Do you have a Facebook account? Dumb question, isn't it? Almost everybody online has a Facebook account nowadays. And if you are a poor sod unlucky not to have an account, jump on to the Facebook bandwagon asap and get a life (or is it the other way round? Pardon me, I am too jumbled up today, probably got off the wrong side of bed!). So now that we all have a nice gleaming Facebook account, lets take a look on our Friend List. I am happy to note that as of today I am having a whooping 127 friends. Cool Man! Wait, wait. What did you say, how many you have? 1794! C'mon, stop joking. Nobody can have so many friends. But you do, huh? And many people have lots more? Poor me. I am starting to hate you for outdoing me. If only there was a Foe List, you would have been the prime candidate to be on mine.
But seriously, are all those people on our friend list really our friends or have we all been a little bit overzealous in accepting and sending friend requests, and befriending people whom we have had little interaction ever? Of course, you are very right in befriending that sweet girl, unknown to your wife, with whom you went out to your first date years ago but isn't sending a friend request to her husband's sister a bit weird? And all that because she is God damn hot? We aren't growing up, are we?
It is high time to realize that when you befriend anybody on Facebook, you are sharing all our personal details with them. In the good old offline world, would you be comfortable in showing off your photos from your recent Hawaii trip in which you are playing beach volleyball with some really hot babes? Or what about sharing gory details of your recent Thailand Massage Parlor adventure? But then, you cannot resist the urge to share your conquests on the FB circuit. And if you happen to have such a wide open Friend List, there's every chance that all such public information is published in front of voyeuristic gazes of millions across this not so Lonely Planet. Well, well, I never meant to make you feel miserable. At least, I am not responsible if your wife, who is not on Facebook, happens to find some day, your intimate pics with her best friend which you had proudly posted on your Wall, thinking as if it was the Great Wall of China which your dumb wife cannot scale. But if she haven't yet found out, then may be you are in luck here buddy. Lets try to mend the cracks in your Wall before it falls like a Berlin Wall.
Lets do some tweaks to your FB settings so that you can be absolved of your earlier sins, at least in the eyes of this mortal world. Now, start by clicking your profile and go to your friends page. Click "Edit Friends" in the top right corner and then click "Create Friend List" on the next page. Now go ahead and create a list with all of your so called friends with whom you won't like to share your very personal information. You can name it whatever you wish but for our example lets say you made a new list called "Block Them". Now include in this list every Tom, Dick and Harry (er, that Mary too...yes I know, she is hot but then...). You can also then create other lists like one for your closest friends, one for your office mates, one for your family, one for your club mates etc. Now that you are armed with many friend lists, lets unleash their powerful effect in FB Privacy settings. Go to the privacy settings (for the really dumb ones like my adoring wife, you can get to this elite section in the Account settings drop down.....oops, hope my wife doesn't read this otherwise it may well be RIP for this blog, may be for me too!). Now click that link at the bottom saying "Customize Settings". Here you can choose what to share with what people. For example, for the first setting "Posts by Me", click it and choose custom edit. Then choose as depicted in the image below. Click "Save Setting" and that's it. From now on, all your new posts including your status updates and photos would default to this setting and friends on the block list would only be left wondering why your FB account is so inactive. Mind you, for the pre-existing photo albums and videos, you have to reset their privacy settings by clicking another link a bit down on the same page (Last link in "Things I Share" section).
But if there is really something you would like to share with all your friends, you can always click the "lock" icon in your status box (see image below) before posting and choose whatever option you desire which overrides your default privacy settings for this post only. Similarly, you can restrict your mom-in-law (if you are stupid enough to have your MIL in your Friend List) from seeing the pics of last night's wild party by using the lock icon and choosing your Family List in "Hide this from" box. Alternatively, you can share those exclusive pics with your closest friends by choosing that particular list in "Make this visible to" box. The possibilities are endless. You just have to know what to share with whom and what not to. Now go and change your settings right away. You can always come back later to thank me for saving your skin. Now where was my wishlist?
Posts
0 comments:
Post a Comment