How do I make myself invisible to people on my friend's list?

[Lulabells Starlight]

There are times, when I am in world, that I do not want to be disturbed by a lot of IM's.  How do I make myself invisible  to ppl on my FL, without removing them or blocking them?

[Rolig Loon]

The easy answer is that you do not have ANY obligation to answer when someone sends you an IM.  If you want to be left alone, just ignore them.  Most people will understand.

The almost easy answer is that you can use one of the options in the pull-down menu at the top of your screen to put yourself in BUSY or DO NOT DISTURB mode (the wording varies from one viewer to another).  When you do that, your viewer automatically sends a canned response to anyone who IM's you, and then saves their message until you come back out of BUSY mode.  Personally, I don't like doing that because it also blocks any deliveries.  If you have bought something or if a friend sends you a gift, it will be returned, and you will never know what happened.  I much prefer just ignoring messages if I am too busy to answer at the moment.

[Lulabells Starlight]

Thank you Rolig.