Rejoice all ye who find annoyance with constantly seeing their “news” feed flooded with inane status updates about “Check out this crazy site I found,” or “My baby is the cutest ever it just …” because Facebook’s newest feature lets you subscribe, to varying degrees, to what your “friends” want to say to everyone.

I’m guilty of posting some of those very useless updates that really no one cares to read, but I have some “friends” that only post those things; I think we all do. In the past, I would suffer through those. Now I just click “unsubscribe from (insert name)” or “only important” and I don’t have to be bothered with the chatter.

But really, what am I doing? I don’t want to delete some of these people, as they are ties with childhood, or nice people I met that are really just acquaintances rather than friends, but I don’t want to interact with them often. I mean, I might want to talk to them if some memory pops up or I visit some random location that it just so happens they now live in.

On the same note, why am I concerned about just declining their friendship from the outset?

The answer is simple: I want to be nice.

Most people like being friendly, be it to new folks or old buddies. When you are nice to others, they tend to be nice to you. At the same time, you don’t always want to hang out or know about their day.

Many moons ago, Facebook provided us with the means to let essentially anyone into our lives no matter where they might be located. Before the subscribe option, you would either have to have all or nothing of what some “friend” wanted to say.

Now you can let everyone’s feeling stay all hunky dory as you choose “unsubscribe” to probably two-thirds of the people you know, because your supposed friendship remains intact due to being listed with hundreds of other names on their profile page.

People you bonded with drunkenly at the bar last night and might never see again but who post every hour about the level of their boredom in class or at work: gone, but still thinking you are interested.

Older family members that post constant updates about events that you have zero interest in: toast, but still deluded into thinking you pay attention because they don’t understand all the bells and whistles available on Facebook.

Friends that post non-funny sports updates constantly: bye-bye, but you still have to hear the same things in person when you see them.

My point is, Facebook should be looked at as a hero of the movement to make folks feel better about themselves. Now you can “friend” every person you meet, and they will be none the wiser as to your complete and utter lack of interest into their lives.

Three cheers for Facebook! Huzzah! Huzzah! Huzzah! We can all hold hands and sing “Kumbayah” till the rapture overtakes us.

But seriously, is this how starved for attention we have become?

We all want others to pay attention to us; we all want to have a degree, even be it amongst people we have met, of fame. And to do that we post on Facebook.

Furthermore, why is it so damaging to simply not be “friends” with someone on Facebook?

I’ve had people ask why we aren’t pals on Facebook, and I didn’t have the heart to tell them I really don’t want more people I just met clogging up information I might actually want to see from close friends — scrolling down through an entire day of posts in your feed is possibly more brain-numbing than reality TV.

But again, thankfully Facebook has provided us with an option to let everyone in, but make certain we don’t have to actually interact with unless we want to, and even regulate how they see and what they see on our profiles. Top it all off with the ability to block requests and you can keep everything pretty darn tidy.

It is pretty much like real-life encounters of avoidance, but with the advantage of not having to pretend not to recognize someone waving across the room.

Go Facebook! Paving the way for a better tomorrow by creating a false reality where people think others actually care about what you are thinking.