We, as a society, harbour a dark secret. We, each and every single one of use, are sitting atop a well of shame so extensive, so comprehensive, that were our secret to ever resurface it would rend apart the very fabric of modern civilisation. We are all complicit in our silence, of suppressing that shameful secret, and the name of that deep, dark reservoir of shame is ‘all of our Facebook posts between the years of 2008-2013’.
Each and every single post from this time, represents a vast network of collective embarrassment. The tendrils of this web are far-reaching and extensive, there is barely a person alive who has escaped its shameful touch.
‘OMG, Duz any1 else think cats are like, the best?’ Oct, 2011.
‘Life’s too short to waste on the h8ers, like & share.’ Jul, 2011.
‘5th year is the haaaardest.’
‘Does anyone else think Kony gets a bad rap? I mean he’s getting all those kids off the streets and giving them jobs.’ Mar, 2012.
‘What’s every1’s favourite piza topping?’ Mar, 2012.
‘Okay, I see a lot of you are still angry with me about my Kony post (even goin so far as to ruin my fun pizza toppings post with comments about, like, war crimes or something). I just want y’all to know that the h8ers aren’t gonna ever win, I have my opinions and I’m not afraid to speak them. If you can’t deal with that then u no where the ‘unfriend’ button is, k bi.’ Mar, 2012.
‘Having done some research into the matter, I would like to retract my statements posted in March of this year about Kony. I apologise for any offence caused.’ Apr, 2012.
As I said, a deep, dark well that will destroy us all if ever a light is shone into it. While it may seem an arduous and deeply, unappealing prospect to scroll through the dank recesses of your entire newsfeed on some grand purge to help salvage your own permanently damaged public image, Facebook has actually created a relatively painless way to go about this, huzzah!
- Go onto your own profile page.
- Under the status box there is a ‘Manage Posts’ button, click on this.
- In this menu you can choose to filter posts by date and year, do this, having braced yourself, both emotionally (deep-breathing) and physically (ensuring there are tissues nearby and a large bin to vomit into if necessary).
- Start perusing the posts in the time period you’ve selected, you will be able to select individual posts to be either deleted permanently or hidden from your timeline.
- Select those you would like expunged from history and select either ‘hide’ or ‘delete’, and voila! Only you will know what you have done, only you will know of these skeletons that live in your closet.
- However, if you are looking to delete posts that have been put on your wall by friends, you are unfortunately only able to hide these, so the friend in question will still know of what has happened. You will be locked together in your pact of secrecy.
At the moment you can only remove 50 posts at a time. I hope for your sake that this is enough, otherwise, sweet Christ I don’t know how you’ve been able to sleep at night after all these years.
