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Fortnite now lets you block toxic emotes from the game

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Few things make gamers as angry as suffering the umpteenth defeat in Fortnite Battle Royale against sweaty players who are constantly dancing on their graves.

The hostility has apparently become so bad that developer Epic Games felt compelled to intervene.

With the release of Fortnite's latest update today (April 23), Fortnite players can now block four of the game's most “confrontational” emotes. These include “Laugh it Up,” “Take the L,” “Whipcrack,” and “Make it Plantain.”

Apparently, Epic has identified this handful of cheer dances as the ones most likely to be abused by toxic gamers.

How to block emotes in Fortnite

After updating the game, the option to block emotes will be available from the Settings tab.

You can find the new option under “Account & Privacy” in the Fortnite settings (Epic Games).

You can find the new option under “Account & Privacy” in the Fortnite settings (Epic Games).

Simply navigate to the “Account & Privacy” section and then “Social Privacy” to find the new feature.

Here you should see an option called “Show Confrontation Emotes,” which is currently set to only allow you to see the selected emotes if they're “from friends in the party.” You can then either turn it back on for everyone, or turn it off completely by toggling left or right.

There are some reports circulating on social media claiming that the new option is enabled by default for everyone, but this is false.

Of course, if other players have confrontational emotes disabled, they won't be able to see your moves either. As Epic notes, this doesn't prevent you from using all of the game's emotes, just the four mentioned above.

What are Fortnite emotes?

For those unfamiliar, Fortnite players use the game's extensive library of free and premium emotes to express themselves. A spontaneous dance move is a great way to share a laugh with your friends or celebrate a Victory Royale.

But emotes have a dark side. Imagine waiting for your friends to revive you after you've been gunned down in the heat of battle, only to have other players repeatedly beat your cartoon corpse. That's one of the ways the whip crack emote is used in combat by the game's worst offenders. And the incoherent yelling of the “Laugh it Up” emote gets boring pretty quickly, too.

While this may all seem pretty childish to outsiders, it's important to remember that Fortnite is largely played by a younger audience. In that sense, some of the game's emotes are no different from playground chants – yes, they're crude, but you're probably joining in if you're following along.