3. Make iPods and Headphones Your New Best Friends
Even if you manage to avoid what you’ve deemed are likely “Spoiler Zones” and “Spoiler Acquaintances”, you can’t avoid everyone, everything, and every place.
Something as seemingly innocuous as a subway ride could easily transform into a train ride from hell if you find yourself in a car with chatty people who are really interested in detailing Han Solo’s role in the latest Star Wars flick. People have vocal discussions no matter where you are, and they make it pretty difficult to effectively avoid potential spoilers.
Sometimes, the best option is to simply drown out such discussions with silence or other noises. Keeping an iPod on hand will provide you the opportunity to immediately blast some tunes in order to tune out the random strangers who hold more power over you than they’re even aware of.
Whether you’re into smooth jazz or screamo heavy metal, any type of music is preferable to hearing spoilers about something you’re still anticipating. Equally preferable is silence, so if you don’t enjoy listening to music, it’s advisable that you at least invest in some of those swanky sound-proofed headphones that seem ridiculously overpriced until they’re the only thing preventing you from having the season finale of your favorite show ruined.
2. Distance Yourself From Chatty Friends (& Annoying Co-Workers)
We all know one, we all have one in our lives: the long-time friend whom you love dearly except during those moments where they can’t. keep. their. mouth. shut.
Friends and family are usually pretty tolerable, but when it comes to the dangerous point in time where they’ve seen or read something before you, they become pretty insufferable pretty fast. While (hopefully) the people in your life would never consciously spoil something for you, there’s always the risk that they will anyway. In this case, the best thing to do is simply give everyone in your life a heads-up that you will briefly be removing yourself from their circle until you’ve managed to watch whatever it is that they’ve seen before you.
Or, if by some miracle, all of your friends and loved ones are pretty chill and can understand your cues to stop talking, it’s very likely that you unfortunately have a co-worker whose idea of “water cooler talk” involves blabbing about all of the OMG moments from the TV show that you still haven’t caught up with yet. This one’s a bit easier to manage because, chances are, this dude or dudette is already someone that you can’t really stand… meaning avoiding them shouldn’t be all that difficult. Stick to eating lunch on your own until you’ve caught up with the rest of those in your fandom and steer clear of whichever co-workers you know run the risk of spoiling things for others.
1. Stay Ahead of the Curve
Listen, I realize that we all have real lives and prior commitments/obligations. I know that not everyone can just press pause on their daily life to focus on fictional worlds but… in all honesty, the absolute best way to avoid spoilers is to simply watch/read/listen to the latest pop-culture phenomenon as soon as humanly possible… preferably immediately upon its release.
It’s a surefire way of ensuring you won’t be spoiled by the literal millions of people who will be talking about said phenomenon and, if anything, it’ll put you in the position of potential spoiler. How can someone spoil something for you if you’ve already seen it? Answer: they can’t.
The longer you wait to read/watch something, the greater the chance you have of being spoiled… meaning that the sooner you read/watch something, the smaller the chance you have of being spoiled. It’s a pretty simple concept that’s equally easy to follow.
Do you have any other tips on how to avoid spoilers? Tell us in the comments, or let us know on Twitter!
