Hello, facebook people. Welcome to my blog, and welcome to my Facebook list of friends. I seem to have taken on a handful of new FB friends recently, which is always a good thing. It kind of goes in spurts with me – no new friends for a while, and then someone opens the gate and a whole bunch of new ones rush in. However it happens, it’s always a good thing.

Here’s the thing – there are certain things I’ll do with Facebook, also known as FB, and certain things I won’t do. I wrote about this previously in a post called Facebook My Way. Since I’ve already written that, I’m not going to restate the rules here – I’ll just refer you to that post. It’s not that hard – just click on the little link I just made for you.

But I want to take a minute and explain my Facebook Hiding policy.

I’m a big fan of the FB “hide” button. It’s not like I use it every day, but I have used it, and I always like it. If you’re not familiar with the FB “hide” button, it’s a little “hide” notice that appears next to anyone’s FB posts. When I click it, that person’s posts are then hidden from me.  They can post away, and I’ll rarely see what they’ve posted. Thus the “hide” name. I’ve “hidden” that person. That person is still on my FB friend list, and if that person wants to send me a personal message, I’ll get it. But I won’t see their wall posts.

**The thing about the “hide” button – if someone “hides” you, you don’t know it. You just continue on as you always have, posting whatever you want, but the person who “hid” you won’t see your postings. The other thing – even if I’ve hidden you, if you post directly to my wall, i.e., something you’ve written to me specifically, I’ll see that. I just won’t see things like your crazy status posts. So everyone wins.

At the moment I’m writing this, I have 14 friends who I’ve “hidden.” There are various reasons why I might choose to “hide” someone. Such as…

1.  You whine too much.

2.  You’re depressed all the time.

3.  You’re too well-known. One guy on my friends list is known by people all over the country, and has thousands of friends. And he’s really a friend – not just a guy I’ve heard of. I actually know him and he knows me. But because he’s so well known, he gets 8 bazillion posts a day, and if I try to just read postings from my other friends, his posts tend to monopolize the wall. So I hid him, and if I want to get in contact with him, I can.

4.  You try to suck me into religious and/or political discussions. That doesn’t mean I’ll hide you if you simply post about religious or political stuff. I happen to be a person of strong Christian faith, and I sometimes even have political feelings. But I normally don’t find discussions of faith or politics on Facebook to be productive at all, but actually pretty frustrating. I’ll gladly talk about those things with you by private message, or email, or even  the old-fashioned telephone or (gasp) personal visit. But I’m really not into the quick sound-byte, cliche, easily misunderstood Facebook method of dealing with these issues. So post about them all you want – but if try to draw me in, you’ll get hidden.

5.  You whine too much. I know I said that before, but I really don’t like whining.

Thank you for your understanding. Actually I don’t need you to understand; I can just hide you if necessary.