I don’t feel like responding to another “People on Facebook are annoying” thread because I’d rather not ask this question every time it comes up, so I would like to ask you all a question right here and right now. To anyone who has ever posted a thread here about annoying friend/non-friends on FB, or have felt an annoyance but haven’t posted, what is your rationale is for dealing with this kind of crap? Look, folks…
Hiding a user’s comments does not notify the user, it doesn’t send off a nastygram, it doesn’t do anything. It simply stops you from not having to see a status update every time the friend takes a shit. Why is this not an acceptable option?
Defriend the person. If this person annoys you so much, who gives a shit if he’s offended? You really care about some guy from high school in 1997 who posts inane and/or highly offensive shit everyday?
…I honestly do not understand why this is an issue. Can someone please explain? Reading over this, it seems as though I may be just a tad full of crap, and maybe I am slightly about point 2. While I may not give two shits about what Joe Bob from high school thinks about Jebus, Obama or queers, or what he thinks about me not giving two shits about his opinion on Jebus, Obama or queers, I understand some people can’t bear to hurt another person’s feelings, even if that person is a douchebag. I cannot understand at all why hiding someone’s comments shouldn’t suffice. They person won’t even know, and you won’t have to see it anymore! Does not compute!
I suspect this is quickly headed to the Pit, but I find many of my friends, while sometimes overposting and putting up inane crap, do also occasionally list funny or useful information as well, so I keep them around for that reason and nothing more. So far, I have only ever unfriended two people. One person was an old work colleague who just stopped posting at one point and all I got was Farmville/ Mafia Wars/ whatever stupid quiz results from her, so I didn’t see a point in keeping up with her. The other person was turned into a ‘friend collector’ and though he is a quasi-relative by marriage, he irritated me with his constant salesman persona and given that he had close to a 1,000 ‘friends’ I figured he wouldn’t notice if I dropped his ass. Among my own friends (less than 100), everyone really is someone I know and talk to at least occasionally in real life. I’d say I have a post at most, once a week so I can be sure not to annoy others in kind.
The Pit, you say? Don’t mistake my use of off-color language for hostility. I just have a naturally abrasive manner.
Now then, you choose to not hide comments for the rare post that may be interesting or worthwhile? If I were in such a situation, I would still hide the person’s updates, but occasionally check the page to find if anything interesting is going on. This way you can check up on whatever is going on in whoever’s life without having to see the daily “I eat cookies” update. Note: I am specifically asking about people who bothered by X user’s Facebook messages, not people who think X user says stupid stuff, but it isn’t a big deal. If you don’t care either way about inane FB stuff, then fair enough. If you are bothered by what someone is posting, why not do away with it?
Another option I employ is not hiding the person’s posts but hiding all the games/apps. That way I still get their updates, pictures, links, and other “real” posts, but not apps. Very useful.
Because I avoid conflict as a general rule. I minimize the annoyance as much as possible and try to focus on the positive attributes of others. I tell myself it’s not really a big deal. This doesn’t always work, but it brings me peace of mind more often than not.
I did pit someone I was friends with on Facebook, and it was that pitting in part that led me to realize I really didn’t have to put up with her crap. I hid her for a long time, then unhid her, and then when she posted another ridiculously judgmental thing I removed her because I realized she exists on some other psychotic and ignorant plane of existence. So I did the right thing, but it took a lot of personal grief before I got around to it.
Oh, and by the way, it’s one thing to remove some acquaintance, quite another thing to have to remove a person who knows your darkest family secrets and vice-versa, who was a fundamental part of your childhood identity in some way. That takes a little more gumption.
If you’re so afraid of standing up for yourself over the internet and don’t want to tell them to shut the fuck up you can just delete them and say you must have stayed sign in when you had friends over and one of them screwed with your friends list and you didn’t notice or something.
Though if you’re going to go through all that trouble might as well just tell them the truth, that they’re annoying and need to shut up.
I’m not afraid of conflict, I just generally find that 99% of the time the thing that pisses you off ‘‘in that moment’’ turns out to be not a big deal long-term. So usually I have to have evidence that I’m going to get pissed off again and again to make it worth it for me to terminate a relationship. I didn’t leave a pissy, ‘‘I’m not your friend any more’’ message or anything, but my final comments make it pretty clear why I ended the relationship.
Why not just hide the updates so that you don’t have to be pissed off “in that moment” or at all? You can always check the friend’s page periodically to see if something interesting is happening. And if it turns out this person is simply an insufferable douche, de-friend.
It would depend on what they were doing, but if someone starting posting inappropriate things* on my wall, I’d send them a message to say please don’t do that again. If they argue, I’ll tell them that it’s my wall and they should respect my wishes in the matter as a simple matter of respect and courtesy.
If the continue to post, I’ll unfriend them without warning. It’s not like they’re the only one who have interesting or clever things to say. Also, this applies to my wall, not their own feed, which they are free to post whatever they want – though I still reserve the right to unfriend them if I get tired of it.
*Of course, there are various degrees of inappropriateness.
Oh! Where is that button? I block apps when I’m invited to play any of them, but I haven’t seen a thing that let’s me block other people’s apps and still see their posts.
I didn’t know there was such a thing! Tell me how!
It’s not that it bothers me to read them, I just don’t want them on my wall, possibly giving others the impression that I concur. And throwing the baby out with the bathwater is an inelegant solution.
When an update from an app appears in your feed, hover the mouse over it. You’ll see a Hide button, with a little drop-down menu that lets you either hide the person or hide the app. Choose to hide the app, and you won’t see any more updates from it, from any of your friends.
I have hidden just about every single app and quiz that has shown up on my feed, and now my feed is pretty much only status updates, photos, blog posts, and other stuff I might actually want to see. It’s nice.
I hide all the apps and quizzes, too. It seems like someone is always coming up with more of them for me to block, though.
Another thing I’ve found helpful is that you can block certain people from seeing your activity, pictures, whatever. This isn’t a big problem for me, but there are a couple of people who used to annoy the hell out of me with dumb comments on my status updates. Like, every single status update I ever did, to the point I stopped doing them. I blocked them from seeing my updates, and they no longer annoy me.
I want this persons social natterings…I do not want any posts from this person about politics. This person I want their political postings which are always interesting and we are pretty like minded…but any posts about her children need to be blocked because she has the most annoying children in the world that she brags about constantly. I don’t want to know anything about anyone’s abortion position on Facebook.
I do unfriend those that provide no information to me other than their latest status in Mafia Wars and every other Facebook game or poll in existence. And I also defriend those who annoy me more than please me. But most people are fine, and everyone I choose to retain brings me more good feelings than bad - but that doesn’t mean I can’t bitch about the bad.
I wish there were some way to block posts about sports. There are a few friends that I have blocked because they have an unfortunate habit of posting play-by-play updates whenever their favorite team is playing. Thanks, but if I wanted to watch the game, I’d watch the goddamned game.