Don’t Unfriend Your Eccentric Family Members Just Yet

Sometimes those Facebook conversations can be overwhelming. Even some eccentric family member’s political or religious rants might be a bit too much for you, but there’s no need to ‘unfriend’ them and hurt their feelings. That makes it difficult when you see them at the next holiday event. Here are some ways in which you can keep those connections, but avoid the controversy.

With the new changes at Facebook, the settings are in some slightly different places. When you view your Home page, which gives you the News Feed of all your friends, there is a tab with a drop down arrow on the top right side of each status.

This is where you can select from several options that help control what you’ll see in your news feed. When you “Hide” the story, you won’t see it pop back up every time a mutual friend comments on it. You can also select from which kind of updates you want.

You can also set the types of subscriptions you want by hovering over a friend’s name, then uncheck the statuses you don’t want to see and check the ones that are most important to you. (That’s my husband smiling at me, aren’t we cute?) If you select “Unsubscribe” don’t worry..you’re still connected. You just won’t see any of their updates in your News Feed, but you can always go to their page if you want to pop in and say hello.

Another option is to create a List.You’ll see the Lists area on the left side of your News Feed. Click “more” to see all your lists. You can either “Create a List” or “Manage a List”.

You can select from several options for your Lists.

Once you have your Lists created, you can specify which List gets to see which updates. Just below the status bar you can click the icon for the status settings. When you select “Custom” you will be given the opportunity to set that status to allow certain Lists to view and comment.

I selected “Specific People or Lists” As you begin to type the title to one of your Lists, it will appear for you to click on. Then hit “save changes” and continue with posting your status. *Important* Once you’ve posted a status to a specific audience, all following statuses will be set to the same setting by default. You will need to RESET your status to your normal settings the next time you post a status.

Now when we go back to the News Feed page, we can also select which List we want to view in the News Feed. I can choose to view only statuses from My Homeschool List or Family List. Simply go back to your Home page and on the left find the “Lists” section and click “More”. Each List has its own News Feed. Find the List you want to view and click. Now you’ll only see those friends in your News Feed. You can also post a status directly to that List right on that page.

Another thing to keep in mind is: when you’re commenting on a status, each of your friends have different settings. If you find a status set with the World icon, that is a Public discussion and everything you say there will have the potential to be seen by millions of people.

 I hope these settings will assist you in keeping the peace with your friends and family. No need to make waves by unfriending those special, although eccentric, loved ones.

When you nurture and give to the community, you are growing your own heart to make room for others to embrace you and to give back.

In future blog posts, we will begin to share how this blogging philosophy can be introduced to the blogosphere and the steps we recommend to nurturing your blog community. As we grow together, we will be building one another up and will be preparing ourselves for a strong and vibrant launch to the Family Blog Network. 

Lisa (Sisterlisa) blogs at The HomeSpun Life and is a contributor at The Homeschool Post. She enjoys blogging, photography, and cooking. Her homeschooling family is active in their community and enjoys traveling with friends and family.