Avoiding Olympic Spoilers: A Guide

Too Much Free Time

from the just-kill-the-internet dept

As the Olympic Games rage on and an entire world full of people watch on to remind themselves that they should have paid better attention in their high school geography classes (stop lying: you couldn't pick out Angola on a map either), the old-world thinking of the various Olypmic committees and new media has delivered a giant trauma to fans: spoilers. See, as Olympic broadcast partners have spent so much time dilligently ensuring that every fan's viewing experience sucks like a whorish Hoover vacuum, they appear to have missed out on the invention of the internet. So by the time weekday prime time broadcasts are airing Asian badminton players possibly throwing their match to get a better tournement seeding, we've already read all about it on the internet, Twitter, or else overheard friends/family/coworkers discussing the results. And since NBC and the IOC don't seem to want to… you know… live in today-land, you may be looking for a way to make your daily life spoiler-free.

Fortunately Justin Peters, editor of the Columbia Journalism Review, has penned an ignorance guide for CNN to help us all out. As you might expect, his satircal list of ten tips is dominated by various flavors of avoid-technology ice cream:

“Your smartphone is your enemy during these next two weeks. If you carry it around, you will be tempted to check the Internet, and you risk receiving spoiler-laden text messages from your gymnastics-loving friends. Switch to an older phone for the duration of the Olympics, preferably one that is decades old, is shaped like a brick and has a wan green display that can handle neither text messages nor the Internet.”

Seems reasonable. But there's more along the same lines:

“You can probably divide your Facebook friends into “people who are likely to follow the Olympics” and “people who are not.” Hide all status updates from the Olympics-following friends. This should leave you with a Facebook feed composed entirely of elderly relatives, local merchants and new mothers posting photographs of their children. Abandon Twitter entirely, or, at the very least, unfollow everyone except Jose Canseco.”

You get the idea. Unfortunately, the internet isn't the only place where you can overhear heated discussions about whether the United States or China has asserted itself as a world power by winning doubles rowing competitions. But Peters can help there, too:

“Practice walking with your fingers in your ears while shouting “I can't hear you! I can't hear you!”

And:

“You know where nobody's talking about the Olympics? In the forest. Take these next two weeks as an opportunity to go back to nature. Pitch a tent in the woods, and commune with the stars and the seedlings. Bring a battery-powered television that gets only three channels, and fire it up every night around 7. You'll be able to watch the key moments of the Games in peace and quiet. And, despite what you've heard, it is quite unlikely that you'll be eaten by a bear.”

Peters offers even more tips for insulating the rest of your life to guard against Olympic spoilers. On the other hand, NBC and the Olympic Committee could also realize that this internet thing might just not be a fad and take their cue from the NCAA's Basketball Tournement and show the damned games so people can watch whenever they want. 

Filed Under: olympics, spoilers