Introduction
What you are about to read has been written by Mr Biffo, the creative force behind the 90s Teletext videogames magazine Digitiser. He now runs the show at digitiser2000.com
If you failed to get tickets to the first showings of the Star Wars: The Force Awakens, chances are you're not going to get to see it in the next few days. Cinemas across the known world are sold out, which means the chances of you hearing or stumbling across spoilers are about to increase exponentially.
Special lengths must be taken if you stand any hope of going into the cinema utterly unspoiled. Indeed, you can already get a Chrome extension which blocks spoilers, but here are 10 further steps you can take to ensure your Force Awakens experience is unsuilled by the almond taint of foreknowledge.
1. DON'T EVEN LOOK AT REVIEWS
Alright, so the media has been asked – begged, even – not to spoil any of the major plot points of The Force Awakens. That's not to say something won't accidentally slip out – like a dog's 'lipstick' – about, say, General Leia Organa's fall to the Dark Side, or Han Solo's bionic eye, or that bit where Luke Skywalker drowns in the bath.
Your first step in going spoiler-free is to not even glance at a review – not even a single word. Who knows what something as even seemingly innocuous as "The" or "That" could reveal?
2. DON'T GO ONLINE
The Internet is the worst, populated by the most awful people on earth: human beings. We all know that these j-holes like nothing more than to ruin things for others.
Unless you switch off your broadband router until after you've seen The Force Awakens, your Facebook, Twitter and Instagram feeds are going to be full of messages like "OMG! I can't believe Chewbacca's leg got chopped off!" and "Totes couldn't have predicted that BB-8 is R2-D2's illegitimate son!" or "The best bit was when that person said 'I have a bad feeling about this'."
3. AVOID OTHER PEOPLE
Why not go one better than avoiding people on the Internet, by simply avoiding all people altogether?
This could prove tricky when travelling to the multiplex – fanboys will inevitably already know everything, and be on their 10th or eleventh viewing. You could overhear them inadvertently, discussing important plot points.
Instead, seal yourself inside a sound-proofed travel case, and arrange to be posted to the cinema, only emerging from your spoiler-free cocoon once it is time for the movie to begin. Offset any strange looks you get by making a terrifying bird sound.
4. DON'T USE YOUR IMAGINATION
Seriously now: what if you accidentally imagine something about The Force Awakens which turns out to be true? What if you start daydreaming, and imagine a scene in which Kylo Ren turns out to be Jabba the Hutt's cousin, and it turns out to be true? Best to not use your imagination at all until after you've seen the movie.
Though, now that I think about it… what if your subconscious starts imaging things without your permission, while you're not awake enough to tell it to stop? What if you have a dream about The Force Awakens, and that turns out to come true as well? The only way to ensure you don't dream is to stay awake until after the movie.
5. DON'T BE JJ ABRAMS
This is crucial: nobody knows more about Star Wars: The Force Awakens than its director and co-writer JJ Abrams. To ensure you have the most pure Force Awakens experience, triple-check you're not him. If it turns out that you are him… stop immediately (being him).
6. TAKE A HOLIDAY
Though it is becoming increasingly difficult to find a place on our planet which has no knowledge of Star Wars, here are a few places where we doubt anybody has interest in The Force Awakens spoilers: The Vatican City, debtor's prison, your gran's house.
7. GO BACK IN TIME
Want to get those pesky spoilers out of your head? Then you need to go back in time to un-read all those spoilers you looked at a year-and-a-half (or more) ago.
Don't pretend you haven't; we all did it. The second those first leaks hit the Internet 18 months or so ago we couldn't get on there fast enough. Regretting it now aren't you? Idiot.
8. UNLEARN EVERYTHING YOU KNOW ABOUT IT
This is going to prove tricky, but it's important: if The Force Awakens continues the themes of the Star Wars saga, chances are it's basically going to be a retread of everything we've already seen; parental and sibling revelations, bad guys versus good guys, and struggles with inner angst… all that sort of classic stuff.
The only way you're possibly going to be entirely surprised by The Force Awakens is if you go in there having only ever watched dry and tedious foreign language arthouse movies for the entirety of your life. How do you unlearn the memory of movies you already know intimately? Heavy drinking.
9. ENTER A CHEMICALLY-INDUCED COMA UNTIL 2025
Colin Trevorrow's Star Wars Episode IV is currently scheduled to be released in 2019. Chances are, by 2025, people would've stopped talking about the events of all the three impending Star Wars sequels.
You could safely awaken from your coma into a world where the hype has subsided, and just put the three films on Netflix for a binge. That'll make sure that the final shot of the triple-trilogy - with Han, Luke and Leia as force ghosts! – comes as a total surprise.
10. STOP READING THIS ARTICLE
This is the most important of all the points on this list. Seriously, who knows what I might inadvertently let slip, without even realising? Though, thinking about it now, I probably should've put this one first…