Subverting spoilerphobic safeguards
Star Wars: The Force Awakens has officially hit theaters, which means everyone who cares a modicum about popular culture is booking to the theaters to experience this sweeping cultural moment before some jerk spoils the film’s major twists. I come here not to impart judgement on spoiler-phobia (it’s not every day real, honest-to-God Star Wars comes back from the dead, so I kinda get it), but to deliver a warning.
According to NeoGAF user Xaero Gravity, certain Xbox Live users have been combing through their ‘recent player’ lists and delivering the spoilers like a TIE Bomber. Their advice is solid: don’t open messages from unknown players until you see the movie. Another GAF user names one of the culprits, but I won’t start a witch hunt without first-hand information. The post isn’t difficult to find if you decide on a pre-emptive block, though.
If you’re playing Star Wars Battlefront on PC, avoiding spoilers might be a shade more difficult than simply opting out of a message. A second NeoGAF thread warns of Battlefront players changing their avatars to custom-made spoiler rundowns, which has been corroborated by a reddit thread. The OP has provided proof by way of a screenshot, but even their valiant blurring attempts don’t quite hide everything — don’t click if you have any working theories.
The avatar scourge continues into Call of Duty: Black Ops III, according to a post in the Battlefront GAF thread and a video from Call of Duty YouTuber HoneyBadger (which, as of writing, has spoilers lurking in the comments). Both advocate disabling user-generated content in Black Ops‘s options menu, which is a great idea regardless of how you feel about Star Wars spoilers.
As the week goes on, it becomes exponentially more and more unlikely you will make it to The Force Awakens with fresh eyes, so you should get on that ASAP. More jerks will see the movie, and they’ll find new ways of spoiling it for everyone else. Maybe one day we’ll all look up and find that an entrepreneurial asshole has hired a skywriter to ruin the secret of John Boyega’s bottomless charm.
