In the digital age of putting your ex boyfriend or girlfriend's
stupid crap in a box and sticking it in a dark corner of your closet, Facebook
recently announced that it is testing new features and options that will allow
you to see a lot less of your ex, if you want to.
In an announcement made
on the Facebook blog, laid out the new tools that will kick in upon the update
of your relationship status.
The following will pop up:
If you say yes, you can do several
things like choose to see your ex lover's name and profile pic around Facebook
less, reduce or eliminate their presence in your news feed, and keep Facebook
from suggesting their name when writing message or tagging photos. And it can
do all this without blocking or unfriending the ex, which will be extremely
useful for the initial period after a break up when every single thing reminds
you of them and everything hurts and life is terrible.
Also useful is the option of limiting what the ex can see of
you, which is both a nice convenience and can come as a form of protection for
someone going through an ugly break up. Or, it could also be a form of kindness
if you have a new paramour or fund new life, and don't want to be so cruel as
to rub it in your ex's face.
The tools are very
thorough, even providing the retroactive option of controlling who can see past
posts and allowing a user to untag themselves from old posts and photos they
were featured in with their ex.
Essentially, the tools allow you to review the whole
relationship and decide which parts to keep and, to a certain degree, which
parts to forget. Which is the kind of thing we all do at the end of a
relationship, except this way involves a pleasant blue-themed interface.
The tools began with beta
testing in the United States soon will be in India too on mobile devices, with
improvements and further rollout promised in the future.
