'Avengers: Endgame' Leaked Video Footage: How to Avoid Spoilers Online
by Eric FranciscoThanks to some newly leaked footage, there are spoilers online for Avengers: Endgame. And if you’re not careful, you might find out [REDACTED] becomes [REDACTED] before April 26.
Spoilers for big movies with sky-high anticipation are a fairly expected hazard in today’s online ecosystem. But beyond “not being online,” is it possible to actually avoid spoilers without blacking out from social media entirely for the next week and a half? The answer is sort of. There’s some steps you can take to block spoilers, though it’s always possible something could slip through.
With that said, here is a quick and dirty guide to avoiding Avengers: Endgame spoilers online before the film is theatrically released on April 26.
Let’s start with the most annoying, most problematic, and most ubiquitous social media platform in existence. While it would be extremely healthy to just log off of Facebook forever, if you really must stay on in the lead-up to Avengers: Endgame, you can restrict what kind of content ends up in your newsfeed.
On your Facebook dashboard when you’ve logged in, click on “News Feed Preferences” directly above “Settings.” A pop-up box will appear, and that will become your main weapon against spoilers.
This tool allows you to restrict what you see on your feed, whether it’s only updates from specific friends or reliable public pages. (Hi! Like us already.) Use this to avoid spoilers that your weird friends from home, casual acquaintances, or anyone else you know who spoils every time a Marvel movie comes out.
The "Preferences" window in Facebook, which tailors your news feed to see only what you want to see.
While it would be equally advisable to just not be on Twitter, ever, you can use the platform’s tried and true “Mute words” function to black out terms you don’t want to see.
Go to the “Settings and Privacy” section of Twitter. Below the left side of the screen where your profile hovers, you will find the page for “Muted words.” In this page, you can enter words like “Avengers,” “Endgame,” “Tony Stark,” etc. to avoid seeing tweets from jerks spoiling Tony Stark’s death (note that I am purely being theoretical here).
This will be a long chore, as you might have to name everything from “Marvel” to “MCU” to specific things, like “Shuri,” “Vision,” “Black Widow,” “Falcon,” “Spider-Man” (not to mention “Pete,” “Peter Parker,” “Parker,” etc.). However, you can set the tweets to be muted for a certain period, ranging from 24 hours to “Forever,” and you can block out tweets “From anyone” or “From people you don’t follow.”
Twitter's "Muted words" options.
The latter is how I discovered, just now while writing this article, that I had actually muted things related to Avengers: Infinity War for the past year. I completely forgot about it, because I allowed the people I follow to tweet about “Cap” and “Tony,” because I follow good nerds who aren’t a-holes. Still, it might just be easier to just not be on Twitter.
YouTube
There are no special tricks or tools to avoid certain content on YouTube — the site has a notorious algorithm that will autoplay garbage if you’re not careful. For now, just stick to stuff you know won’t ruin anything.
May I suggest Critical Role, the insanely fun Dungeons & Dragons show starring voice actors playing fifth edition? It will take 15 days (and counting) to binge the whole thing. So you’ll be safe from the algorithms if this is all you watch from now until April 26.
Avengers: Endgame will be in theaters on April 26.
