This Glorious Hack Makes Sure Facebook Can't Remind You How Single You Are

Stop me if you've heard this one:

You wake up and log in to Facebook, hoping for a quick, 30-second morning scroll.

Instead, the top of your newsfeed has an "On This Day" post.

And in that "On This Day" post is a photo of your ex.

Yuck. Today's gonna suck.

Facebook is great at drudging up the past like that. In life, you can ignore bad memories, but Facebook likes to hang on to them.

It's not that Facebook necessarily means to be this cruel. It's just that Facebook is run by a bunch of soulless algorithms.

These same algorithms were in play in 2014 when they gave all users a "Year In Review" feature — which wasn't exactly great for Eric Meyer, whose daughter died that year and was featured prominently in the Facebook review.

The automatic features Facebook has aren't much better. I know I get upset every year when Facebook reminds me it's the birthday of a childhood friend who died years ago — before they came up with the "legacy" feature about what happens to your account after you die.

But Facebook is trying to make the experience at least somewhat better.

So there's a super useful feature to prevent your heartbreak from the "On This Day" post.

(Of course, this hack takes like 80 steps because nothing with Facebook is ever easy, but here we go.)

First, log in to Facebook and find the "Apps" section on the left side of the newsfeed.

Click on "On This Day." At the top of that section, click the "Preferences" button.

There, you can individually filter out certain people or dates from being included in your "On This Day" posts.

Go ahead and get rid of your exes and dates you know will be hard to be reminded of. Facebook isn't exactly the best place for your mental wellness, but at least you can help yourself a little with this.

Citations: Meyer Web, Slate, Hello Giggles