I’m not on Facebook, but it bugs the crap out of me anyway. I frequently get emails from Facebook saying this or that member is inviting me to join, complete with a link that you would think, due to its placement, would go to their Facebook page. It doesn’t - it just goes to some damned ‘join Facebook’ page.
Dear Facebook:
If you’re going to invite me to join, at least let me see what the fuck it is that you’re asking me to join.
If someone in particular invites me, I damned well would like to see their page, so I can see if they’re actually someone I know, or whether they’ve pulled up my name by mistake. It doesn’t seem like that would be so hard to do: if they’re inviting me, the presumption is that they’d like me to see their Facebook page. So you can, you know, show it to me.
Is that the same thing as the “block this application” function? Or is hiding the application different? I use the block because some applications will be able to access some of your data if your friend uses it.
This is the problem I’ve had with the “block this application” function too. New apps are invented all the time.
Countless posts about Facebook annoyances 'round these parts, and nobody has an explanation for why they won’t de-friend or hide the users posts? Somebody’s holding out.
Is this (indirectly) directed at my post? If so I think I’d prefer a pitting, it seems to be like a rite of passage around here.
Anyway, I can’t speak for others, but two things;
1 - My thread wasn’t moaning about annoying friends, but specifically about commenting on their religious posts and how dick-ish this would be.
2 - For those asking why you just don’t hide or defriend anyone who does post annoying stuff…my guess would be a ‘baby with the bathwater’ attitude. I’ve hid plenty of people who post glurge, but who I don’t particularly want to piss off. For people who post some glurge and some stuff you might be interested in, you could hide and keep checking their page. But then why bother having a news feed in the first place?
However, I agree that ‘someone is always annoying’ needs no thought whatsoever. Even ‘someone is annoying part of the time’ can be answered with ‘decide how annoying, and act upon it’.
I’m going to pimp this on every Facebook thread from here on out, because it answers the basic question that is inevitably asked in every Facebook thread. That is “How do I block all those annoying apps?!”
Keep your shirt on. Nobody is upset with anybody (yet). I am sincere when I ask what the hold up is. I do not understand why defriending or hiding isn’t the simplest thing to do.
How often are these people updating their status? More than once daily? Once daily? Every several days? If you check someone’s page every week or so, you should be able to see what they’ve been up to for the past week or two without having to be annoyed by their silly updates repeatedly.
Like I said if someone is genuinely annoying with no redeeming features, boot 'em, hide 'em, whatever. If someone’s annoying and useful at the same time…well, determine the ratio. Speaking as advocatus diaboli for a second I can understand that this ratio may be difficult to determine, plus you have the fact that not everyone wants to look through a load of wall posts, photos and whatnot like a stalker to find out what a (sometimes) annoying friend is up to.
It has been explained. There’s no hangup or holdup. Facebook doesn’t have an explanation for why you can’t hide one post and not the friend. You sound like you’re trying to convince people to be exceedingly dismissive. Well, I’m not coming in; the water’s not fine.
Fine, stay out, nobody cares. No one’s trying to convince anyone to do anything. I see posts around here all the time about Facebook annoyances, there’s a Pit thread right now about some woman with a sick kid who annoys the poster with anti health care reform messages, and I don’t get it. My thought is “Defriend or hide.” The response is “Then we might miss some other stuff.” Well how much does the crap really bother you then? Apparently not that much if you’re still willing to deal with the person’s messages. That’s fine. Like I said earlier:
If people are complaining about Facebook messages just for fun and/or are only moderately annoyed at times, then I am misinterpreting how bothered they are. There’s a lady at work who complains about inane Facebook newsfeeds too, and when I asked her why not defriend/hide, she said “It seems mean.” :rolleyes:
This Facebook Purity business. I like it.
I don’t understand the “Then we might miss some other stuff” mentality either. What I don’t get is the implied urgency of needing to know the “other stuff” immediately. You’re not going to miss anything at all. You can always go to the person’s page and see all their updates at your leisure.
It’s like TiVo: I don’t have to rush home and tune in to each and every episode every night. I can wait until the weekend watch all of them if I want, or skip the boring ones.
Well, that’s what I did, right? She pissed me off, I pitted her, someone on the Dope suggested I hide her (which I was not aware was possible), so I hid her. But of course I was missing out on everything she posted, not just the ignorant shit. So after a month or so of hiding her, I unhid her, and the next thing she posted was so mind-numbingly idiotic that I immediately defriended her.
I may not have been fighting with her, but I was agitated and depressed, seems like a kind of internal conflict anyway. Some people handle negative feelings about others much better than I do. If you don’t see a conflict, you don’t see a conflict. Me, I was pissed off for days and so riled up I lost sleep over it. Eventually I figured it out, so I’m not sure what the big deal is.
I feel like the crux of the argument here (no offense intended to MeanOldLady) is, ‘‘Why can’t you experience things like I do instead of the way you do?’’
I don’t know. Cuz I’m me? I’m uncomfortable with feeling angry and frustrated with other people and I would rather get along with everyone, particularly those who seem to mean well. I don’t easily hold grudges and give people lots of chances. It doesn’t get more complicated than that.
