Facebook. Let your fingers do the stalking.

We all know how useful Facebook is for stalking ex-es. This includes discovering that your ex-boyfriend’s got a new girl, or that your ex hook-up has four, or that your ex-husband has a new baby, when you didn’t even know he’d gotten married.

Well I think Facebook is feelin used and abused, so now it’s stalking us back.

Have you guys noticed the Facebook ads on the right side of your profile page? I know their search engines are behind it, targeting each individual, but still, the ads are unsettling in their specificity. They seem to know what buttons need pushing. Are they trying to tell us something? (In the example on the right the ad insists this woman is a gay man).

My ex-cub pointed this out to me. His noticed that ever since our break up, his Facebook ads are recommending things like: 1- a new apartment, 2- a better career, and 3- local Christian girls. I guess Facebook knows it’s probably not a good idea to sell him local Jewish Cougars.

So I took a look at my page. The ad at the top was benign: ‘New York vegan food.’ But as I scrolled down I saw, “Psychology and Counseling,” and then, “Acupuncture and IVF treatments.”

What the F-book? Does Facebook think that they can just passive aggressively express their opinion of what they think is right for me?

For fun, I wondered what kind of ads would come from my mother. Would I be getting, “Local Jewish doctors and lawyers,” or “Apartments available on the Upper West Side,” or “Donate to the Holocaust Museum?”

Linked-In recently got on the here-are-things-you-prefer-not-to-think-about bandwagon too. The day after my cub and I broke up, Linked-In recommended I connect with my ex-husband. They thought he was “someone I might know.” Ya think?

Pressure and guilt from my mother I can take. But automated, social media guilt? Creepy!

(Confession: As I write this, I keep checking back to my profile page to see what else Facebook thinks I should be doing. Wait, ‘Invisalign?’ Are my teeth crooked?)