Star Wars: The Force Awakens has broken the web - or at least, temporarily tangled it. According to internet monitoring experts, traffic in nations where JJ Abrams’ space opera reboot has arrived in cinemas dropped significantly in the wake of the first screenings – potentially as a result of fans choosing to avoid spoilers by staying offline.
In the UK, where The Force Awakens opened on Thursday, overall internet traffic on the Incapsula security network was down 5.5% in the wake of the country’s first screenings, according to cyber-monitoring film Imperva. In Russia traffic was down by 4.7%, and in France, where the film bowed on Wednesday, it dropped by a whopping 10.9% against average totals.
“In the 12 hours after the first screenings of Star Wars in UK we noticed that traffic levels remained relatively low,” said Igal Zeifman, senior digital strategist at Imperva. “This could of course be as a result of more people going to cinemas to catch other early screenings of the movie. However I do believe that this might also be a result of some fans staying offline to avoid the early morning spoilers.”
Internet traffic cliffs were even steeper in most case during the screening periods themselves. In the UK, total numbers online declined by 8.7%, while in Russia they dipped by 6.9%. However, French figures were down just 8% on the average.
Imperva came up with its figures by comparing traffic for the periods during and after The Force Awakens first hit cinemas in each country to those from the same time of day earlier in the month of December. The Incapsula security network is extensive: it hosts sites such as eHarmony, Just Eat, Newsweek and Siemens, and on the day of the UK screening boasted roughly 290 million visits.
Star Wars fans have been going to great lengths to avoid spoilers for the new episode following threats by a group of rogue Star Wars fans to ruin The Force Awakens on social media unless studio Disney agrees to film the saga’s abandoned “expanded universe” stories. The Alliance to Preserve the Expanded Universe says it has now expelled all members who promised to reveal The Force Awakens’ deepest secrets via social media, in a process dubbed “spoiler jihad” in online circles, but some fans have nonetheless decided it is best to avoid the internet altogether before viewing the film. Reddit has also begun banning users who post spoilers.
A Google Chrome app, the Star Wars Spoiler Blocker extension, promises to save users from the horrors of unwittingly discovering the secrets of The Force Awakens. If they are about to encounter spoiler-heavy content, the user will see only a large box resembling the space saga’s famous opening crawl with the warning “potential spoilers ahead”, rather than the page in question.
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