Basic questions about facebook profile

Factual Questions
1

I’m amongst the 0.1% of the population on Earth not using facebook. Still, I have an account. Upon visiting it today (apparently the first time in 3 years) I decided to complete my profile a bit since apparently, a growing number of my relatives are registering (3 years ago, only my youngest relatives and my cousins had an account. Now apparently I’m about the only one not having one, along my hermit of a brother and my elderly mother).
Call me an idiot, but I can’t fill my profile. So, I have some very basic questions.

-If I begin to fill in for instance my place of birth, a dropping menu with names beginning with the first letters appear. If I pick a name in this dropping list, fine. But if I type something not on the list, it’s doesn’t appear on the profile. To give a fake example, Facebook will propose : “The Pit” or “Straightdope message board, The internet” but won’t accept “The Pit, Straightdope Message Board, The internet”. Not on the list, doesn’t appear on the profile. Same problem with other fields : anglais, english english, english y español, español venezolano are all valid choices for languages spoken, but weirdly enough neither simply “english” nor "español are.

So, what are you supposed to do to fill a field with what you actually want to appear in the field?

-Facebook proposes a large number of backgrounds, but how do you add your own? Like for instance a picture from my computer?
Call me an idiot again, but I couldn’t find on Facebook any explanation answering those simple questions. Sorry to bother you with such basic questions, but where else would I ask? :slight_smile:

2

That’s weird about the language choices; I have both English and Spanish on mine, as do many friends. But then again I filled out my profile a long time ago, and maybe the menus have changed (though that seems like an odd thing to change).

I do have a number of slightly paranoid friends (a couple of gay teachers among them) who have disguised their profiles in various ways so that their students, etc. don’t find them. I just noticed today that one college friend listed his current location as Ulan Bator, and was thinking “that’s odd, what on Earth would he be doing there?” But when I clicked through to his profile, he’d changed a number of facts about himself (hometown, etc.), presumably for privacy.

Are you using Facebook in English, or in French? Maybe the French menus are different?

3

Most fields in Facebook should allow you to keep typing and use your own custom value. Your browser may be misbehaving and preventing you from using the full functionality. Try another one.