I love Facebook.
My page -- part diary, part cocktail party, part think tank -- has become a place where friends, acquaintances and complete strangers come together and joke, flirt, share stories and have really smart and often tough conversations about everything from sex and love to gender and race.
I also love that I'm never sure who is going to pop up in my feed and when I'm bored or avoiding doing something more important, I scroll through my "People You May Know" box on the off chance I'll bump into someone from my past or find someone I might want to be a part of my future. But mostly my friend suggestions involve people I don't know and fall into one of these four categories: guys who look like models, guys who look like porn stars, drag queens and guys who look like models that do drag porn.
At least that was true until last night. And then everything changed and all of a sudden I noticed that my "People You May Know" box was overrun with a decade's worth of guys that I've dated or hooked up with and then promptly forgot about (or actively took great pains to avoid).
There was the guy who was so arrogant that despite him having one of the prettiest dicks I've ever held in my left hand, I couldn't make it past a second date with him. There was the guy who didn't get any of my jokes and lived in what I imagine Freddy Krueger's basement bachelor pad would probably look like. And there was the guy who literally chewed on my tongue while we were making out (and not in a good way).
At first I thought I must be on some kind of low budget cable access hidden camera show or maybe my roommate had spiked my chili with PCP but when I mentioned the horror show that was unfolding on my page to my Facebook friends it became clear that I wasn't the only one being haunted and/or hunted and my feed immediately filled up with comments like, "OMG WHY IS THIS HAPPENING?!?" "I thought I was going crazy" and "I noticed the change. Suddenly my vague work contacts were side by side with people I've seen naked. Memories..."
So, why is this happening and how do we make it stop? Facebook is infamously cagey when it comes to explaining their algorithms (and didn't immediately respond to a request for a statement) but it appears that the social media site is using our contacts in our phones to put us (back) in touch with people we may have (purposefully) forgotten about.
Someone in my comments section mentioned that you can go to this page and see the imported phone numbers and delete them. However, he also noted that "even if you didn't sync your phone book, if you provide your phone number to Facebook, you might get matched with other folks who have you in their phonebooks. So if you want to completely opt out, you need to take your phone number off Facebook. Also keep in mind that your phone book will be continuously synced so any new numbers you add might show up in People You May Know." (This may not actually solve the problem, though, as some are reporting that people they've chatted with on Grindr and Tinder but never swapped numbers with are now popping up.)
After my initial hysteria wore off I started to wonder if maybe -- just maybe -- there was some good that could come out of this nightmare. And, of course, there is. It's always a good idea to (re)consider how often and how easily we offer up personal information about ourselves and how often and how easily corporations can make use of that personal information. And on a very practical level, it's a good reminder to clean out my phone book (something I haven't done in years -- if ever) more often.
But beyond that, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that not every hook up or relationship was awful and a few of the faces that I saw in my "People You May Know" box were guys I actually had a really nice time with and, for one reason or another, we just never hung out again. I'm not saying that I'm going to contact all (or any) of these guys or that I'm having (or at least indulging) fantasies about finding my husband in the ruins of a once forgotten one-night stand, but I like the idea of remembering -- of memory -- and honoring those experiences (even the terrible ones) as being part of building who I am today. In our culture of the quick fix and the even quicker orgasm, when we're often so ready to flee from something that feels scary or challenging, being confronted by our failures can reveal how much we've grown.
That doesn't mean I really want to be reunited with mister arrogant pretty dick or Freddy Krueger or the tongue chewer. Some experiences and people belong in the past and that's an important lesson too. But I am going to take Facebook's lead and consider that maybe I judged some of those other guys a little too quickly and they might deserve another chance or -- at the very least -- a Facebook friend request.
UPDATE: A representative from Facebook told The Huffington Post in an email, "We don't take data from Grindr or Tinder to inform the people you may know feature."
A representative from Grindr told The Huffington Post in an email, "As part of our commitment to privacy, Grindr does not share user data with Facebook. However we offer users the ability to display to their Facebook page as an opt-in feature -- that information is not shared with Facebook."
Also on The Huffington Post:
In a 2011 Esquire interview, Megan Fox confirmed her bisexuality, stating, "I think people are born bisexual and then make subconscious choices based on the pressures of society. I have no question in my mind about being bisexual. But I'm also a hypocrite: I would never date a girl who was bisexual, because that means they also sleep with men, and men are so dirty that I'd never want to sleep with a girl who had slept with a man."
The Green Day front man opened up about his sexuality in a 1995 interview with The Advocate: "I think I've always been bisexual. I mean, it's something that I've always been interested in. I think everybody kind of fantasizes about the same sex. I think people are born bisexual, and it's just that our parents and society kind of veer us off into this feeling of 'Oh, I can't.' They say it's taboo. It's ingrained in our heads that it's bad, when it's not bad at all. It's a very beautiful thing."
Comedian Margaret Cho has long been open about her sexuality. In August 2013, Cho discussed the semantics surrounding her open marriage to artist Al Ridenour, saying that she's "technically not able to stay with one person sexually because I’m bisexual,” and joking that she just “can’t stop up that hole.” She also identifies as queer, and opened up about her sexuality in an interview with HuffPost Gay Voices Editor-At-Large Michelangelo Signorile.
Twice-married record executive and music mogul Clive Davis came out as bisexual in his 2013 memoir, The Soundtrack Of My Life. Davis opened up about two long-term relationships he had with men after his divorce from his second wife.
Actress Bai Ling is openly bisexual -- and the identity category has often provided some humorous mix-ups involving her first name. According to GLAAD, she discussed it in-depth in a 2009 interview with Entertainment Weekly: "[A]t first when I was in the United States I didn't always have an interpreter in interviews and I didn't speak English so well. There was some confusion. My name is pronounced 'bi,' so when I was asked, 'Are you bi?' I said, 'Yes, I am Bai.' Do you like men? 'Of course!' Do you like women? 'Why yes!' And later I found out what that means and I said, 'Sure, I am bi!' But I think the interpreters and the reporters thought that I didn't know what I was saying because I was so open about it. They were uncomfortable about it. Such a thing is not important for me."
The "Portlandia" star and former guitarist and vocalist for Sleater-Kinney is often assumed to identify as gay. However, she told "Willamette Week" in 2012 that, "It’s weird, because no one’s actually ever asked me. People just always assume, like, you’re this or that. It’s like, ‘OK. I’m bisexual.’”
The star of "Here Comes Honey Boo Boo" revealed that she's bisexual in an "Inside Edition" interview in April 2015. Her daughter "Pumpkin" Lauryn Thompson also came out as bi at the same time.
