The Internet Is Giving Me The Creeps
What you see below is a screenshot of my 'Suggestions' page on Facebook. For those of you, who don't use this social networking platform: on this page you find a list of people that Facebook 'suggests' to you to become friends with. These 'filtered' people are in 99% percent of the cases friends of your friends on Facebook (so you might actually know them). It very rarely happens that someone completely unfamiliar pops up and if they do, the connection is something like same school, same university etc. – but at least there still is some sort of connection...
As for the girl I circled, Päivi from Finland, I also know her. We met on an online apartment search forum about two years back when we were both looking for a place to stay in Copenhagen. We exchanged email addresses and had planned to find an apartment together – opening up a flatshare seemed easier and cheaper than finding something by yourself. To cut a long story short, finally we both actually did end up finding something on our own but decided to at least meet up for a coffee just for kicks when we were in Copenhagen. So we also exchanged phone numbers, met, had a coffee, found out that we had very little in common and that was that. We never had contact after that again. Not via email, sms, anything. And now she pops up in this very 'Suggestions' page.
And here's the really scary part: we have no mutual friends on Facebook, we never visited the same school or university – she studied at Copenhagen Business School – heck we most likely don't even have the same interests posted. We only lived in Copenhagen during the same period of time. So I ask myself: why, of all the people that Facebook could possibly pick for me as a 'potential friend' it for fuck's sake chose Päivi?! How the hell does it know that we had contact (and that only very briefly)?! Maybe it doesn't know, maybe it was just a very stupid coincidence. But actually I just can't believe that. My head just went into paranoia mode and now I'm thinking that Facebook somehow, somewhere pulled this information off the internet – email records, phone bills, whatever. I know that sounds ridiculous, but seriously, what are the odds?
As for the girl I circled, Päivi from Finland, I also know her. We met on an online apartment search forum about two years back when we were both looking for a place to stay in Copenhagen. We exchanged email addresses and had planned to find an apartment together – opening up a flatshare seemed easier and cheaper than finding something by yourself. To cut a long story short, finally we both actually did end up finding something on our own but decided to at least meet up for a coffee just for kicks when we were in Copenhagen. So we also exchanged phone numbers, met, had a coffee, found out that we had very little in common and that was that. We never had contact after that again. Not via email, sms, anything. And now she pops up in this very 'Suggestions' page.
And here's the really scary part: we have no mutual friends on Facebook, we never visited the same school or university – she studied at Copenhagen Business School – heck we most likely don't even have the same interests posted. We only lived in Copenhagen during the same period of time. So I ask myself: why, of all the people that Facebook could possibly pick for me as a 'potential friend' it for fuck's sake chose Päivi?! How the hell does it know that we had contact (and that only very briefly)?! Maybe it doesn't know, maybe it was just a very stupid coincidence. But actually I just can't believe that. My head just went into paranoia mode and now I'm thinking that Facebook somehow, somewhere pulled this information off the internet – email records, phone bills, whatever. I know that sounds ridiculous, but seriously, what are the odds?
ccseabass - 2009-06-24 23:33