There is nothing I love more than having a crush. As a teen, having a crush was a very serious thing. You had only one crush and you wanted to date them more than anything, end of story. Every conversation had impossibly high stakes. This was your crush, after all, and you had to get it right.
Crushes, however, have taken on an entirely different meaning and place in my adult life. Crushes are everywhere. Crushes are a low-stakes excuse to flirt with someone you see semi-regularly. I'm 24 years old–old enough to no longer fear the idea of having a crush as well as knowing I don't necessarily want to date one either. I just like them! I can't help it. I've spent almost the entire year single, and yet I've never felt lonely. I've had my crushes–at parties, shows, my local coffee shop.
I feel almost as strongly about Facebook as I do about having crushes. I love Facebook, but I hate what it has become. I yearn for the old days when it was just an endless stream of photos of your friends at the beach. These days, Facebook is seemingly only used to discuss Bernie Sanders or promote improv comedy shows. I've grown increasingly worried that in the mess of engaging political discussions and asking people to like your Harold team's page, my crushes weren't accessing my content. Only 5 percent of the total likes on my current profile pictures were from crushes, and the likes on my statuses and shared links were closer to 1 percent. I felt like I could do better: my pictures were cute and my content was strong. But if I couldn't get through the mess of Facebook's algorithm, I had to use it to my advantage.
Facebook's timeline shows you a combination of your closest friends as well as very active users. Not all of my crushes were active users, and some of them were from high school or college. Some were even internet friends! If I wasn't constantly writing on their wall or interacting with them, there was no way for me to see them or vice versa. It was possible that they were seeing my content and not liking it, sure, but it felt more likely that it wasn't even showing up in their timeline and I had no way of changing that within the newsfeed itself.
So: I put all of my crushes into a secret Facebook group.
In many ways, this was the most vulnerable thing I've ever done. Not only was I directly telling a group of people that I had a crush on them, but they also weren't alone in receiving my affections. There were 15 crushes in the group, plus myself. I began the group with two potential outcomes in mind: 1) I start dating a crush (ideal) or 2) all of my crushes overthrow me from my own group (not ideal but pretty cool). While this might sound like it was an insane suicide mission, it turned out to be the opposite. More than a month since its inception, my secret Facebook group of crushes is more or less thriving.
One of the reasons I feel like my group has succeeded is because my crushes are so different from each other. I started with 15 crushes, a mix of high school, college, and people I know from my life. Friends of friends, a few people I had gone one or two dates with. One of my crushes was an internet crush! I set only two barriers on the group: 1) only un-kissed crushes (to avoid any awkwardness of confessing lingering crushes on any former one night stands and 2) no work-related crushes because, you know, boundaries.
A diverse gender landscape kept the group balanced. A Facebook group of fifteen men is essentially an office, and to be frank, I didn't know 15 lesbians to start with.
(I didn't know if independent woodworking was considered creative or business, so it became its own category.)
While it might have been tempting to use the group to post an endless stream of thirst selfies as crush bait, it became more interesting to me to foster a community of all of the people I wanted to kiss. I genuinely wanted to engage with these people and what they were up to and what they liked.
I anticipated the reaction to the group to be negative. I figured it would maybe burn a bridge or two, but if anything, that would prove a crush didn't have a good sense of humor about themselves. About half reached out to me individually–either by text or a private Facebook message–with reactions ranging from "Just wanna know what I'm getting involved in" to "you are wild." But no one left! And no one complained. In fact, everyone seemed willing and game, one crush even mentioning that she thought she'd probably wind up adding them all on Facebook at some point. I was worried I would have to push content or discussions forward, and yet, three days in, one of my crushes asked what everyone was doing for lunch that day. I found over time my crushes enjoyed participating in polls and also discussing "Master Of None" (which we all seemingly watched the same week).
My Facebook group was a nice, polite online space, certainly, but the whole thing did give me a little ego boost. Here were my crushes, all together, interacting with me, of all people. It was as if the Newsfeed didn't exist. It was just me and my crushes, hurtling through the universe together in a stream of conversations about what everyone was doing each weekend.
About a week into my group's timeline, the unthinkable happened. A crush voluntarily left without a word. I woke up one morning and he wasn't there anymore. He hadn't participated before leaving, but he had "seen" most everything posted. It felt too uncomfortable of a thing to directly reach out–can you send a text that asks "hey, why did you leave my secret Facebook group full of crushes?"–as did the thought of just adding him back in.
Instead, I reached out to the only people I spoke to anymore.
Phew. Not only was the group a singularly good idea but also this crush was bad! If anyone had my best interests in mind, it was my group of crushes (and the four remaining crushes who presumably were abstaining from voting for whatever reason). Because my crush had chosen to leave my group, he was also no longer my crush. Goodbye forever!
Since that event, the rest of the group has continued on relatively drama-free. In fact, it's very drama-free. As much as I would love to incite drama between my crushes, they actually seem to really enjoy each other's company.
Even if I wanted to split up my crushes and make them fight for my affection, it might be impossible. A third and relatively unexpected outcome had occurred: my crushes had teamed up–not to overthrow me, but to connect to each other. It turned out I had created a safe space in which they could interact with each other with few consequences. It was a Facebook group of people who hardly knew each other and yet found a way to build community, with me as the binding tie. I had brought the idea up to one crush before originally founding the group, and he nodded, enthusiastic. "Declare yourself queen of your own crushes," he encouraged me, and that's exactly what it had become.
That was nice and all, but my crushes weren't paying enough attention to me. They managed to turn my secret Facebook group of crushes into a smaller, centralized version of what Facebook already was (except on Facebook at large, Mark Zuckerberg is the binding tie, which is gross). They even had the gall to promote their improv shows.
We continue to exist in a tenuous but good balance, me and my crushes. There are quiet days and loud days. It might be silly, but I feel closer through this little group than I do to the bulk of my Facebook feed. I'm not telling you to unfriend everyone who isn't a crush, but I am telling you it's nice to have the people you like see what you do.
I'd be lying if I said I didn't want my crush group to exist forever. Over the past few weeks or so, it has gotten relatively quiet. Maybe it's the holidays. But I still check up on it, mostly to make sure no one else has abandoned it (and sure enough, no one has). And last night, even, someone posted an Iron & Wine cover. A lovely bedtime treat from a crush! I can't just let them go.
When I asked them if I could write about this, they overwhelmingly voted for Taco Bell. So. I guess I owe them Taco Bell. It's the least I can do for my crushes.
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