It's an exciting time for film buffs. Not only is Avengers: Endgame - the last installment in a decade-long saga of Marvel films - premiering in cinemas, but the final season of Game of Thrones is also airing on HBO.
You know what that means? Spoilers. A tonne of them.
Reviews for early Endgame showings are already popping up, and two of the first three Game of Thrones season eight episodes even leaked online, which means the web is a very dangerous place for those of you who don't want to read anything before they can watch for themselves.
Luckily, there are several tips, settings changes, and tools available to make it harder for others to spoil your favourite movies and TV shows.
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How to avoid spoilers online
First, the obvious...
- Don't read any reviews, even the so-called "spoiler-free" reviews.
- Don't read any comments on the internet - whether it's on Facebook or a news site.
- Don't watch any analysis or review videos on YouTube.
- Tell your mom, dad, siblings, and friends to shut their mouths - politely, of course.
- Now remind them again in group chats so they avoid sharing memes with you.
- Disconnect from the internet for the time being. OK, not really, but it's an option.
Pause your fan communities
If you're a member of a fan community, like a Subreddit or a Facebook Group, you need to take a break from them. To help prevent seeing spoilers on Reddit, turn off trending notifications and disable the Post Suggestions and Subscribed Subreddit Posts settings. Go here to learn how. You can also easily remove Subreddits from your front-page feed with the Reddit Enhancement Suite extension for Chrome or Firefox.
All you have to do is go to Reddit with the extension enabled, then click the gear icon in the top-right corner, and click on RES settings console to access the Reddit Enhancement Suite’s configuration screen. Select the Subreddits link on the left sidebar and choose filteReddit. You can then filter specific words from Reddit. You can also hide subreddits, both across Reddit and domain pages.
As for Facebook Groups, you can unfollow them for now, or turn off all notifications for when members post. Learn how to do that here. While you're at it, look into how to turn off notifications or chats for any social platform you're on - be it Twitter, Facebook, or PlayStation.
Mute keywords on Twitter
Twitter is the worst place to be if you're trying to avoid a spoiler. However, Twitter offers a neat tool that can help: Muting. Simply go to this page and start manually adding any names, actors, authors, places, studios, and related keywords that might appear in a spoiler. You can set the mute duration to 24 hours, 7 days, 30 days, etc, though you can always come back and adjust this once you've watched your film or TV show.
You can even turn off the ability to receive direct messages from anyone, if you think that's necessary. Go here to learn how.
Use browser extensions
If after all that, you're still seeing spoiler-packed posts and headlines, you still have an amazing option at your disposal: Browser extensions. There are quite of few out there, so it's worth installing them, tinkering with their settings, and sticking with the one you like best.
We really like Spoiler Protection 2.0 for Chrome and Firefox browsers. You can even use it with Firefox on iOS and Android. Once installed, it opens up a window that lets you add specific keywords to block and a subsequent an action. You can even turn off images and videos associated with that keyword. It's so effective that it'll block entire paragraphs or even articles based on keywords.
An alternative to Spoiler Protection 2.0 is Unspoiler for Chrome. Add keywords, and it does a great job at blocking headlines and related images.
A YouTube-specific option is BlockTube for Chrome and Firefox. It lets you hide video comments by keyword. You can use it to block videos by keywords in their titles, or to block YouTube’s Trending page and auto-generated playlists. The Remove Recommendations and Remove Youtube’s Suggestions extensions also block recommended videos on Chrome and Firefox, respectively.
Those of you who use Twitch can try BetterTTV to block keywords from chat.
Did you like this?
Then maybe you'll like our watch guide for Marvel films and TV show before you go see The Avengers: End Game in theatres: