Last November, I went home for Thanksgiving and while I was in town, my sister & I attended a mini-reunion of a bunch of people that we went to high school with, who all happened to be in town for the holidays (and some who are still local). During that get-together, this picture was taken:
That’s me in the flowery shirt on the left, and my gorgeous sister is in the middle in blue.
If you click through to Flickr, you’ll see that my caption for the guy on the far right is “some dude I don’t know.” Well, I do know who he is now, because he’s added me as a friend on Facebook. Which is weird, because we only met that one time and I don’t remember him from high school at all. I only recognize his last name because I kinda-sorta knew his younger brother (or I should say, I recognized his brother’s name; I don’t know if we ever spoke to each other in high school). My sister had no clue who he was either, even though he was closer to her grade. But yeah, ok, we have like 15 Facebook friends in common, so sure I’ll add you. Why not?
Here’s the weird thing: that picture up there? He has that set as his profile picture. WTF? I’m guessing he likes that there’s a picture of himself with 5 attractive women, but since neither my sister nor I really know him at all, I thought it was borderline creepy that we’re in his profile picture. But eh, ok, I let it go. But that’s kind of weird, isn’t it?
Now, though, I’m starting to get really annoyed, because he keeps making these outrageous political statements on Facebook (i.e., one of his status updates said, “Oboma [sic] is such a liar!!!”), and he answers Facebook polls with “Absolutely!” on the “Would you vote Sarah Palin for president in 2012?” question. So, basically, all of this far-right rhetoric is popping up… with my sister’s and my faces right next to it. And since I’m pretty much the polar opposite end of the spectrum, I really don’t like this at all. (I think I can safely say for my sister that she wouldn’t care much for it either, but I don’t know if she’s noticed it yet.)
So, my question is, can I send him a very polite private message on Facebook, and just say, hey look, you’re 100% entitled to your opinions, but I’d prefer if you use a different profile picture because I don’t want people to associate my face with that kind of talk? Or do I just have to suck it up & ignore it?