Facebook Issues: 4 Easy Steps to Eliminate a Clingy Facebook Friend

Let’s face it: Some people on Facebook are clingy. I speak from experience when I say that it’s easier to eliminate a real-life clingy friend as opposed to a Facebook clingy friend–especially if you have mutual friends!

How do you know if a friend is Facebook clingy?

Ask yourself one simple question–do you dread seeing his/her name when that little red notification icon pops up?

A clingy friend on Facebook can do one or more of the following things: always comment on your status, comment on wall posts by your OTHER friends, spam your wall, engage in conversations with your near and dear and then add them on Facebook, and if you’re especially unfortunate, adds your family members or closest friends to their network on Facebook (even without knowing them or ever having met them).

How do I know? Someone I know does all of the above–a super clingy friend, AKA, “The Rash

Clingy Facebook Friend
theoatmeal.com

Follow these easy 4 Steps to slowly, but effectively, eliminate your Facebook clingy friend in just 5 weeks:

This is a delicate matter that should be handled with tact and grace. You don’t want to block this person or remove them as a friend completely because they will surely notice and end up “commenting” in person, rather than online.

Week 1:

Block The Rash from private information. This includes relationship status, family members, and where you work. Start off with this step the first week so it appears that you are just beginning to clean up your profile, NOT blocking your “friend.”

Week 3:

Waiting a solid two weeks will help to ease this transition. Each time you update your status, make sure to hide it from your irritating friend.

This way, you don’t go from blocking a few personal items to your entire wall, but rather it APPEARS that you are just not updating your status. The person will think you are very busy and this may prompt him/her to lose interest in you.

Yes, this is a tedious process because you have to individually customize your status–if you save the setting then your entire wall gets blocked and that’s way too obvious and way too soon. You must click the arrow to customize your status and block each one from The Rash.

Week 4:

By week 4, it’s time to take more serious action. Post a fake status that only your friend can see saying something along the lines of, “I’m taking a hiatus from Facebook. My wall will be out of reach! This is temporary guys :)”.

If you customize this particular status to ONLY appear on your annoying friend’s news feed, no one else will think you are really leaving Facebook and you may be finally on the path to peace and quiet from The Rash.

Week 5:

Block your wall. Yep, it’s time. Simply go into your settings and customize your wall and status to block the viewing eyes of the The Rash. It may seem harsh, but you gave him/her 5 weeks to redeem him/herself and it just didn’t happen.

You can’t go on living your life wondering when the next tag, posting or awkward comment will happen, but we both know this is really the only way to handle this type of situation.

One can argue that the 5 week process above can be taken care of in less than six minutes; however, it’s important to remember that gradual distancing is more natural and less offensive. Why burn bridges when you can just put up a padlocked gate?

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