9 Steps Towards A Better Facebook

Not only do you have some real-life friends who tend to go overboard on some subjects, some of those friend requests are from 'bots or trolls and are meant to whip you into a frenzy for one reason or another. Click over to the persons Facebook page and if not much shows, friend them for a better look and make a quick decision on whether to instantly unfriend them. I can usually tell from their masthead and first couple of posts as to whether I want them on my feed or not.

If you have a friend that's being annoying about one thing or another, you can now snooze them for thirty days.  Are they fighting with their ex and you're still friends with both?  Snooze 'em! They'll probably have everything worked out by the time they pop back up on your feed.

You can unfollow someone and still be their friend. I have to tell you, for instance, I don't like hunting pictures. I don't mind hunting, and I know where meat comes from, but I just don't like waking up to pictures of dead animals.  I have lots of friends who are hunters and they'll even give me the occasional chub of deer sausage, I'm just not into their sport the same way you're probably not into bocce ball.

I have a couple of friends that I can talk to on the phone for hours, but I do not like the kind of stuff they post. I just don't want any part of what their social media is about. I really only use unfriend these days if they are way over the top. I'm now finding that unfollow and snooze are better.

I no longer post on anyone's page. Not even Happy Birthday. In fact, it was a post I put up to encourage someone who was having a down day that led me to this (a jerk trolled it-it's not worth explaining further).  Anyways, I only allow myself to use the emoticons or I send them a personal message.

In your settings, you can set it up so that you have to approve anything that anyone tries to post on your feed. Yes, they can still comment on the stuff you post, but they can't, for instance, put up a post about their garage sale, or post some fake news on your site.

I only post on my own site. We all know it helps to vent on our sites. Sometimes we express a political view show off our happiness or exasperation as we try to navigate through life. We certainly don't need someone picking apart our thoughts and feelings. No one, absolutely no one has a right to take issue with anything you post. If you want to discuss it, then discuss it, but you wouldn't let someone come in your house and start telling you how to cook, so don't allow it online either.

There's actually more comedy and cuteness out there than misery. All you have to do is make a point to like the websites that pass along the kind of stuff that makes you smile and make a point out of sharing it with your friends. I absolutely love sharing anything to do with cute animals with my daughter, now how much better is it to wake up to that than people fighting over politics?

This is closely related to #8 but different enough to merit mentioning separately. You have interest and you have values. You might be the Star Wars Guy, or the Gun Safety Girl. You might like sharing food pics, or you might like weird stoner bands. Set yourself up so that every day you open your page and it's about the things you love most.