid-season finale of AMC's "The Walking Dead," you might want to stop reading. 

This past Sunday, AMC dropped a spoiler on social media that seemingly had the same affect as an atomic bomb.

A lot of fans of the hit zombie show "The Walking Dead," which is currently halfway through its fifth season, found out about the death of a main character in a way that sometimes cannot be avoided: social media. But the fans didn't find out from a few comments on Facebook or a bunch of tweets on Twitter; they found out from the official Facebook account of the show itself. 

Yes, we can no longer only fear our annoying friends, family or co-workers to spoil what happens on a beloved TV show before we've seen it for ourselves. We now have to avoid social media like it's a mutated form of Ebola, especially the official accounts of the TV shows we love oh, so much. 

Before the mid-season finale – titled "Coda" – aired on the West Coast, the network posted a devastating photo of an emotional, grungy-looking Darryl Dixon (Norman Reedus) carrying the dead body of Beth Greene (Emily Kinney), a character who was kidnapped towards the end of the show's fourth season, out of the Atlanta hospital where she was trapped.

To twist the dagger, the photo was accompanied with the hashtag #RIPBeth on its social media page right after the East Coast airing. Fans who had yet to watch the episode were angry. Very angry. 

One viewer wrote, "This is the dumbest post I've ever seen from an official fb page. Spoiling a major plot point for millions of your fans? Someone should be fired over this." This comment alone has racked up over 16,000 likes, which insinuates that many, many people feel the same way. 

On Monday, the Facebook account for "The Walking Dead" posted an apology:

"We heard your feedback to last night's post, and we're sorry," the post read. "With zero negative intent, we jumped the gun and put up a spoiler. Please know we're going to work to ensure that, in the future, possible spoilers by official AMC social feeds are killed before they can infect, certainly before the West Coast (U.S.) broadcast of The Walking Dead. As always, thank you for watching, and keep the comments coming. We appreciate all of your support. #RIPSpoiler"

As of this writing, the apology has 281,027 likes, 32,941 comments, and 19,153 shares. Comments range from casual forgiveness to lingering disappointment to a mix of idiotic and clever memes.

Some just don't understand the complaints. One commenter wrote, "If you don't want the possibility of seeing a spoiler, don't get on social media!"

Yes, social media is filled with spoilers and could be avoided if you actively try. We should expect spoilers on social media, especially Twitter, in which it's largely popular to live-tweet during an episode of a popular TV show like "The Walking Dead."

So, if you want to avoid spoilers, maybe it's healthy to just stay logged off social media until after you've seen the episode because they'll be out there, waiting to ruin all the possible fun and excitement. Or you could not actively seek them out by reading through countless "Walking Dead" Twitter feeds or the much-to-ignore comments section of a Facebook post. 

The problem in this case, however, is that we shouldn't expect spoilers from the official accounts of these TV shows so soon after an episode airs. It was an extremely clumsy move that deserved some backlash.

Thankfully, I didn't see the post until after I watched the episode, but I know that if I would've seen the post before having seen the episode, I would've been upset. I wouldn't have gone out of my way to write an angry comment, but the moment in which Beth is killed in a moment of confused, impulsive violence, wouldn't have been nearly as emotionally impactful if I was already expecting it.

So here's what the social media accounts of TV shows could learn about, well, social media:

• Wait at least a day after the episode airs to post a spoiler-filled image and/or hashtag (not five minutes).
• Believe it or not, but quite a few people do not watch the episode right when it airs on television. Some may wait the next day to watch the episode (you've heard of DVR, right?). 
• Study the first two tips. 

Now that most of "The Walking Dead" fans have watched the episode and know what happens – whether through actually watching the episode or just logging onto Facebook or Twitter, the bitter rage (and yes, there was a lot of rage) has turned into tears with some passionate fans exclaiming that they wanted the entire episode to be just a dream. I didn't know that Beth was that much of a beloved character, or maybe the tears had something to do with the very beloved Darryl being emotionally destroyed. I'm guessing more the latter. 

Although thousands have read and commented on the spoiler-filled original post, which has since been deleted and reposted again, it didn't hurt the ratings by any means. A total of 14.8 million viewers, which is a 23 percent increase from last season's mid-season finale, tuned in.

"The Walking Dead" returns in February. For fans of the show, myself included, it's going to be a long winter ahead.