‘Tis the time to be vigilant, because many a foe on the interwebs will try to spoil each weekly instalment of the last season of Game of Thrones. We can’t let that happen. We won’t let it happen. This is how to make sure it doesn’t happen to you.
Unfortunately, South Africans have to get through a whole day of work before having the pleasure of enjoying each new episode at 10pm every Monday on Showmax. Darned timezones.
But fear not, you won’t have to isolate yourself from social media in order to avoid spoilers. We’ve compiled the latest methods you can use to mute/block any GoT-related content across social media and the web.
The House of Twitter
Luckily, Twitter’s got an easy fix for potential spoilers. The social platform first introduced keyword muting in 2016, and it allows you to block everything from words and hashtags to specific users.
On mobile, tap the gear icon in your notifications, and you’ll find the ‘Muted’ option in the settings. You’ll want to look for ‘Muted words’, and not ‘Muted accounts’. Go in, and make sure to mute every possible GoT-related word and phrase that could possibly spoil the weekly episode.
On the desktop, the settings menu can be found under your profile icon, it’s called ‘Settings & Privacy’. From here, search for ‘Muted Words’ on the left-hand side panel. Here you’ll see the list of muted words yet again. You can include hashtags as well as keywords — so go wild and include all the GoT house names and character names if you want to be really thorough.
House of Facebook
Although the company tested a keyword search feature last year and decided to boot it, there are ways around hiding spoilers on the platform. You’ll need to get a bit creative from here on out if you’re serious about filtering out spoilers.
If you know any pages in particular that are likely to spoil? You can snooze those pages for 30 days. Users? Same deal. Just go to one of their posts — not their pages or profiles, but a specific post — go to ‘more’ and ‘snooze this person’. You’ll have the options to snooze that page or that person for 30 days.
Our recommendation? Try to stay off Facebook. Historically, it’s the main hangout spot people (and news sources) who love to post spoilers frequent. And there’s no surefire way to keep them completely at bay.
Also, you know, Facebook is trash. So maybe avoiding it for the next six weeks will show you how little value it adds to your life and you’ll be encouraged to stay off it longer term, channelling the time and energy you used to spend watching the lives of people you don’t like into your own multi-book fantasy epic that could one day turn you into a star… you never know, right?
Game of Spoils
Not a typo, Game of Spoils is a Chrome extension specifically developed for the situation we find ourselves in now. You can use the Game of Spoils chrome extension to hide anything related to the show across Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, and Google News.
We’re still testing the actual usefulness of the extension. But so far it looks like it filters out most Game of Thrones spoilers without censoring competitions and regular GoT-postings that aren’t spoiling anything.
Once you install the extension, it uses words, names, and phrases from the show — like ‘Game of Thrones’, ‘Targaryen’, or ‘Winterfell’ – to block potentially Monday-ruining content. You can also add new phrases if you want to be extra careful.
We hope you have a cold, spoiler-free winter.
