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How to avoid Olympics spoilers

Love them or hate them (But, really, how could you hate them?), the Sochi Olympics will be everywhere for two weeks in February. Many die-hard Olympics fans will try to stay away from any spoilers before watching the actual events, but in the age of digital madness, real-time results are becoming harder and harder to avoid.

Compound that with a significant time difference for many viewers, and you have yourself a challenge, but if you’re committed to watching the events and not just catching them via social media, here are some (pretty obvious) suggestions on how to avoid the spoilers.

If you really want to get the blinders on, you’re going to have to temporarily disable the whole social media shebang, especially the big guns: Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Instagram, Google Plus, etc. For many of us, doing away with social media for two weeks sounds like an apocalypse, so if you’re getting sweats and chills just thinking about the social media withdrawals, you can at least organize your newsfeeds. Be especially sure to hide the statuses of people who tend to post about news event in real time. (We all have at least a few of those social media titans in our circles.)

[ Related: USA sends to Sochi largest Winter Olympic team ever ]

If you’re a Twitter fiend, use TweetDeck to track hashtags and keyword searches in the midst of reading about your friends’ latest opinions on kale. You can also turn off tweets that contain certain words. Under settings, choose "Global Filter." Then type in “Olympics” or certain events for which you're especially interested, and you should be able to avoid the cheers and jeers about the latest Sochi news until you're ready to soak it in.

Finally, dumb down your smartphone. Delete apps that will automatically post results, and be sure to turn off those spontaneous news alerts.

Not every event will be aired live from Sochi, but for the first time for a Winter Olympics, everything will be streamed live online, at NBCOlympics.com and through the NBC Sports Live Extra mobile app. Coverage kicks off on Thursday, Feb. 6, with the men’s and women’s snowboard slopestyle competition, women’s moguls and team figure skating. The Opening Ceremony is slated for the next night, Feb. 7.

And if you’re really dedicated to staying in-the-know, you could always go nocturnal for two weeks. So, good luck out there, all you tried-and-true Olympics watchers. It’s pretty tough to avoid the digital world these days, so, if all else fails, um, close your eyes?