I am by no means a computer expert. Nor am I a hacker. I can usually find my way around a PC fairly well, but if you need someone who really knows what they're doing? I'm not your girl. But hey, you know what I am good at? Finding weird, secret things on the Internet. Case in point: These five secret Facebook tricks you might not know about. Because who doesn't want to feel like a Facebook ninja?
Facebook tricks can be a little… well, tricky. As you might expect, the Book of Face is constantly plugging its own holes, which means that hilarious and slightly unintentional workarounds come and go pretty quickly. My favorite little trick, for example? How to make your “via Android” or whatever status message read something like “via Bananaphone?” It doesn't work anymore. Or at least, the old method doesn't work anymore. Sad face.
But the five little tricks seen below definitely do still work, so go on. You know you've always wanted to see who's been at your page recently, right?
1. See Who You're Most Connected To
Ever wanted to know who you're most connected to? It's actually pretty easy to find out. First, go to your page; then right click anywhere on your timeline and select “View Page Source.” It'll pull up a freaky-looking page of code, but don't run away screaming in terror. Instead, hit CTRL+F to bring up the search box and type “InitialChatFriendsList.” See all those numbers? Those are the profile ID's of the top-sorted list of friends in your Messenger list.
From there, all you have to do is go to "http://www.facebook.com/whatever ID number you want to look up" in your browser, and it'll bring you to the page associated with that ID number. Everytime I do this, by the way, there's always a “-2” after the ID number when it's displayed in the source code — but the trick will only work if you drop the “-2” from the end of the number. So, say the source code for you looks like this:
["InitialChatFriendsList",[],{"list":["ABCDEF-2"]
What you put in your browser is this:
http://www.facebook.com/ABCDEFVoila!
2. Make a Fake Comment Thread
This Facebook interpretation of the Second World War is one of my favorite history jokes of all time. And hey, guess what? You, too, can make things like this with the wonders of this thing called The Wall Machine. Once you connect your Facebook page to it, you'll find yourself looking at this:
Every single thing on there is customizable, from the text right down to the icons, so go nuts. Historical events… famous film or literature plots… exchanges between your pets… whatever you want. It'll be fun. I promise.
3. Create Your Own Chat Emoticons
This one's easy. Technically it doesn't let you create your own emoticons — but it does let you use anyone's profile picture as an emoticon. All you have to do is put double brackets around the user name belonging to the image you want to use when you type it into the chat window. So, if you wanted to use, say, Bustle's fabulous logo, you'd type “[[bustledotcom]]” before hitting enter. Want a few shortcuts? Check out Remove and Replace's listing — it's got shortcuts for all sorts of Rage comic faces. Much hilarity abounds. Note, however, that this trick only works in chat, not in regular ol' messages.
4. Download Your Entire Facebook History
In case you've ever wanted all of your Facebook data in one place, here's how to do it: Go to “Settings,” then to “General Account Settings.” Below the list of settings, you should see a link that says “Download a copy of your Facebook data.” You probably don't want to share it around, since it's got… well, all of the data you've ever put on Facebook in it—so be careful. With great power comes great responsibility and all that. Oh, and if you've been on FB for a long time… expect the download to take a while.
5. Find Out Who Unfriended You
Confession: I could not get this thing to work. But apparently Who.Deleted.Me will inform you when you're unfriended, as well as let you know who unfriended you. I'm not totally sure why you would want to do this to yourself—I feel like it's just going to lead to a whole bunch of self-esteem issues — but if you're curious… well, there you go. Jut don't say I didn't warn you.
Images: Giphy (5)