Fair enough. I wasn’t specifically grilling you on your situation, but was interested in knowing in general why people don’t always just hide or defriend people who are annoying. Are there others who don’t know hiding is an option? I suppose it’s possible. Hell, I didn’t know, and some months ago asked people if there was a way to block certain people’s newsfeeds and all Sorority Life (or whatever the hell) app invites. So there’s that. There’s also the “But I don’t want to miss other stuff” rationale from people who are completely aware of the hide feature, which is as good as a justification as I’m going to get, but still makes zero sense to me. Who cares? Miss stuff then. Check the page every other week if you’re annoyed at times, but still curious enough to see if anything interesting is happening. It’s like TiVo for newsfeeds, like Swallowed My Cellphone said.
Well yes and no. Obviously people see things differently than I do, but what’s so wrong about asking why? I’ve never lost sleep over anything anyone has posted on Facebook, but if I were the type of person who would, I would like to think I would choose to eliminate such a stress from my life immediately. The unwillingness to hide is what I can’t wrap my head around. While it may not be my goal to be conciliatory or get along with everyone, I understand perfectly well that it is the objective for many people. Cue god from stage left. Now there is a hiding option that will bar annoying newsfeeds and Mafia Wars invites, and no one will be the wiser. Seems like the perfect solution for someone who is irritated by their FB friends’ crap, but wishes not to offend, no?
On what seems to be a different issue entirely, I have no problem defriending people. If we’re close friends, you’re probably not the kind of person who posts 35 highly grating status updates a day. If we’re not close friends, I don’t care if you’re bothered by me defriending you or not. Also, I would like to think the people I fraternize with realize that our friendship is not contingent upon whether or not I have them on my FB friends list. Not having you on my FB doesn’t mean we’re not friends. Hell, the gal pal I was out with tonight is not on my friends list. I don’t even know if she has a FB page; I don’t care. I have her phone number, and I know where she lives. And if she friended me on FB today, and I defriended her tomorrow, I am 100% certain we would still be friends after that. Some fuckwad from high school who I defriended? Don’t care.
Hey, you’re asking people who debate semantics and argue their opinions to the death for fun. Is it a surprise that some people here kind of want to engage that annoying Evangelical on their news feed?
I’m blessed with a pretty good group of friends - or at least, some pretty literate ones whose endless status updates designed to show how clever they are drown out the rest - but I also don’t believe in arguing over Facebook. It’s meant to be fun, not the venue for converting people (in any direction) and I generally don’t think it’s a good idea to call people out in such a venue for posting stuff I find ignorant or offensive - it just feeds their complex about being a martyr at the hands of the PC police.
Well, as noted above, the person in question wasn’t just ‘‘some fuckwad from high school.’’ If it was someone I was never close to it would have been a completely different story. This is someone I have always felt maternal and protective toward ever since she was a little girl. Essentially what every person must do is a cost-benefit analysis. Sometimes you got to take the bad with the good. Other times it’s not worth it. Sometimes it takes some of us a little longer than others to figure out it’s not worth it. My problem with the hide function is that it left the issue unresolved for me for this particular person. Otherwise I think the hide function is a suitable response, though it does raise the question, ‘‘If you really don’t care what this person has to say, why not defriend them?’’
I find defriending on Facebook a trickier proposition than, say, defriending someone on LiveJournal. For one, it’s the “I know you in person” factor – if you’re going to defriend said person on Facebook, then why are you friends IRL in the first place? Sometimes you can’t get around that because of your relationship with them…in which case, what I do is grin and bear it. Oh, and scroll past anything I haven’t already put under the “Hide” button.
I don’t even go over to FB very much anymore. It seems most of my friends there are just there for the apps
I have a more fundamental question- why do their posts bother you in the first place? I’m FB friends with people that have some views that are diametrically opposed to my own, but reading such a post by them affects me not one iota. I just figure “so-and-so’s going on about [________] again, whatever” and skip down to the next post/comment. Actually reading their opinion doesn’t bother me any more than knowing that they feel that way about the topic, and that doesn’t bother me in the slightest. And why should it? Life’s too short to get your (the general* your*) panties bunched over shit like that.
If I’m in a mood to debate, then I might read the whole thing and have at it. Otherwise, bounce right past it.
I think there’s just a tipping point at where you don’t think you could possibly have a decent debate with the person, and that everything they have to say is something you find offensive.
If everything they say is contrary to your beliefs (they hate the politician you love, they are against the issues you are for, they’re religious and you find religion to be off-putting, etc) then eventually it gets to be that they’re attacking YOU. And you get nervous about putting your own beliefs up because they might come out fighting.
But still, you hold on to those old memories of the person and it’s hard to “get rid” of them. You can hide them, but they still see your status. You can de-friend them but you’ll never hear from them again.
For some people, this is a tough choice. And you need to be on FB a while before you decide how you want to deal with it. It was a weird thing for me at the beginning but eventually I came up with rules/strategy for how I want to deal with it and I’m good now.
I LOVE hiding the apps. It makes things so much easier to follow (although I do enjoy Typing Maniac. That is addicting.)
I dumped Mafia Wars and Restaurant City and kept only Pet Society, because my pet is so darn cute. In fact, since I dumped the games I don’t have the urgency to get on Facebook every day…I haven’t checked it in two days (my pet probably needs a bath by now.)
