Okay Facebook, It's Getting Creepy

Some of you may be familiar with Clifton StrengthsFinder? I like this tool--and the whole psychology behind it--quite a lot. (I've written about it here on the blog in the past too...check out this, and this, and this for a look into the past.)

My wife works in the Career Development Center here on our campus, and they use StrengthsFinder as one tool to support discerning students trying to figure out "What should I do with my life??" It's helpful for that sort of thing. And, like many couples, we sometimes wind up talking about work at home. And so it happened that last night, we had a conversation about Strengths, which isn't wildly out of the ordinary, but it also isn't something that we talk about all that often.

And I know I haven't looked up the StrengthsFinder website on my computer or phone anytime recently--probably for a couple of years, actually, until today when I searched it up as was writing this post.

But here's why I'm thinking about this right now. Earlier today I had this ad show up in my Facebook feed:

Hmmm...this feels a little (lot) bit creepy, Facebook.

Facebook Update

About 5 months ago, I wrote this rambling post about my complicated relationship with Facebook, which included a mention that I was removing the Facebook app from my phone.

A weird thing happened right after that. As I often do, I shared the link to that post on Facebook...

Facebook is Weird

I.

A month or so ago, I presented a session at the annual Day of Encouragement held here on our campus. The session was entitled "Ministering to 'Digital Natives'" and I was pleased that quite a few people showed up. As folks were coming in the room, I was surprised and amazed how many of them I knew: one of my best friends in the world, a couple of colleagues from here at the college, several of my former students (both from my days teaching middle school, and my current prof life), a young woman who used to babysit our kids when they were little, church friends, and even my former youth pastor from my high school days in southern California. It was a weird mash-up of different parts of my life, all in the same room. I joked that this was a little bit like Facebook.

Image by Jo Alcock [CC BY-SA-NC 2.0]