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Protect yourself from Avengers: Infinity War spoilers with these simple tools

Prepare to mute

Marvel Studios’ AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR..L to R: Thor (Chris Hemsworth), Rocket (voiced by Bradley Cooper) and Groot (voiced by Vin Diesel) Marvel Studios

Avengers: Infinity War press screenings are done, reviews written, red carpet events over — and that means the internet is about to become a cesspool of spoilers.

It’s practically unavoidable and impractical to avoid going online until the movie’s out this Friday, April 27. But we also loathe having to change the way we use our most frequented websites just to guarantee a spoiler-free movie-watching experience. Alas, this is the state of the internet. Here are some helpful tips to try sneaking around the internet without encountering any Avengers spoilers.

Twitter

Twitter’s best tool remains the mute function. It’s not only helpful in quietly banishing trolls who continue to scream into the abyss, but it’s also a decent way to keep spoilers off your timeline.

Muting on Twitter is also, conveniently, very simple. Log into Twitter and click on your profile. Select “settings and privacy” from the dropdown menu, and then click on the “muted accounts” tab to the left. From there, you can input certain terms, phrases and individual words you don’t want to see on your timeline.

If, for example, you don’t want to know anything about Hawkeye until you settle in for the movie yourself, your muted terms page could look something like:

  • Hawkeye
  • Avengers: Infinity War spoilers
  • Clint Barton
  • Legolas
  • Jeremy Renner

It also might not be a bad idea to mute specific accounts, like enthusiast press sites, that will be writing about the film in days to come. You can do that by muting specific accounts from the same page.

The last recommendation I have regarding safe browsing on Twitter is to mute certain emoji. Using things like a hammer (Thor), bow and arrow (Hawkeye), tree (Groot), rocket (Rocket Raccoon), the American flag (Captain America) and a spider (Spider-Man) are some ways that trolls might try to bombard people with spoilers. Having certain emoji blocked until you see the film may seem like the nuclear option, but it’s become a necessary evil.

Reddit

Reddit is a breeding ground for trolls. Spoiling movies is an area that Reddit’s mastered. Trolls from unrelated subreddits, including r/ImGoingToHellForThis, were using Star Wars: The Last Jedi spoilers in their tags and flares to spoil the movie for people. Here are a list of subreddits that the Marvel community is anticipating will try to ruin the movie:

Besides avoiding these subreddits, the best way to ensure they don’t pop up on your front page is by going to r/all, hitting the “filter” button on the side of the page and typing in the names of these subreddits.

Other subreddits that the Marvel fandom is wary of, which you may want to add to your list of filtered subreddits just in case, are as follows:

Tumblr

It’s a little disappointing and wholly ironic that Tumblr, a website dedicated to fandom, doesn’t have a very good, proper mute function. There is an official way to mute posts, but it relies on people using proper hashtags that you can then mute. Your best bet for avoiding spoilers on Tumblr, while also getting in your latest Science Bros. kicks, is to install the Tumblr Savior browser extension. The extension allows you to create a “black list” and “white list” of key terms, words or phrases. The white list will show you any post containing a certain term, phrase or keyword in it; the black list will hide any post that uses a certain term, phrase or keyword.

Remember: This is Tumblr. It’s going to take some additional muting measures to ensure nothing is ruined. That means the names of popular ’ships should accompany your basic list of muted key terms, like Avengers: Infinity War. Here are just a few examples that I can think of off the top of my head:

  • Stony
  • Science Bros
  • Stucky
  • Pepperoni
  • Thorki
  • STEM Squad
  • Green-Eyed Widow
  • ScarletVision

And, of course, whatever your other favorite ’ships might be.

Facebook

Facebook gets a little difficult, because it also lacks a good muting tool. The best option you have is to hit snooze on a friend or outlet that you follow for 30 days — or until you see the movie.

Simply click on the ellipses in the top-right hand corner of a friend or publication’s post, and hit the snooze function. This will stop those posts from appearing on your feed. SocialFixer, another Chrome extension, can also be downloaded to help filter out hashtags and keywords. It’s a little janky, but if you absolutely need to use Facebook before going to see Infinity War, it’s not terrible.

Beware, though: There are notorious Facebook groups planning to troll Avengers fans with spoilers. Members will appear in Facebook comments or posts that use hashtags. Down With Disney’s Treatment of Franchises and its Fanboys, a troll group that attempts to review bomb Disney movies (like The Last Jedi, which it went after in December) and spoil the film for others, is back. There’s a good chance that nothing will come of it, but remain alert.

Facebook

4chan

This sums up trying to use 4chan while also avoiding spoilers.
Polygon

The possibility of running into spoilers online is always going to be there. These are just a few tools that may help in your quest to learn as little as possible beforehand. But if you really want to avoid all spoilers, try to stay offline until you walk out of the theater. And remember: Don’t be a jerk once you’ve seen it. Try not to spoil the movie, both online and sitting in a bar after the movie, discussing everything you’ve seen. Never go full Homer Simpson.

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