It”s going to be a stressful week for fans of Star Wars. With the press seeing “The Force Awakens” on Monday – go here to read our Drew McWeeny”s review! – and the film opening in wide release today in several markets, the dance of spoiler avoidance has begun in earnest. For in every fandom, there are always a handful of folks dying to ruin everyone else”s experience.
That”s something Star Wars Books will not stand for.
If you head over to the official Star Wars Books Facebook page between now and December 21, 2015, you”ll find nothing. The page has disappeared from the Internet. This is not an accident. As anticipation for “The Force Awakens” reached a crescendo, a handful of (terrible) people were posting what they claimed were major spoilers in the comments. Despite multiple warnings, post deletions, and user bans by the Star Wars Books admins, they persisted.
Left with little choice if they wanted to respect the sanctity of seeing “The Force Awakens” without worrying the whole movie had been spoiled, Star Wars Books took drastic action. From the Del Rey Star Wars official Tumblr:
Why is it gone? Simple – we don”t want to contribute to anyone spoiling The Force Awakens.
Some individuals decided not to respect that request. While we quickly removed those comments, even if they were present for only 2 minutes – that is 2 minutes too long. Facebook doesn”t have more adequate tools for moderating comments (filters are helpful, but not foolproof), so we made the decision to simply unpublish the page.
We don”t want to give people who wish to spoil the movie for others a platform to do that and we are under no obligation to do so.
You can read their full statement over here.
“Star Wars: The Force Awakens” hit theaters on December 18. Just let people see the film in peace, you cretins.