The other day I noticed something kind of strange about the “People You Might Know” list on my Facebook account. In addition to the usual array of strangers or acquaintances with whom I share mutual friends and thus “might know,” Facebook was suddenly suggesting some new faces with whom I shared no mutual friends. A few were unfamiliar at first, until something about their face or name jogged my memory.
First: Wait, is that the guy I went on one date with three summers ago and it was so hot that my ass sweated through my dress in the cab and I had a huge butt-shaped sweat stain and he never asked me out again?
Then another: Eww, no, whyyyy is this douchebag a suggestion?! He basically went out of his way to go on dates with, like, four Frisky staff members. I only went out with him to interrogate him about his lady blogger fetish. Why is he all up in my suggested friends list? GET OUT.
And another: Oooh, I remember you, random one-night stand with the big dick who put a big band-aid on his nose to cover a zit and it kept halfway peeling off while we banged. THAT was your name. I had forgotten.
Seriously, why was Facebook trying to make me friend a bunch of dudes I don’t actually know, you know, aside from going on one date and/or roll in the hay? Apparently, there is an explanation, and it’s not because FB is, like, so desperate to get me laid that they’re reaching back into my dating archives. It seems FB is using the contacts on our phones to find and suggest new potential friends that we had no desire to be friends with in the first place.
If you’re as irritated as I am about Facebook’s nerve in suggesting dudes who were total duds, you can go to this page and delete the imported contacts. But keep in mind that if you have included your own phone number in your profile, even if it’s hidden, you may end up popping up on the suggested friends list of anyone who had you in their contacts. Goddammit, Facebook, LEAVE THE PAST IN THE PAST!
[Huffington Post]Original by Amelia McDonell-Parry @xoamelia
