A lot of people enjoy Facebook's many, many applications. You can take quizzes, send your friends a plant/fairy dust/round of drinks, play online games of skill and chance, and invite others to support your favorite causes.

For some people using Facebook - myself among them - this is largely just a lot of noise. I am more interested in reading people's status updates than to continually poke, prod, send plants or buy "gifts" for each other. I want to know how my current and old chums are feeling these days, what they are up do. I don't care how many Mafia Wars they've got going, or how their Farm Plot is growing.

To keep my Facebook "inbox" clean, I do two things:

1. I "ignore" all requests for games, gifts, drinks, snowball fights and whatever else shows up in my "Invitations" page. Just hit the ignore button. No one will be offended and the requests will gradually stop coming in.

2. I "hide" results from said gifts, games and whatnot when they show up in my wall pages. So if I get annoyed that Mafia Wars and YoVille are pushing actual interesting status updates off my feed, I simply move my mouse over to the "hide" button and choose exactly what I wish hidden (as in, the application, not the person).

You can always "unhide" something later if you suddenly get bit by the plant-pushing bug. Clicking on "hide" will ensure you don't see messages you find annoying anymore.

I will admit I get sucked into quizzes from time to time, but I at least try to add a statement about how I feel about the answer, so it's not a complete waste of time for others. For example, I might say, "Yeah, I expected Griffindor," so that when it mentions I took some quiz about HogWarts Houses, people can feel free to tell me, "Really? I would have thought Ravensclaw for you."

All this said, I realize there are people who do live for Facebook games and apps, freely sending drinks and flowers and fairies and fuzzy pets to everyone they know. And that is fine. Lots of people enjoy this!! Everyone uses Facebook to their own satisfaction.

My point is that if, to you, these games are noisy clutter, you don't have to join in or even read about them. Don't waste your time; no one is going to get offended if you don't return their plants. Keep in touch in more personal ways, by commenting on your friends' photos, links and status updates instead.

A few helpful Facebook resources on Amazon.com:

Facebook: The Missing Manual

Facebook For Dummies