I like Facebook. Not, “I can’t live without checking my Facebook every day,” but I don’t dislike it as much as I thought I would…except for one thing. Whatever genius designed it offers three options for those friends who have nothing to fucking do all day but take stupid quizzes which then automatically post on my Wall with enormous graphics and too-long explanations of the results (and yes, I have one such FB friend). I can do one of: leave it as-is and have three-fucking-quarters of my Wall littered with the results of whatever lame “Which (insert fantasy character) are you?” or “What (insert personality trait) are you?” quizzes she took that day; or, I can disallow apps from showing quiz results on my Wall…app-by-app; or, I can hide her from my wall entirely, which includes anything she actually writes herself. Option one is annoying; one or two quizzes, sure, but Jesus Christ, it’s like she has absolutely nothing better to do than sit there and take fucking FB quizzes all day. Option two is a pain in the arse, and not useful to me because it’s not one quiz and lots of people, it’s one person and lots of different quizzes. Option three will be the one I choose if I decide I’m sufficiently annoyed. She was away last week, and I gotta say, it was bliss; all I got from her on my Wall were single-sentence status updates, which was fine. FB needs to add an option for us to block all quiz results, or to block quiz results only from certain friends. I do want to see which quizzes some people have taken because some of them are quite fun, and most people don’t go overboard with them, but she’s been back for not even two full days, and already I have eight of her quiz results displayed on my goddamned wall. I’m fast approaching, “I like you, but whatever you have to say is less important to me than blocking your annoying fucking quiz results, so you’re going to be hidden entirely” territory. Seems kind of mean, but so is inconsiderately spamming one’s friends with the Facebook equivalent of, “I’m bored, so here’s a bunch of junk you don’t care about to force you to scroll all the way down the page to actually read anything of any interest to you.” I guess that for now, I could just hide her entirely and hope she doesn’t post, “I’m moving to Bora Bora,” or “I’m dying,” or anything actually important. Argh. Who designed the UI of that site, anyway? What a fucking nightmare, just trying to find the option to link my Flickr and Facebook (after I’d been told where it was); an option I would not even have known existed if M. hadn’t found it first and uploaded photos to her Flickr so I could see it on my Wall.
“What is your purpose in life?” Hm. Apparently, to annoy me with this shit until I feel like blocking someone I’ve known since I was fourteen years old, and someone who used to be a reasonably close friend. Can’t be a very accurate quiz if she is not possessed of sufficient perception to figure out how many people get pissed off at those who spam their friends’ Walls with this feel-good-about-myself glurge.
Hmmm….found this on some blog, but don’t want to lose it. If it’s un-doable, then…. 😀
The latest on how to un-hide friends on Facebook
When I look at my web stats to see what’s driving people to this blog, BY FAR the number one source is a Google search asking how to unhide friends on Facebook. I’ve written a couple of posts previously addressing this issue, but it seems like new bugs keep appearing on a regular basis. So I’m writing this one, which will be the one-stop-shop for all the latest info I have about the situation. I’m going to change previous posts so they direct people here.
Basic Steps
If you just have no idea how it’s supposed to work:
On your home page, highlight the filter in the left-hand panel that says News Feed.- Scroll to the bottom of the News Feed and click the link that says “Edit Options”.
- In the box that appears, click the Add to News Feed link for everyone you want to unhide, then click Close.
Note: The reason I said to highlight the News Feed filter is because, if you had another filter highlighted, but your hidden friend(s) didn’t fit that category, the Edit Options link would not appear. For example, if you selected the Photos filter, but your friend had never posted any photos, s/he would never have had an update in that list to unhide.
Troubleshooting
Now that all seems very straightforward but, unfortunately, not so much. Some people have reported that there is no Edit Options at the bottom of the page and others have had the option, but it didn’t work, i.e. after clicking Add to News Feed, the person wasn’t added back. If you have one of these problems, here are some things you can try to fix it.
- Double-check you’ve selected the News Feed filter from the left-hand panel and see if that brings it back.
- If you’re using Internet Explorer, sometimes right after you hide or unhide someone’s updates, that link disappears. But if you refresh your browser page, it may come back.
- Another possible solution is a bit weird (and contradicts something I said above), but it worked in the past for a specific IE problem. Click one of the other filters in the left-hand panel and then try using the Edit Options link to add your friends back again.
- You can also try hiding another person’s updates by mousing over one of them and clicking the Hide link that appears. After you do that, a box should appear that confirms the action and also provides a link to the Edit Options box.
WARNING: Someone tried this and the Edit Options DID come up, but it only had the name of the person she just hid on it, and when she clicked “Add to News Feed”, it didn’t add that person back. So if you try this, you might want to choose a friend you don’t mind “losing” until the problem is solved. - If the above doesn’t work, try using a different browser, e.g. if you normally use IE, try Firefox, or vice-versa. If you don’t have another browser on your computer, but have access to a different computer that does, log in to your FB account from there and unhide the updates (if possible). Then, when you go back to your computer and browser, they should be there again.
That’s as much as I’ve been able to figure out so far. If you try all these steps and it still doesn’t work, please let me know and I’ll see if I can find any other possible solutions.
Alternatively, you can contact Facebook to see if they have a solution. I’ve done this with a couple of issues and you probably won’t be surprised to learn that I haven’t found them exactly responsive to date…
If you do find a solution to your problem that’s not listed above, I’d really appreciate it if you’d pass it along to me so I can share it with other T4L readers.
