There are certain times when I play online and I don't want certain people to know I'm online OR what I'm playing.  For example, I have a "friend" who always seems to be online.  Whenever I buy a new game, he wants to borrow it!!  He'll go out of his way to find me and say something like, "Hey man!  I see you got that new Heavy Rain.  Is it any good?  Well when you fininsh it, can I borrow it?"

Me being the kind hearted push over that I am, I always give in.  I let the guy borrow Heavy Rain in early March and I just got it back YESTERDAY!!  He had it twice as long as I did --and still didn't beat the game!

Life would be a lot easier if I could turn off my "online status" from time to time.  Plus, if there's a way to turn off those notices ("bob4titties is now online", "killerbot is now offline"), that would be awesome.  The notification always pops up when I'm trying to read something in that corner.

Any help would be appreciated.

I've turned off the notices, so that's possible. Don't remember how exactly and unable to check now, but it's there.
Haven't managed to hide status though.

you need to be less kind heated and more like your Avatar

I think there is a way of setting it so you appear offline or you could just not login when playing offline games.

Not that i know of.

I just log off when I play games that are too embarassing to show your playing! {cough* playing motorstorm 1 3 years after launch *cough}

darth, I play it still after 3 years, what's the problem there? Are you saying it's a bad game?

There's still people who play it online, heck, it's easier to get into a race on the first than the second D:

You can set your Status to "Not Avaliable"

and you can turn off notification Messages in the System Settings

Settings -> System settings -> Notification messages for not showing friends going on- and offline. It also blocks messages notifications.

For status there seems to be only "not available" as an alternative to "online", but it just changes the blue dot indicator to a yellow one with a clock so not much good for hiding.

Thanks, alekth! I searched the menus but I didn't see it. I'll try it again now that I know what I'm looking for.

@KylieDog

u can change that in the setting lol