How to stop annoying your friends with game posts

Is your Facebook Wall inundated daily by game-related statuses?  Have all your non-game statuses been buried by a sea of game posts?  There are two sources of game posts to consider: those generated by you and those generated by your friends.  Let’s just consider the game posts that you generate.  There are several solutions to this dilemma.

The most extreme yet effective solution is to admit that you have a gaming addiction, quit cold-turkey, and block the game app.  Not many of you die-hard gamers will go this route.  In that case, consider the following, less drastic alternative.

The first step is to set up a new Facebook list.  Click on the “facebook” logo on the upper left corner of any Facebook webpage.  On the left-side bar, you should see a “LISTS” header.   If not, click on “MORE” and it should appear.   Move your mouse slightly to the right of “LISTS” and you’ll see “MORE” pop up; click on it to open up a list of all your lists.  Now click on the “Create List” button. 

Let’s say you play a game called Empires & Allies and you want to make game posts visible to only friends that also play the game.  Create a new list called, say, “EMPIRE.”  Now add all your existing fellow gamers on this list.  In the future, if you add any new gaming friends, be sure to add them to this list.

The second step is to tell the game app to utilize this list.  Go to “Account Settings.”  Click on “Apps” on the left-side bar.  (Alternatively, you can go to “Privacy Settings” and then “Edit Settings” for “Apps and Websites.”)  Click on your game.  Look for “App activity privacy: Who can see posts and activity from this app on Facebook?”  Change the setting to the list “EMPIRE” that you created in step one.

Now whenever you play the game and the game posts something on your Wall, the default privacy setting will be the list you selected.  Repeat steps 1 and 2 for each game that you play.  It’s up to you whether to create a single master game list or to create a separate list for each game you play.

All your game posts will now be visible only to your fellow gaming friends.  Your non-gaming friends won’t see your game posts at all.  Keep in mind, however, that you will still see everything.  So if you like having a clean Wall, you still have the job of periodically cleaning it up. 

This solution doesn’t stop your friends from making game posts on your Wall.  You can change a setting so that only you and not your friends can post on your Wall, but you probably don’t want to do this.  You can block the game from posting on your Wall at all, but that’s probably too drastic.  Unfortunately, at this time, Facebook doesn’t seem to have a finer system for setting who can post on your Wall. The best you can do for now is to tell your gaming friends to be selective in what they post to your Wall.  If they don’t know, educate them on hitting the cancel (“X”) button rather than the “Share” button by default.