My FIL sent me a friend request on facebook. (You know FB has jumped the shark when your FIL joins!)
I do not want to friend my FIL. He will comment on my posts. He will post a lot of things. My FIL has a superpower: he will always say the exact thing that you do not want to hear, and he will say it at length. He once talked to my SIL (on the other side, he’d never met her before) for an hour about hunting. I don’t think he’s ever been hunting–does he even know anyone who hunts?–I don’t know why he picked that topic, but of course she’s a vegetarian who thinks hunting is immoral.
Don’t get me wrong, he’s not a terrible person or anything–he’s just very very hard to be in the same room with. We haven’t spoken with him much this year after a sort of family blowup that I didn’t get involved in. We’re on the way to more contact now that the dust has settled, but I don’t want him as a FB friend!
And of course if I don’t accept the request I’ll feel guilty for shutting him out. It’s not his fault, mostly, that he’s hard to live with. Even my BIL who isn’t speaking with him at all has accepted (which kind of surprises me actually). I can’t not do it, but maybe I’ll hide him…gah. Why can’t annoying relatives just stay off the dang facebook?
As much as some of the new FB stuff annoys me, there are solutions to this where you are not doomed:
Go ahead and friend him. It will make him feel better, and you less guilty.
There are settings (I can’t find them right now, maybe someone else will know) where you can keep certain users or groups of users from seeing your status updates. This will keep him from commenting on your statuses.
Once you’ve added him, you can hide him from being seen in the status updates YOU see by using the “hide” feature. This will keep you from having to read stuff that irritates you.
You have therefore been a good DIL by adding him, but then you don’t actually have to be bothered with dealing with him. Best of both worlds, so to speak.
I am a gypsy, a rebel, a nerd, and a black sheep. Yet I have all my nieces and nephews, former pastors & wives, employers and other related “oh noes” people friending me.
They are all under my “limited profile” settings. (I would tell you how to do it - but I’m at work and can’t access it.)
And I’ve hidden certain ones (y’know, the ones who fill up your status feed updates with drivel or annoying app activities.)
And this includes my deceased sister’s former husband (she died while they were separated.) He’s an unemployed politicial nutcase who recently announced he was going to run for Senate - posted with a headshot of himself taken in his ramshackle double-wide.
That’s what I did, after getting friended by someone I had zero interest in being friended by (no, that’s not true - I actively didn’t want him as a friend), and getting tired of updates that I don’t care about - you’re at work! Good for you! I deleted that account, set up a new one with three friends that I actually care about, and haven’t gone back in months.
Eh, I didn’t friend my mother. No family on facebook, that’s my motto. I only “friend” people who are actually my “friends.” Didn’t feel guilty for a second!
So I would ignore the request. And not feel guilty about it. If he wants friends he can make them the normal way, by being a person other people can stand to be around.
Not to paraphrase but why should I give up facebook due to pests, when I had the power to end their pestiness easily? Well, my exposure to it anyway.
Yeah, I thought I might hide him. I have now figured out how to set my privacy settings–turns out my BIL has already done that, which explains why he accepted the friend request in the first place. Thanks for reminding me of the possibility! I think after a day or so I’ll accept the request, do the privacy setting, and see how much he posts before I hide him for good. I’ve only hidden one other person so far–he was taking quizzes on sexual positions and I do not even want to think about that. I always hide all games and quizzes.
I like facebook, all my college friends live far away and I get to talk with them easily this way.
Add me to the “I Quit Facebook” club. I found it was more aggravation than fun, so I deleted my account. Only one friend noticed - a friend for 40 years - and she sent an email. I assured her I didn’t quit over anything she said. And that was that.
Life is so much more pleasant without the idiocy I subjected myself to.
This is exactly why I wish there was a way to adjust privacy settings differently for the different friend lists.
I found out at Thanksgiving my father-in-law is on facebook. I’d love for him to be able to see the photos I post of his grandkids, but not to read some of the more political comments other friends make on my wall.
I’m afraid if I add him that whenever I change my status during work hours he’ll hit me with “you should be working”. And he’d be right - I just don’t want it pointed out.
dangermom, I’d be careful about accepting your FIL’s request, which would allow him to interact with all of your current facebook friends.
I had a cousin send me a friend request, but I knew he’d be spouting off on his crazy political rants, so I denied him. I personally wouldn’t mind reading his insanity every day (it kinda makes me laugh) but I wouldn’t want my other friends, family, or colleagues to see that sort of drivel. It would reflect poorly on YOU.
Yes, you could accept him and then hide all of his posts, but that seems like a lot of work to go through for someone who you don’t want to be fb friends with.
Or tell him that you like to post naked pictures of yourself on facebook, and you wouldn’t want him seeing those.
Say what? Adding someone does not automatically add them to your friends. The only way they could interact is via mail, which they could do anyway. Unless you are talking about them being able to interact writing on your wall. But if your friends use your wall for that without your permission, THAT is an unfriendable action. The purpose of comments/wall posts is to talk to YOU.
Anyways, my advice to the OP is to take your time. Find out how seriously the FIL takes Facebook. If you find out it’s a big deal to him (particularly if that will significantly influence the lives of those you love), then go the privacy setting route. Facebook is updating them soon, and it appears you’ll be able to have different privacy settings for different friend groups.
I personally have a group called “Just to be nice”. Whenever I add someone there, I like to give them the benefit of a doubt, hiding them if they are annoying, and will only unfriend if they figure out a way to be annoying after I’ve hidden them. It hasn’t happened yet. (I hide from anyone who isn’t in my close friends list in chat, so JTBNers are off by default there.)
Say what? Adding someone does not automatically add them to your friends. The only way they could interact is via mail, which they could do anyway. Unless you are talking about them being able to interact writing on your wall. But if your friends use your wall for that without your permission, THAT is an unfriendable action. The purpose of comments/wall posts is to talk to YOU.QUOTE]
I’ve had FB friends comment back and forth to each within the comments section of something I posted. It’s not unusal at all. And yes, if someone abused that priveledge and insulted another one of my friends via the comments section, you have the option of defriending them. But by that time, the damage is already done.
