eternal sunshine of the facebook mind.

If you use Facebook as much as I do (I'm always logged in for work, I swear! haha), then you've seen those little annoying "memories" and recommendations that pop up on the side of your screen as you're stalking your next potential flame. You can't lie -- it's kind of awkward seeing your ex's face while your scrolling for pictures of your next's ex for comparison. It's ok, we've all been there...

 

Well, after a few complaints (seriously, did people complain about "emotional distress" from seeing their exes when they could just as easily block them?), Facebook changed this feature so that it wouldn't show these "memories" from people you were in a relationship with... as long as the relationship was listed on Facebook at one time or another. From my experience, these memories/recommendations often featured the people I interact with most on the social networking site. Still, even after this change, there was a chance that you could see something you may not want to be reminded of in the off chance your relationship was never explicitly "Facebook official." So some genius created an extension for those of you using Google Chrome that allows you to "hide" a person -- from your memories, newsfeed, photos, even Facebook chat -- without defriending or blocking them. The name of this amazing little extension? Eternal Sunshine. So. Effing. Perfect.

Don't catch the reference? How can you not have seen Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind? Oh, you know -- it's only the greatest romantic comedy/story/whatever. Well, if you've never seen it (or never read my post about it before), it's about a couple who both have a fictional procedure done to completely erase the other from their lives. In a brilliant twist, while going through the process, Jim Carrey's character, Joel (probably one of his greatest performances ever), realizes that he still wants to keep all of these memories -- good and bad. This just presents a whole other set of problems since he's mid-procedure and the film takes you through his mind. Even greater, the bond still exists even after it's all gone. It's fictional and often funny, but powerful nonetheless. It also stars Kate Winslet, Mark Ruffalo, Kirsten Dunst and Elijah Wood. It's one of my favorite movies, and that's probably why I think this Google extension is so great :)