My Facebook Friend Suggestion Became a Friend Request?

I’m not sure if Facebook is trying to pull one over on me or if this is just a bug, but yesterday I noticed that a friend suggestion I had sitting out there was now a friend request. (In this case, I mean a friend that someone had suggested I had, not the algorithmically derived “suggestions” that appear on the homepage).

I’ve been hanging onto this particular friend suggestion for some time, debating on whether or not I should take action since it involves the sort of “not really a friend” type person that I’ve been wondering what happened to, but who’s not someone I actually want to get back in touch with. So instead of doing anything about it, I’ve ignored the suggestion while I tried to decide. Besides, I thought, this person has several mutual friends with me – if they wanted to get back in touch, they could initiate the request, instead of the other way around. Then I could choose to graciously accept or continue to ignore them.

In any event, I noticed yesterday that the friend suggestion had disappeared. And now, in its place, is a friend request. Did this person actually request my friendship? Or is something else going on with Facebook? Assuming it was a legitimate request, that wouldn’t have caused the suggestion’s removal…I should still have the suggestion in addition to the request. Right? At least that’s what I thought would happen. My gut tells me that something else is going on. A bug perhaps or just Facebook getting sneaky. I’m not sure I should accept this request now, graciously or not, because I don’t know that it’s for real.

After all, the suggestion sat there for months on end…what would prompt this person to initiate a request now? And isn’t Facebook in the middle of another big revamp? Could they have screwed something up in the process?

Has this happened to anyone else?