After reading Robin’s post on making his Facebook Timeline fun again 1, I decided to give it a try2. Here’s how I did it:

#1

Open your Facebook Timeline3.

#2

Instead of hiding the post, unfollow the “facebook friend” if his/her post which appears on the timeline matches these following conditions:

  1. It’s an anger posts and your “facebook friend” keeps posting anger posts4.
  2. It’s a link shared from questionable sources.
  3. It’s an “attention seeking” post5.
  4. It’s an opinion backed with weak argument posted by a person who wouldn’t fairly admit that he/she might be wrong6.
  5. It’s a post which tries to promote a product7.
  6. It’s a post from a person you don’t actually know8.
  7. Basically anything that makes your Facebook timeline annoying9.

#3

Repeat step #2 until you find that every post appears on your Facebook timeline feels relatively awesome.

***

When Facebook firstly rolled out the “follow” and “unfollow” capability, I actually thought that Facebook had lost its vision by blindly copying Twitter’s mechanic. Now, I see this follow-mechanic as a brilliant move:

  1. You might have a connection to certain people, hence the “friend” connection.
  2. But you might not want to “follow” that person.

That’s the reason why you never meet an old friend10 in the first place: you have a connection, but you’re not interested in keeping up with him/her. In some societies, “unfriend”-ing often sees as a rude move, hence the need of the “keep the relationship but unfollow the person” mechanic. It allows Facebook to be once again fun again11 without forcing people to “harshly” unfriend-ing his connection on Facebook12.

Well played13, Facebook.

  1. Also, as a follow up of this post ↩

  2. With few adjustment on the filtering process ↩

  3. Duh, obviously ↩

  4. As my lecturer put this brilliantly: Anger bagets anger. Anger drains your attention and your actual life seriously deserves a better attention ↩

  5. When a person OVER posts every single activity, every single thought, or every damned dumb jokes. Sidebar: for the time being I seriously think that this kind of person experiences lack of actual and real attention on the offline life ↩

  6. Pro tip: never waste your life debating a person who wouldn’t argue that he/she might be wrong after a solid, backed with fact, and delivered with well manner argument. I learned this the hard way: It’s a time wasting. ↩

  7. Repeatedly, for what it’s worth ↩

  8. Or you don’t actually care ↩

  9. Suggestions, anyone? ↩

  10. Whom you’re able to meet, not the one who is separated by distance ↩

  11. Clearly, only for person who are want and knowledgeable enough to do so ↩

  12. Connection between people is what makes Facebook worth in the first place, isn’t it? ↩

  13. For my quite-tech-literate need. It is not that well played for most Facebook users: this is what news feed algorithm should automatically do in the first place. To be fair, I think they have done it but the result are not that good hence the manually edited timeline ↩